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Grizzly bear mortalities in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem have reached record levels for the third year in a row, with over 80 bears already dead, with two months remaining in the year. Conservation groups today sounded the alarm over the increased bear deaths, at least 50 of which were human-caused, with another 15 under investigation. The groups urged the Trump administration to avoid doing even more harm by finalizing a 4(d) management rule that would allow for more bear killing or delisting the species, which is currently listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

In July, the Trump administration proposed a revised 4(d) rule that would hand over greater management of the species to hostile Northern Rockies states. While bears would temporarily retain their Endangered Species Act listing, the rule would function as a backdoor delisting without the prerequisite findings that federal protections are no longer required to sustain the species. The revised 4(d) proposal is expected to be finalized in the coming weeks.

Since announcing the 4(d) proposal, the Trump administration has also openly stated that it intends to immediately push on delisting after the rule is finalized. An Interior Department official noted that the 4(d) rule would act as a safety net if delisting fails in an expected court challenge. Several conservation groups have stated they plan to challenge to maintain protections for the grizzly bear, particularly in light of these new and emerging threats.

“It is incredibly alarming that the administration is seeking new ways to harm or kill grizzly bears as the species faces three years of record mortality,” said Jenny Harbine, managing attorney for Earthjustice’s Northern Rockies Office. “This is the absolute worst time to be caving to political pressure from Northern Rockies states that will do even more harm to the species if they take the reins. The Trump administration has already taken numerous actions that will further impair grizzly recovery, including rescinding the Roadless Rule and eliminating habitat protections under the ESA. Further eroding safeguards for bears would be incredibly shortsighted.”

“The dismayingly high number of grizzly bear deaths points out the need to better protect grizzlies in the Lower 48,” said Kevin Proescholdt, conservation director for Wilderness Watch. “Among the measures that would provide a lifeline to threatened grizzly bears is designating more Wilderness in prime grizzly habitat in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. We should also work to eliminate livestock grazing permits in prime grizzly bear habitat like the Upper Green River in Wyoming, which includes the Bridger Wilderness. If grizzly bears can’t be safe from persecution in Wilderness areas, no public lands are safe for grizzly bears.”

“Record high grizzly deaths show bears need more protection, not less, as they continue expanding their range and attempt to reoccupy the places they once freely roamed,” said Adam Rissien, rewilding manager with WildEarth Guardians. “It is no surprise conflicts are increasing and more grizzlies are getting killed. Bears are having to search for more food in more places because of shorter winters, more severe summer heat and drought, and a steep drop in whitebark pine nuts that they’ve historically relied on for a substantial portion of their fall diet.”

“With this many deaths occurring year after year, it’s obvious that we still have a long way to go before we can say we are doing a good job of properly coexisting with grizzly bears,” said Kristin Combs, executive director for Wyoming Wildlife Advocates. “Much more needs to be done to reduce human-caused conflicts. It’s no secret that Wyoming intends to allow more grizzlies to be killed so removing protections would add more deaths to an already beleaguered population. Because grizzlies are so slow to reproduce, this could undo decades of recovery work.”

“Dead grizzlies are the predictable price of putting more cattle in grizzly country,” said Patrick Kelly, Montana Director for Western Watersheds Project. “Livestock conflict has killed more Greater Yellowstone grizzlies this year than any other cause, yet the Trump administration is pushing national forests across the region to restock vacant grazing allotments, and several already have. Now the same administration wants to finalize a 4(d) rule handing grizzly management to states that have made clear they want fewer bears. That’s not recovery. It’s a plan for more dead grizzlies.”

“The alarming number of grizzly deaths in recent years shows the devastating toll of the Trump administration’s dismantling of land conservation measures throughout the Northern Rockies,” said Nick Gevock, Sierra Club Northern Rockies campaign strategist. “More motorized use and logging, along with putting livestock onto lands that were specifically closed to alleviate conflicts with grizzlies, has only led to more deaths. It further proves that with hostile states eager to drive the grizzly population down, now is no time to remove federal protections for this iconic species.”

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum issued a Secretarial Order today restating the Trump administration’s desire to giving public lands ranchers their full wish list, including fast-tracked permits, maximized livestock use, and loosened protections on killing native wildlife. While much of the Secretarial Order (SO) simply restates the same messaging and promises of early missives, today’s announcement sets timelines for all of the land-management agencies (including national parks and national wildlife refuges) to identify ways to exploit even more land for grazing use.

“Once again we see the Trump administration fundamentally misunderstand—or misleadingly overstate—the significance of public lands ranching, which contributes less than 2 percent of all the beef in the U.S. markets, by claiming that weakening bedrock environmental protections will somehow lower beef prices for the American consumer,” said Josh Osher, policy director for Western Watersheds Project. “Public lands are a significant source of wildlife habitat, recreational opportunities, carbon storage, and watershed protections for all Americans, but Secretary Burgum is making plain that he only values the special interest industries that extract and exploit our natural resources.”

The SO establishes a new “Rangeland Health Initiative” but rather than ensuring that public rangelands managed by the Department of the Interior are actually healthy and productive, the Initiative’s primary purpose is to expand grazing at all costs and expense to wildlife, native plants, and resilient ecosystems. Components of a true Rangeland Health Initiative would include:

• Immediately suspending or reducing livestock grazing in all allotments that are failing to meet rangeland health standards due to current livestock grazing, estimated at over 37 million acres .

• Reducing the forage allocated to livestock to no more than 25-30 percent to ensure sufficient forage is available for native wildlife and plant resilience and productivity.

• Establishing a drought policy that requires suspending or reducing livestock grazing when areas are experiencing persistent and/or extreme drought conditions.

• Prioritizing the health of native carnivores and other wildlife over the production of livestock by ensuring no net loss of wildlife populations on federal public lands.

• Ensuring immediate compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, and other bedrock environmental laws including prioritizing public input in all rangeland management decisions.

