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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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…
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Kootznoowoo Wilderness Spared an Airport
In a great victory for the Kootznoowoo Wilderness, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), with the support and urging of Wilderness Watch and our supporters around the country, decided in 2016 to site the Angoon Airport outside the boundaries of…
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WW Urges a Wilder Yosemite Wilderness
Wilderness Watch submitted comments on Yosemite National Park’s Wilderness Stewardship Plan (WSP) Preliminary Concepts and Ideas. The 704,000-acre Yosemite Wilderness in California makes up 94 percent of the Park.
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Another Helicopter Proposal to Capture and Collar Wildlife
Wilderness Watch and other organizations are opposing a Utah Division of Wildlife Resources (UDWR) plan to use helicopters to capture and collar non-native mountain goats in three Wildernesses along the Wasatch Front in Utah—Twin Peaks, Lone Peak, and Mt.…
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Park Service Should Protect Nation’s Largest National Park and Wilderness
Wilderness Watch is concerned that measures proposed by the National Park Service (NPS) in their Backcountry and Wilderness Stewardship Plan for Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve (Wrangells) in Alaska will fail to adequately protect the wilderness character of this great landscape.…
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Mining Exploration Halted in Famed River of No Return Wilderness
Wilderness Watch and several other conservation groups have scored a major victory for the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness in Idaho! On August 2, 2016, a federal judge in Idaho issued an order declaring that the U.S. Forest Service’s…
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Utah Public Lands Initiative Guts Wilderness Protections
In August 2016, Wilderness Watch released a detailed analysis of the Wilderness provisions found in the “Utah Public Lands Initiative Act” (H.R. 5780), which was introduced in Congress on July 14, 2016 by Rep Rob Bishop (R-UT) and Rep…
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Congress Allows Unethical Killing in Wildlife Refuges in Alaska
Trump signed a law in early April 2017 to again allow the following practices to kill wildlife in national wildlife refuges in Alaska: • Same day airborne hunting of bears, wolves, and wolverines; • Use of traps, snares, and…
Photo: Desolation Wilderness, Utah by Bob Wick/BLM