Wilderness Watch is in D.C. this week and we need your backup

Wilderness Watch staff are in Washington, D.C. to educate and urge members of Congress to take action to protect Wilderness—and we could use your help!

Please call your representative and two senators at 202-224-3121 and deliver the following message:

“I’m calling to let my member of Congress know that Wilderness is important. The Wilderness Act was a bipartisan bill passed in 1964 and the threats are greater than ever. Agencies are flouting the law and Congress is actively considering bills that will undermine and chip away at the Wilderness Act. Please keep nonconforming exceptions out of Wilderness bills and start holding the agencies accountable for their attacks on Wilderness.”

Want to do even more for Wilderness?!?

We’ve put together the following list of actions that your members of Congress can take that will defend Wilderness and protect the Wilderness Act. Please consider contacting your members of Congress and urge them to do the following:

• Conduct oversight hearings, such as the U.S. Forest Service’s illegal authorizations of chainsaw use in Wilderness, all the agencies’ authorizations of motorized equipment and transport in Wilderness, and the defunding of trail crews and wilderness programs that have contributed to situations that lead to an exploitative use of the 4(c) exception.
• Reinstate and improve reporting requirements for Wilderness-administering agencies. The Wilderness Act originally had reporting requirements, but those were repealed by the Paperwork Reduction Act, which allowed the gutting of wilderness programs. For example, require the agencies to annually report wilderness staffing levels and the 4(c) exceptions the agencies have authorized, specifically tallying allowances for helicopter flights and landings separate from other motorized use.
• Send a letter to all agencies revising wilderness guidance to restate the Congressional vision for the National Wilderness Preservation System and agency obligations under 1964 Wilderness Act.
• Send a letter to the Bureau of Land Management. The agency is overhauling grazing regulations to weaken land health standards and omit public notification and involvement. Restate the Congressional vision for Wilderness and remind the agency of its obligations to preserve wilderness character under the 1964 Wilderness Act.
• Appropriate and earmark money for Wilderness programs, including funding crews with hand tools for trail work; require reports for how the agencies use those funds.
• Create a separate agency for Wilderness and fund it. Stewart Udall, who served three terms as a congressman from Arizona and also served as Secretary of the Interior recommended that Congress create an agency–a “National Wilderness Service” that would ensure stewardship accountability among the four agencies that administer Wilderness, while those agencies would remain responsible for day-to-day management.
• Support or, if there is no counterpart in your chamber, consider sponsoring wilderness bills that are free from non-conforming exceptions, have no “buffer zone” language, and are over 5,000 acres or add to an existing Wilderness: e.g., the Arctic Refuge Protection Act (H.R. 3067, S. 1519), the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act (H.R.2420, S. 1198), America’s Red Rocks Wilderness Act (H.R. 2467, S. 1193); the Oregon Recreation Enhancement Act (S. 888).
• Support or sponsor the Boundary Waters Wilderness Protection and Pollution Prevention Act (H.R. 588, S. 1366).
• Support or consider sponsoring the Voluntary Grazing Permit Retirement Act (H.R. 5785, no Senate counterpart) or other legislation to end livestock grazing in Wilderness.
• Oppose the Save Our Sequoias Act (S. 4103) which allows vegetation manipulation in Wilderness and is accompanied by a House report that claims this is generally allowed under the Wilderness Act.
• Repeal the Congressional Review Act and reinstate the agency actions that protected the Gates of the Arctic and Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
• Repeal the fixed anchor provision (Sec. 122) of the EXPLORE Act (Pub. L. 188-234).
• Reunite the Cumberland Island Wilderness by repealing the road carve out and prohibit land exchanges that would privatize potential wilderness areas.

Thank you for getting in touch with your members of Congress! Together, we’ll defend the Wilderness Act and our National Wilderness Preservation System from these unprecedented attacks.