“The Trump administration is putting the livestock industry ahead of protecting our public lands and native wildlife,” said Dan Brister, staff attorney of Wilderness Watch. “This sweeping order pushes to expand livestock grazing, resurrect suspended grazing privileges, and weaken protections for native predators, potentially threatening even our most protected Wilderness areas. America’s wildest public lands are not private feedlots.”

“Vacant grazing allotments and other public lands that are currently spared from the destructive impacts of commercial livestock grazing aren’t ‘underutilized’,” said Chris Krupp, public lands attorney for WildEarth Guardians. “In fact, because these lands aren’t grazed, they are among the very best and most secure habitat for elk, mule deer, sage grouse, grizzly bears, native fish, and so many other species that are vital to the health of our public lands and our Western economies.”

This year, ProPublica and High Country News published a three-part investigation into the public lands grazing system, examining the subsidies that support it, its environmental impacts and the political influence that can limit oversight. The investigation found that public lands grazing is concentrated among a small number of wealthy individuals and corporations, with the top 10 percent of permittees controlling roughly two-thirds of grazing on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands and more than half on Forest Service lands. At the same time, federal grazing fees averaged about 93 percent below the market rate for private forage, and public lands ranchers could access at least $2.5 billion in federal subsidies in 2024. The investigation also found that BLM assessments identified at least 38 million acres degraded by grazing, with no land health assessment on record for another 35 million acres.

“Without consideration of recent huge staff losses at the BLM (a decrease from 11,000 employees in 2024 to 5,800 employees in August of 2026) the Order expands the work that agency employees are being asked to do. In addition to losing capacity, the agency is losing the specialists. Massive changes to public lands management require expertise that is rapidly disappearing from BLM, and we expect that implementation of this Order will be slipshod,” said Chandra Rosenthal, Western Lands Advocate at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

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On October 21, 1978, President Jimmy Carter signed the 1978 Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness Act, Public Law 95-495, into law!

This culminated a fiercely-fought battle to provide new protections for the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, which was originally established in 1964 when the Wilderness Act was signed into law. Our conservation director, Kevin Proescholdt, was a key figure in the passage of the 1978 Act...Thank you, Kevin!

Specifically, the 1978 Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness Act:

• Ended logging within the Wilderness and essentially ended snowmobiling;

• Reduced motorboat use from 62 percent of water surface area to about 21 percent of water surface area today;

• Essentially prohibited mineral exploration and mining inside the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness;

• Created a new BWCA Mining Protection Area outside the Wilderness;

• Added about 68,000 acres to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in small additions along the periphery for a total today of 1,098,000 acres;

• Removed section 4(d)(5) from the 1964 Wilderness Act, which had singled out the BWCA to allow continued logging and motorboat use (the only time the 1964 Wilderness Act has been amended); and

• Officially re-named the area from Boundary Waters Canoe Area to Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

Happy 48th Anniversary to the 1978 Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness Act!

The River Runs Through It Act (H.R. 10529), introduced by Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke, would protect just a fraction of public National Forest lands needed for our wildlife and fish to not only persist, but thrive.

The act contains new designations for 465,000 acres primarily in the Blackfoot and Clearwater watersheds that are home to bull trout, cutthroat trout, grizzly bears, lynx, wolverine and a large herd of elk that over-winters on the Blackfoot-Clearwater Wildlife Management Area.

Commercial logging, new roads and motorized recreation would be allowed on about 330,000 of these acres including a new 70-mile motorized loop trail through sensitive wildlife habitats. The primary elk migration corridor between the Bob Marshall Wilderness complex and winter range would be degraded.

Wilderness-quality lands that would be opened to development include all of the Lincoln Gulch, Crater Mountain, Specimen Creek and Anaconda Hill roadless areas, half of Nevada Mountain and all of the Lodgepole Creek area in the Monture watershed. It would open to development the Wales Creek and Hoodoo Mountain Wilderness Study areas. More than 36,000 acres would become permanent motorized winter recreation areas.

The roadless lands adjacent to the Scapegoat Wilderness would be split, with the less productive high elevations designated as “wilderness” and the lower elevation, more productive areas committed to logging and motorized use.

New roads create sediment-choking pollution of waterways vital to native trout recovery and corner elk into smaller and more isolated secure areas which would limit successful hunting opportunities.

The River Runs Through It Act would sacrifice both core and connectivity habitat. Habitat connectivity allows wildlife to move through a network of roadless stepping stones, providing sustainability for a multitude of species. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, any decrease in conservation threatens the survival and recovery of grizzly bears. This is true for all threatened and sensitive wildlife.

The landscape-level approach embodied in the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act is a better strategy for protecting remaining roadless areas and habitat connectivity. That act offers a fundamentally different approach from the River Runs Through It Act, prioritizing wildlands and wildlife protection over new roads and motorized recreation.

Protecting wildlands is essential for safeguarding biodiversity and preserving migration pathways that plants and animals depend on amidst our changing climates, while enhancing the resilience of local communities by ensuring access to clean air, healthy soils and livelihoods rooted in natural systems.

Looking at the biodiversity account, the Zinke’s act makes more withdrawals than deposits. While the River Runs Through It Act would protect some areas that are deserving of “wilderness” designation, it is not nearly enough, and is short on protection in all the right places.

At a time when conservation advocates are putting so much collective effort into maintaining the roadless area conservation rule, promoting the opening of large amounts of roadless area for roadbuilding, logging and motorized use undercuts our efforts and credibility. It also sets a bad precedent for other parts of the Northern Rockies.

Another issue is process. The River Runs Through It Act was developed in an exclusionary fashion, with many conservation advocates left out, leading to over-compromise. For Zinke, who is leaving Congress, the only way to pass the bill in the short time left is to short-circuit debate and informed consent. This is the sort of sausage-making despised by the public.

This shrinking resource needs Congress to provide lasting protection. By taking action to preserve these invaluable landscapes, we invest in a sustainable future for all.

