Wild Issues
For over 35 years, Wilderness Watch has been the leading national organization whose sole focus is the preservation and proper stewardship of lands and rivers included in the National Wilderness Preservation System. Learn more about current Wilderness issues we’re working on.
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World’s First Wilderness Area Under Attack
The U.S. Air Force is proposing up to 10,000 F-16 fighter jet “sorties” a year over the Gila and Aldo Leopold Wildernesses and Gila National Forest in southern New Mexico. The area’s wild character would no doubt be harmed…
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WW Supports Federal Purchase of State Lands in the Boundary Waters
Wilderness Watch is urging the Forest Service to support the federal purchase of 86,000 acres of Minnesota School Trust lands in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) rather than move forward with an ill-conceived plan to shrink the…
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National Monument “Review” Threatens Wilderness
On April 26, 2017 President Trump issued an Executive Order directing the U.S. Department of the Interior to review all national monuments larger than 100,000 acres and established since 1996—27 monuments in all. This “review” was nothing less than an all out…
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Better Ways to Cross a River
Wilderness Watch had urged the Forest Service to abandon its plan to re-construct the large Hawks Rest bridge over the Yellowstone River in the Teton Wilderness in Wyoming, using helicopters and other motorized equipment.The Teton Wilderness lies within the…
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Visitor Permit System Coming to Central Cascades Wildernesses
People shouldn’t be charged for simply walking in the Wilderness, but that’s what the Forest Service is doing in the Mount Jefferson, Mount Washington, and Three Sisters Wildernesses in the Oregon Cascades. (Originally slated to start in May 2020,…
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Commercial Abuse Threatens Pasayten and Lake Chelan-Sawtooth Wildernesses
Wilderness Watch is opposing the latest effort by the Forest Service (FS) to drastically increase the amount of commercial pack stock outfitting and guiding from current levels in the Pasayten and Lake Chelan-Sawtooth Wildernesses east of the Cascade crest…
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Victory for River of No Return Wilderness and Its Wildlife
In a major victory for Wilderness and wildlife, on March 9, 2020, federal Judge B. Lynn Winmill ruled in January 2017 that the Forest Service’s approval of Idaho Fish and Game’s helicopter-assisted elk-collaring project in the Frank Church-River of…
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BLM drops Owyhee Canyonlands Wilderness juniper project
In 2016, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) withdrew its misguided plan to cut junipers across more than 600,000 acres of the Owyhee Canyonlands in Idaho. Wilderness Watch has opposed this drastic tree-clearing project which originally called for cutting…
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WW Objects to Military Range in Wildernesses in Washington
In January 2017, Wilderness Watch formally objected to the Forest Service’s (FS) draft decision on the Pacific Northwest Electronic Warfare Range. This project, which includes flying supersonic military aircraft at low altitudes, would negatively impact five Wildernesses in Washington…
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Leave the Fire Island Breach Be
Wilderness Watch is asking the National Park Service to allow natural processes to determine the outcome of the breach in the Otis Pike Fire Island High Dune Wilderness in New York. In December 2016, WW submitted comments supporting the…
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BLM Proposes Manipulating Remote Wildernesses in Arizona
Wilderness Watch has told the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) it needs to drop its plan to significantly manipulate or trammel the Mount Trumbull and Mount Logan Wildernesses in the Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument in Arizona as part of…
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“Keeping It Wild” Jeopardizes the Wildness of Wilderness
In June 2016, the interagency Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute in Missoula, Montana released a draft “decision support tool” to guide managers contemplating ecological intervention management actions in Wilderness. Though intended to require managers to more adequately justify such…
Photo: Desolation Wilderness, Utah by Bob Wick/BLM