This opinion piece by co-authored by Wilderness Watch; Friends of the Clearwater; Flathead-Lolo-Bitterroot Citizen Task Force; Alliance for the Wild Rockies; Western Watersheds Project; Wilderness Education School; Bold Visions Conservation; Friends of the Wild Swan; Swan View Coalition; Friends of the Bitterroot; Kootenai Environmental Alliance; Gallatin Wildlife Association; Inland Empire Task Force; WildEarth Guardians; Conservation Congress; Gallatin-Yellowstone Wilderness Alliance; Save the Yellowstone Grizzly; Save Our Cabinets; Rock Creek Alliance; Our Montana, Inc.; and Footloose Montana.

TAKE ACTION! Call your U.S. House Rep at (202) 224-3121 and urge them to oppose the River Runs Through It Act (H.R. 10529), while also urging them to co-sponsor and pass the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act (H.R. 2420).

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Cumberland Island National Seashore and Wilderness in southern Georgia is the largest undeveloped barrier island on the eastern seaboard and one of the gems of America’s National Park system. Massive live oak maritime forests, saltwater marshes, and a spectacular white sand beach—home to loggerhead sea turtles—are remarkable to experience.

The National Park Service (NPS) is asking for public input on two of four proposed land exchanges (first announced in 2024) on Cumberland Island. While the proposal released for public review lacks a lot of necessary information, it’s clear the exchanges would benefit private interests far more than the public interest, and would undermine Congress’ intent when the seashore and Wilderness were established—that Cumberland Island would be allowed to rewild over time.

Please speak up by October 16 and tell the NPS, “No land exchanges on Cumberland Island!”

Once the private enclave of wealthy families, the federal government acquired most private land on Cumberland Island in the 1960s to save it from real estate development like that which had beset many other East Coast barrier islands. Congress established the Cumberland Island National Seashore in 1972. Many previous land owners—as part of the deal when selling their land to the public—retained the right to occupy the land for a specified time period. Some of these “retained rights” have already expired and all eventually will.

In 1982, Congress designated much of the island’s northern two-thirds as the Cumberland Island Wilderness, or as potential Wilderness until the nonconforming uses end, whether that be when retained rights expire or the government acquires ownership of the tracts of land. Already quite a treasure, Cumberland Island was on the path to wild restoration and becoming one of the premier Wildernesses in the National Wilderness Preservation System.

Unfortunately, heirs to some of the remaining private tracts are angling to swap their land for prime wild property on the island. While it is not Wilderness or potential Wilderness, it is wild and would be developed if the land-swap moves forward. They’ve been working behind the scenes with the NPS to make that happen, with this proposal the result of those backroom deals.

Both pieces of property NPS proposes to acquire appear to be in some sort of 10-year conservation covenants for tax breaks which began in 2025. Although the National Park Service generally alleges a risk of development to justify acquiring the two tracts of land, the agency has failed to point to any specific imminent threats of development on either tract. In the second land exchange, private owners wouldn’t even sell their whole tract—the maps show the private property owners have carved out private beachfront property for themselves as well as a private road to that private beachfront, fragmenting what the public would acquire. The fate of development is very clear, however, for the public land NPS is proposing to swap away.

The current proposal would sell our public land and allow for up to eight new residences on land currently protected as part of the seashore, each with a potential 15,000-square-foot building footprint. Both pieces of land that would be transferred away are neighboring blocks likely centered around hookup access still there from the earlier owners and structures prior to NPS acquiring the land.

Part of the land to be swapped away was originally transferred to the government in 1978. The occupants’ retained rights expired in 2010, and NPS removed these earlier structures. Currently, the land that we own has relatively wild maritime forests and wetlands, as documented by Wild Cumberland here. If these lands were traded away, the transfer would be permanent and would allow the building construction noted above, disturbing sensitive habitat with new roads, infrastructure, and human disturbance. It’s a good deal for the private interests, but a terrible one for the public, and will undermine six decades of rewilding on Cumberland Island.

NPS has not explained why any of the lands are particularly suitable for an exchange. NPS has not disclosed detailed maps, photos, or relevant history, either.

Acquiring land to protect the seashore and then disposing of it runs contrary to the Congressional mandate to permanently preserve the island in its primitive state, both within and outside of Wilderness. These land exchange proposals should also be opposed because of the dangerous precedent they’d set in transferring away public lands.

The National Park Service is seeking public comment on the proposed land exchanges until October 16. Please send your comments to the NPS at the following link: https://parkplanning.nps.gov/commentForm.cfm?documentID=153378

Please use your own words, but consider making the following points:

• I oppose exchanging out of public ownership any lands on Cumberland Island because the current public lands NPS is considering trading away are contributing to a wilder island. The NPS has the authority to acquire remaining private lands on the island, and it should use that authority rather than trading away public lands.

• NPS should consider its congressional mandate on how to preserve the seashore without permanently transferring public land to private ownership, because that would essentially guarantee development on an island Congress wanted to see returned to its wild state.

• NPS must explain how the proposed land exchanges fit with the agency’s long-term Cumberland Island Land Protection Plan from 1994, which contemplated acquiring the private land on Cumberland Island without disposing of public land on the island.

• NPS must justify and support its general allegations about the risk of development with specific threats for the two pieces of property it proposes to acquire.

• NPS needs to disclose the ownership history of all lands it proposes to sell off and more details about the lands it proposes to acquire.

• NPS must explain what wildlife would be compromised on the lands that would be given over to private ownership, and delineate where critical habitat for endangered species overlaps with the lands NPS would dispose of.

• NPS must complete an environmental impact statement because of the precedence this creates for selling off or transferring away the public’s land.

To learn more about this issue, please watch Wild Cumberland’s town hall: Why the Cumberland Island Land Exchange is Raising Red Flags.

Thank you for speaking up for a wild Cumberland Island!

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A trio of high-profile wolf hearings will be happening in federal court in Missoula, Montana on Tuesday, October 13.

WHEN: Tuesday, October 13 starting at 9:30am MDT
WHERE: U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit; Russell E. Smith Federal Courthouse; Donald W. Molloy Courtroom, room 300; 201 E. Broadway St, Suite 310, Missoula, MT

Livestream link:

These three appeals will be heard in this order:

Mexican wolf “essentiality:” Conservationists are appealing a ruling in a case regarding the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s designation of the only wild Mexican wolf population in the U.S.—estimated at 317 individuals in Arizona and New Mexico—as non-essential to the species’ continued survival. With fewer than 400 wolves in the wild between the U.S. and Mexico, it is inconceivable the only population of wolves in the remaining wolf habitat in the U.S. would be deemed nonessential to the species’ continued existence. There are roughly 45 Mexican wolves known to exist in Mexico—the only other population globally. Interesting angle: The Service’s non-essential designation hampers recovery efforts by limiting the protections afforded to the wolves in the area the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has determined is vital to Mexican wolf recovery.

Northern Rocky Mountains wolf-listing petition: On Aug. 5, 2025, conservationists, including Wilderness Watch, won a case in federal district court in Missoula finding the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service violated the Endangered Species Act (ESA) when it determined that gray wolves in the western U.S.—including wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountains—do not warrant federal protections, despite their role as the “headwaters” of the greater U.S. gray wolf population. The ruling vacated the Service’s decision and remanded the matter back to the agency for a new finding, consistent with the ESA and best available science. The Service, three states, and trophy hunters appealed the decision, and this is the hearing for that appeal. Interesting angle: After a legislative, state-specific delisting in 2011, the states of Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho have been in charge of managing wolves there. These states have proven hostile to wolves, as exemplified by declining populations in Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho, largely due to aggressive, state-set hunting quotas.

General gray wolf endangered species status: In 2022, conservationists won a case restoring Endangered Species Act protections for gray wolves in the Lower 48 states with the exception of the Northern Rockies population (map), for which gray wolf protections were removed by Congress in 2011. The first Trump administration delisted gray wolves in 2020. Our attorneys proved in court the best available science does not support removing these protections. Gray wolves occupy only about 10% of their historic territory. The Service is appealing our victory. Interesting angle: Last month, President Trump signed an executive order signaling imminent nationwide gray wolf delisting or downlisting, representing yet another chapter in the long saga of hostility to gray wolf restoration in the U.S.

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In these coming days many in the environmental community will remind us why our roadless areas are great. And they are. While the National Wilderness Preservation System is 112 million acres, the nation’s roadless inventory adds about 60 million more acres of a secondary yet important level of national forest protection. Roadless areas connect Wilderness areas. Wilderness is the only statutory designation that protects natural processes and systems, but roadless areas provide important administrative protection for other areas, generally protecting old and mature forests, water sources, and countless other benefits. Additionally, roadless areas help stitch together a larger wild landscape. Roadless areas could also be future Wilderness; in fact, many roadless areas are proposed for wilderness designation in the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act.

The U.S. Forest Service analyzed three alternatives for the future of the 2001 Roadless Rule in the draft environmental impact statement (EIS) it publicly released on August 20, and none are great. Two alternatives would entirely or partially eliminate protections for roadless areas—on brand with the administration’s nihilistic push for “development.” The third, “no-action” alternative would keep the 2001 Roadless Rule in place. Just because roadless areas are great does not necessarily mean the 2001 Roadless Rule works well. And we must not limit ourselves to the menu of choices the Forest Service is spoon-feeding us.

Here is how we can improve the Roadless Rule. While the following ideas may be controversial, even among some conservationists, protective measures like these are within the purview of administrative action and could greatly strengthen the Roadless Rule.

Eliminate the logging loopholes. In the 2000 EIS for what became the Roadless Rule, the Forest Service created exceptions to log in roadless areas. But the agency also considered an alternative that had no exceptions. The loopholes in the alternative adopted—explicitly listed in the rule itself—include logging “generally small diameter timber” to “improve” habitat for sensitive, threatened, or endangered species or to “maintain or restore” ecosystem structure to reduce “uncharacteristic” wildfire effects. These are absurd. Logging has never saved species by “improving” habitat, but it has destroyed enough habitat to cause the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list Canada lynx, grizzly bears, northern spotted owls, and bull trout (to name a few) under the Endangered Species Act. We are in a brave new world—a hot one—and cutting down natural solutions (yes, trees) won’t cool our planet but will contribute to the warming that is causing record drought and longer fire seasons. Science over the past two decades has debunked that we can improve roadless areas by logging them.

For at least a decade, the Forest Service Northern Region tracked logging projects it authorized in roadless areas in Montana (and Idaho, which along with Colorado, has a less protective national forest roadless rule not being considered by the Forest Service for change). According to the Forest Service’s own decade of accounting, it authorized 33,000 acres of logging in inventoried roadless areas in Montana under the 2001 Roadless Rule. When we cross checked those figures with the project’s actual environmental analyses, we found authorized logging in inventoried roadless areas in Montana was closer to 40,000 acres. In the 2000 EIS for the Roadless Rule, the agency predicted the Forest Service would only authorize about 1,400 acres of logging in roadless areas across the nation annually. But instead, on average from 2008-2018, the agency authorized 3,200 acres of inventoried roadless logging annually in Montana alone. The majority of this logging overreach—according to the agency’s corresponding environmental analyses—relied upon the loopholes described above.

Montana is not unique. In California in 2024, the Forest Service finally prevailed in the Ninth Circuit, convincing the Court that trees up to 21 inches in diameter were “small-diameter” trees and the agency could log into an inventoried roadless area. Such an interpretation is baffling, since a 16-inch diameter tree in a dry climate like California can be a mature tree, making a 20-inch-diameter tree old growth.

Eliminate livestock grazing in our inventoried roadless areas. Livestock grazing—which is pervasive on nearly 250 million acres of our public lands despite being four percent of livestock production in this nation—spreads invasive grasses that exacerbate wildfires, displaces wildlife, destroys habitat, and pollutes clean water. The Forest Service is clandestinely restocking vacant grazing allotments with cattle—including in roadless areas and Wilderness—without public knowledge or participation. The 2001 Roadless Rule doesn’t protect our national roadless inventory from this environmental degradation.

Restrict motorized and mechanized use in our inventoried roadless areas. Research shows that motorized and mechanized access—on roads, trails, or over the snow—harm wildlife, from elk to grizzly bears. Recent trends that conflate recreation with conservation and that see public lands, including roadless areas on national forests, as merely a commodity to exploit for a growing number of new recreational toys and experiences also present threats to wildlife and those seeking solitude. Additionally, the Forest Service also has the Travel Management Rule in its crosshairs, and wants to open all public lands outside of Wilderness to motorized use. The 2001 Roadless Rule won’t protect our national roadless wildlands from this environmental degradation, either.

Because all of these degradations can still happen if the 2001 Roadless Rule remains in place, advocating for the no-action alternative in the draft EIS becomes problematic.

If you comment on the Forest Service’s proposal, don’t order from their pathetic menu. Even the status quo loses our roadless wildlands inventory with degradation by a thousand cuts. Demand a better alternative that closes the industrial logging and livestock grazing loopholes that have existed for a quarter century, and will protect from the motorized and mechanized destruction on the horizon. While you are at it, ask that the less protective rules in Idaho and Colorado be made part of a strengthened national rule. This is how we protect our roadless and wilderness heritage.

Katie Bilodeau is Wilderness Watch’s Legislative Director and Policy Analyst and Gary Macfarlane is a former board member. Wilderness Watch is a national Wilderness organization headquartered in Missoula, Montana.

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Friends,

As you may have heard, Wilderness Watch and 18 other environmental protection groups were recently notified by certain members of Congress that they are initiating an investigation into our work. In their letter, they call us “radical” and “extremist” for successfully using the court system to force our government to comply with environmental laws, and they note concern about our “emotive messaging.”

While Congress certainly has oversight power to ensure legislation is functioning as intended, the tenor of the letter suggests a more concerning motive. Let us be abundantly clear: Seeking redress through the courts and speaking up for the wild are lawful and constitutionally protected activities, and civil liberties are essential to functioning democracies.

Moments like these only strengthen our commitment to the work we do because we know what we’re fighting for—all the wild places and wild ones that need an unwavering voice, present and future generations who need clean air and clean water and healthy ecosystems, and the broader community of life whose interests and rights should be respected by those wielding power.

Wilderness is not partisan, and it needs our voice now more than ever. We will continue to show up, and we know our members and supporters will too.

Onward,

Dana Johnson
Executive Director

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We should all be deeply concerned about the most recent challenge to the integrity of America’s national forests—the proposed repeal of the 2001 U.S. Forest Service Roadless Area Conservation Rule. This could open up nearly 45 million acres of our public lands to road-building, logging, mining, and development.

Roadless wildlands protected under this rule provide abundant benefits to nature and to people. In their current status, roadless areas provide critical wildlife habitat, mature contiguous forests, magnificent scenic vistas, clean water, carbon storage, and recreation opportunities. However, one often overlooked and very important benefit is that roadless areas are critical to the preservation of wilderness character, including the “qualities” and “values” in Wilderness.

On August 18, 2026, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brook Rollins announced the Trump administration’s proposed rule that would completely repeal the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. Inventoried Roadless Areas are wild areas within national forests where new road building, reconstruction, and logging are generally prohibited, with some notable exceptions. The general prohibition on roadbuilding allows these places to remain in a mostly natural condition with limited development and infrastructure. These roadless areas are not currently designated Wilderness but are often located adjacent to Wilderness areas. Tens of millions of acres of these roadless areas are also currently recommended as Wilderness in the Forest Service’s own forest plans or proposed for wilderness designation via legislation currently pending in Congress, such as the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act.

Roadless areas provide a de facto buffer to protect Wilderness from the impacts of industrial forest management and other resource extraction occurring on nearby National Forest System lands. The Wilderness Act is silent on the issue of buffer zones around designated Wilderness where activities detrimental to the preservation of wilderness character could be limited. However, many subsequent wilderness laws have specifically prohibited the establishment of protective buffer zones. While not perfect, and with notable loopholes, Inventoried Roadless Areas provide an elegant solution to the issue of buffers that meet this need for protection from impacts occurring outside the wilderness boundary to preservation of wilderness character inside, “as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled” by humans.

Critical to this reasoning is that wilderness character inside designated Wilderness can be, and often is, impacted by activities that occur outside Wilderness. Those impacts are many. For example, they include impacts to solitude from the sights and sounds of development and activities occurring outside the wilderness boundary—from things such as logging, mining, road construction, gravel pits, shooting ranges, motorized recreation, and highly developed trailheads for recreational access.

Additionally, natural conditions and wildness inside the Wilderness boundary line can be damaged or enhanced by the presence or absence of suitable wildlife habitat in adjacent areas. Animals and plants located inside Wilderness need habitat beyond the administrative boundary of Wilderness to move within their home range or for adaptation to climate change. Roadless areas provide these natural conditions and offer the benefit of an expansion of their available habitat.

Inventoried Roadless Areas have been serving as buffers that often prevent the most egregious, as well as many lesser, insults to wilderness character. The absence of Inventoried Roadless Areas adjacent to Wilderness would make it much more likely that industrial forest management would take place right up to the wilderness boundary. In Wilderness areas that do not have this de facto buffer, industrial forest management already does often occur right up to the line.

To dig in deeper and think about how repeal of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule might impact a Wilderness near you, check out this map showing the location of Inventoried Roadless Areas across national forests. Click on the layer list to add Forest Service Wilderness areas. Think about what these areas mean to you in their current, roadless condition and then imagine how they and adjacent Wilderness areas would change if roads and related development were allowed. It’s shocking to see how much of America’s remaining wildlands on national forests would be threatened by industrial development if the Roadless Area Conservation Rule is repealed.

The public comment period for this proposal is open until October 6. Click here for talking points and to submit your own public comments. We all must tell the Forest Service what roadless areas on our national forests mean to us, why they are important, and why roadless area protections need to be retained and strengthened, instead of repealed. We must keep these places roadless—for their own sake and for their contribution to the preservation of Wilderness.

Suzanne Cable is a Wilderness Watch board member. She retired in January 2024 after a 30-year career with the Forest Service, finishing her career as the forest-wide program manager for Recreation, Trails, and Wilderness on the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest.

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One hundred years ago, on September 17, 1926, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture William Jardine provided the first wilderness designation for the area later re-named as the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) in the Superior National Forest of Minnesota. While a significant landmark in the region’s history, more remains to be done to fulfill the dream of a fully and permanently protected canoe country wilderness.

Jardine’s new policy sought to resolve a national controversy over the future of the Superior. The U.S. Forest Service and local boosters, in conjunction with the national “Good Roads” movement, sought to build roads throughout the Superior. Conservationists, led by the recently-formed Izaak Walton League of America and the Superior National Forest Recreation Association, pushed to protect the Superior as a Wilderness, citing Aldo Leopold’s 1924 success to administratively establish the Gila Wilderness in New Mexico.

Jardine’s decision settled the road battle in a typical compromise. The Echo Trail, Fernberg Road, and Gunflint Trail extension could proceed, but the most damaging road proposal—from Lake One east across the heart of the current BWCAW to the Gunflint Trail—was blocked by Jardine’s decision, as were other proposed spur roads from the Echo Trail north to Loon Lake and Lac La Croix and south to Trout Lake. Jardine promised that 1,000 square miles of the Superior National Forest (640,000 acres) would be protected “as wilderness” without “roads of any character.” His decision established only the second administratively-designated wilderness in the nation, and the only one established by an official as high as a Cabinet Secretary.

By today’s standards, Jardine’s decision was fairly weak and without strong direction. But coming as it did at the beginning of the national wilderness movement, his policy charted a path toward wilderness protection that continues to this day.

In 1930, Congress passed the Shipstead-Newton-Nolan Act to block a dam-building proposal inside the Superior wilderness and to protect shoreline forests from logging. In 1948, Congress passed the Thye-Blatnik Act to provide funds to purchase private lands and developments, and the following year President Truman created an unprecedented airspace reservation above the wilderness to block low-level flights and the landing of float planes. Congress included the BWCA in the 1964 Wilderness Act, which established the National Wilderness Preservation System, but included language singling out the BWCA to allow logging and motorboats to continue. Finally in 1978, Congress passed the BWCAW Act, which ended logging, reduced motorboat use, essentially prohibited mining inside the Wilderness, eliminated snowmobiles, and added about 68,000 acres to the current 1.1 million-acre BWCAW in key additions along its periphery.

Given this long history of wilderness conservation, what else remains to be done to reach full, permanent wilderness protection?

• Sulfide Mining. Proposals continue for copper-nickel sulfide mines in the watershed of the BWCAW, which pose enormous threats to the BWCAW’s water quality from acid mine drainage.

• Motorboat Traffic. Motorboats still roar on about 21 percent of the BWCAW’s water surface area, and commercial towboats that ferry canoe parties add to the noise and disruption without adequate regulation.

• Visitation Levels. As the most visited Wilderness in the entire National Wilderness Preservation System, the BWCAW continues to attract visitors from around the world. Yet the Wilderness Act promises “outstanding opportunities for solitude,” and too many visitors at the same time and place can make this challenging to provide.

• Motorized Portages. Several commercial motorized portage services remain inside the BWCAW and should eventually be eliminated.

• School Trust Lands. About 80,000 acres of state-owned school trust lands remain inside the BWCAW. A current good proposal calls for the federal government to purchase those lands, with the proceeds deposited in Minnesota’s Permanent School Fund.

• Human Meddling. Wildernesses must remain unmanipulated if they are to remain wild; the Wilderness Act actually defines Wilderness in part as “untrammeled” or unmanipulated. We should resist the calls for manipulating the BWCAW’s forest with manager-ignited fire, as well as calls to plant and shape the forests to satisfy human desires, not Nature’s, even if couched as responses to climate change.

The dream of a fully and permanently protected BWCAW, begun over a century ago and legitimized by William Jardine’s 1926 policy decision, remains within our grasp. Let’s work to make that dream a reality.

Kevin Proescholdt is the conservation director for Wilderness Watch, a national wilderness conservation organization. He guided canoe trips for 10 years in the BWCAW, helped pass the 1978 BWCAW Act through Congress, and co-authored the definitive history of that struggle, Troubled Waters: The Fight for the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

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On August 18, 2026, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brook Rollins announced the Trump administration’s proposed rule that would completely repeal the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule.

The administration’s proposed rule and Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) would put over 44 million acres of roadless, wild National Forest System lands on the chopping block—potentially opening these wildlands up to road building, logging, mining, and other industrial development.

Roadless areas on national forests provide secure habitat for native wildlife, and offer excellent recreation, like camping, hiking, hunting, and more. Because many roadless areas abut designated Wildernesses, they also protect and enhance the value of those Wildernesses by keeping road-building and other industrial development farther away from Wilderness. And in the future, Congress may look to roadless areas for possible future wilderness designations, such as envisioned in the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act.

Unfortunately, even the 2001 Roadless Rule is not nearly protective enough. It contains numerous loopholes that allow some road-building, logging, and other industrial development under certain circumstances. In fact, in just Montana, the U.S. Forest Service authorized nearly 40,000 acres of logging in inventoried roadless areas under the 2001 Roadless Rule. This is a great example of why, rather than repeal the 2001 Roadless Rule, it should be strengthened to eliminate loopholes.

Comments on the DEIS must be received by Tuesday, October 6 at the following link: https://www.regulations.gov/commenton/FS-2025-0001-223869

Use any or all of the following talking points, but please also speak in your own words about the importance of roadless areas.

• I oppose rescinding the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. It has helped protect roadless areas, and adjacent Wilderness areas, on national forests for 25 years.

• If anything is done with the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, it should be strengthened to eliminate logging and roadbuilding loopholes and provide better protection to roadless areas and adjacent Wilderness areas.

• Roads fragment wildlife habitat. Existing roadless areas provide habitat for many threatened and endangered native species. Roadless areas also provide important migration corridors.

• Roads threaten high-quality streams and rivers. Dirt and sediment that runs off roads impairs habitat for fish and aquatic wildlife, and roads in steep, rugged country increase the risk of landslides that suffocate streams and rivers with mounds of mud.

• More roads will result in more human-caused fires in the backcountry. Research shows that more than 60 percent of human-caused fires on national forests in the Lower 48 states are ignited within 1/8-mile of the nearest road, and 95 percent are ignited within 1/2-mile.

• Roadless areas provide for recreation, like camping, hiking and backpacking, hunting and angling, wildlife viewing and photography, and other activities. Large sections of the Continental Divide, Pacific Crest, and Appalachian National Scenic trails cross protected roadless areas.

• The Forest Service already has a huge road system—stretching 380,000 miles, which is longer than the country’s highways—with an estimated maintenance backlog of over $8.6 billion.

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The summer/fall issue of our newsletter, the Wilderness Watcher, is hot off the press. Read it here.

Our newsletter has important updates on how we’re holding federal land management agencies and Congress accountable to the Wilderness Act in preservation of America’s National Wilderness Preservation System and its wildlife.

In this issue, we wish George Nickas, our recently retired Executive Director, happy trails and offer our deepest gratitude for his 30 years defending Wilderness. In the cover story, George writes, “As I step aside as Executive Director and new leadership takes the helm, I can’t imagine a more satisfying feeling than having spent the past three decades ‘fighting for the freedom of the Wilderness,’ and helping to build a national organization—the only one—that remains steadfastly committed to preserving the integrity of the Wilderness Act and the high ideals it represents.”

Our new Executive Director, Dana Johnson, delivers an inspiring message, “In a world of overconsumption, false entitlement, and fabricated realities, Wilderness is an anchor point to the real world—our true home....Our goal in the coming years is to heed this call more than ever, to unapologetically defend Wilderness as an endangered landscape and pull it closer, to start seeing and protecting more of the wild in our own backyards and in ourselves.”

As always, our newsletter also has important updates on our work defending Wilderness and its wildlife in Congress, the courts, and on the ground—work that we simply could not do without you!

Please read and share our summer/fall newsletter and, if you are able, consider making a special donation to help us keep Wilderness wild.

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In an impressive third act, written entirely by the public, you stopped the logging and removal of the survey tree in the Washakie Wilderness—and you saved more than we realized.

On August 18, Wilderness Watch shared imminent Forest Service plans to cut down and helicopter out a remote tree from the Washakie Wilderness southeast of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. This tree has carvings of names from men who were caught in a snowstorm 133 years ago while surveying the Yellowstone Forest Reserve. The Forest Service plan was to build a trail to this tree, cut it down, and move it to a museum to supposedly inspire visitors to protect public lands. I shared two parts to this story—what we knew about the project itself, based on a tip from the Wyoming Wilderness Association and our follow-up with Forest Service employees, and the fact that the decision to authorize this project was done behind closed doors without public knowledge. I noted how I hoped that the third part to this story was one our members and supporters would write by sending in comments to the project leader and the Shoshone National Forest’s supervisor.

Our members, supporters, and wilderness advocates delivered with hundreds of comments. Sincerely, thank you to all who commented, and we especially thank the three dozen or so who shared their comments with us. We believe the Forest Service received many more comments than that. The pushback was so overwhelming that on August 24, the forest supervisor emailed to inform us that they paused the project and would let us know how they intend to proceed, and that there would be no more work on this project this year. That was all you. Wilderness Watch wrote the Forest Service on August 4 to inquire about the project and then asked the Forest Service to pause the project. On August 13 the forest supervisor responded that they intended to proceed. But after the supervisor started hearing from the public as early as August 18, he paused the project less than a week later. Well done, folks!

We’d like to commend the Shoshone National Forest supervisor for pausing the project—it was the correct decision and properly reflective of public concern. In today’s administrative era, that is remarkable.

Later on August 24—the same day the Forest Service paused the project, the agency also disclosed decision documents that Wilderness Watch had requested under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Most of the project details are in a “minimum requirements analysis” (MRA), and the other is the archaeological permit. While the Forest Service did not grant us the expedited processing we had requested when the tree-cutting seemed imminent, it did respond within FOIA’s 20-day statutory deadline. Wilderness Watch would also like to commend the forest supervisor for that because in the current climate, many agencies—including other offices within the Forest Service—are violating FOIA and failing to respond to requestors on the scale of months or sometimes even years. This forest supervisor complied with the FOIA deadline, and we recognize and appreciate that.

The MRA reveals that this project was broader than we first understood. Every person who wrote in contributed to this result and here is what the power of working together saved.

Y’all saved the survey tree. In an odd move for an agency that courts defer to as the experts in trees and forests, the Forest Service described the survey tree a “deceased Engelmann spruce.” That’s a snag. Snags are standing dead or dying trees, commonly missing tops and smaller branches. While trees don’t have as many lives as cats do, they do have a meaningful second life when they die and become snags, spending years giving back to the ecosystem that had given them life. Snags are food for insects and provide indirect sustenance for birds that eat those insects. Snags provide homes for cavity-nesting birds and fantastic hunting platforms for birds of prey. Snags also feed the soil so that new trees can thrive. Removing this “deceased” tree would have devalued this tree’s second life as a snag.

Y’all saved a grove of trees. The project would have cut down more trees than just the survey tree. The Forest Service actually authorized cutting down a dozen trees to access the survey tree. If the surveyors 133 years ago carved their names while caught in a snowstorm, of course they wouldn’t have been in the middle of a meadow or under one tree if better cover were available—they would have sheltered under a grove of trees. Two of these trees slated for cutting are between 22 and 24 inches diameter at breast height; at 9,000 feet, in the cold, alpine climate there in the Washakie Wilderness in Wyoming, those trees are very old. You saved them.

You also saved ten other trees surrounding the survey tree. While the Forest Service dismissed them as “small diameter” trees, in distinguishing the trees that were over 22 inches in diameter, the implication is that trees under 22 inches in diameter are “small diameter” trees. The Forest Service didn’t identify the species of these trees, but if they are Engelmann spruce like the snag, for example, they can be mature at 15 inches in diameter. Birds like the mountain chickadee, red-breasted nuthatch, brown creeper, owls and woodpeckers nest and feed in Engelmann spruce. Small mammals eat the seeds. The vegetation that grows under Engelmann spruce, along with the trees themselves, can provide hiding and thermal cover in some cold Wyoming winters for species like deer, elk, moose, and bear. At high elevations, they can provide shade in the summer and protection from storms year-round, as the surveyors who carved their names into the tree during that snowstorm 133 years ago likely appreciated. Engelmann spruce are also very long-lived—up to 600 years. Cutting down these trees and removing vegetation to access the survey tree would devalue what the trees and understory vegetation provide to their community of life. You saved the years and years of potential those trees likely have ahead of them—that will benefit all sorts of wildlife—because you saved those ten “small-diameter” trees.

Finally, you saved wildlife and human visitors harassment from multiple helicopter landings in Wilderness. The forest supervisor said that they paused the project after the 3D imaging of the tree, but before cutting any trees. We know that trails had already been built to reach the tree, which is problematic. At the same time that six staff were building trails, however, the MRA indicated they also would be preparing a helicopter-landing zone in Borner Meadows. Unfortunately, that might exist now—we don’t know. There were four helicopter landings planned as part of this project: a landing to assess the landing spot; a landing to drop off a crew to Borner Meadows; a landing to load and transport the survey tree to the trailhead; and a landing to pick up the crew and fly them out of the Washakie Wilderness. It’s likely that most or all of these helicopter landings did not happen because they paused the project before cutting any trees.

The MRA confirms what we knew—this project is not necessary to administer Wilderness or to protect wilderness character. Using an MRA as the decision document is concerning because the MRAs is an internal agency tool not designed to analyze environmental impacts. With the shuffling or repeal of so many environmental regulations this past year, I expect we might start to see a trend where the Forest Service will use MRAs for projects in Wilderness while foregoing actual public-facing environmental analyses. This is exactly what we uncovered in Idaho, when the U.S. Forest Service used a MRA to authorize private commercial outfitters to use chainsaws in the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness. While this new trend deserves its own discussion, that is for another time.

Is this the end of the story for this tree? Probably not. Our job, though—like generations reaching back to the surveyors in that snowstorm—is to fight for this place so it might outlast us and we can pass the watch onto the next generation.

But for today—amidst many tough environmental fights—let’s take a moment to revel in the community of life that the public just protected in our Washakie Wilderness.

Katie Bilodeau is Wilderness Watch's Legislative Director and Policy Analyst.

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As we shared with you recently, on August 18 U.S. Federal District Judge Sharon Gleason vacated the Trump administration’s illegal land exchange to transfer public lands within the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge and Wilderness to King Cove Corporation (KCC). This land exchange, done behind closed doors with zero public involvement, would have allowed the construction of a road through the Wilderness to connect the village of King Cove with the town of Cold Bay and its all-season airstrip.

With road construction slated to begin on September 1, this ruling represents a major victory for the Izembek Wilderness and its wildlife—and just in the nick of time. But it was not the end of the fight.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had in July issued a so-called Section 404 Clean Water Act permit to the State of Alaska for the construction of the road through Izembek. A Section 404 permit is required for dumping dredged or fill materials into the waters of the United States, including wetlands. Fortunately, the Army Corps of Engineers suspended that permit on August 26 following Judge Gleason’s ruling, thus withdrawing permission to fill wetlands and stream channels in Izembek as the state had planned.

Furthermore, Wilderness Watch and our allies had earlier, through our wonderful attorneys at Trustees for Alaska, filed a motion for a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) and Preliminary Injunction (PI) to stop the road construction in case Judge Gleason did not rule before construction began on September 1. That motion went before a different federal judge, Judge Aaron Peterson. Since the TRO and PI were no longer needed after Judge Gleason’s ruling, and not wanting to risk any kind of potentially adverse ruling from Judge Peterson, we successfully withdrew that motion on August 28.

As you can see, there are a lot of moving parts in this long-running fight to keep Izembek wild. Thankfully, Izembek and its wildlife are safe—for now.

This, of course, is not the end of the story. The State of Alaska may still try to construct 2.8 miles of road across private lands owned by KCC outside of Izembek’s boundaries, even though it would be another Alaskan “road to nowhere.” Still, even those 2.8 miles would add pressure to the ongoing efforts to build the complete road through Izembek as well as facilitate more illegal ATV use into Izembek. Our attorneys at Trustees for Alaska are looking for options to stop the 2.8 miles of road construction. And, after fighting this road proposal for a couple of decades, we know that the road proponents are not giving up!

A big thank you to all our members and supporters who have written thousands of letters to decision-makers and contributed to our efforts to protect the Izembek Wilderness and its wildlife over the years—this victory belongs to all of you!

BACKGROUND: Located near the tip of the Alaska Peninsula, the 315,000-acre Izembek National Wildlife Refuge—over 95 percent of which is designated Wilderness—is a remote stretch of land where a quarter-million migratory birds, including virtually the entire population of Pacific black brant, congregate each fall.

Nearly 7,000 caribou make their annual trek into the Wilderness where they overwinter, and hundreds of sea otters swim with their young in the Izembek Lagoon, occasionally in the vicinity of migrating orcas, gray whales, minke whales, and Steller sea lions. Massive brown bears—as many as nine per mile—lumber through wilderness streams during peak summer salmon runs.

The illegal land exchange not only endangered the health of a vast and thriving ecosystem, but would have set a dangerous precedent by allowing an agency appointee to trade away designated Wilderness and circumvent Congress.

The land exchange, announced by the Trump Administration’s Department of Interior in October 2025, swapped lands owned by King Cove Corporation for Izembek Refuge and Wilderness lands administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Our lawsuit challenged the agency for violating the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, Administrative Procedure Act, and National Environmental Policy Act.

The Native Village of Hooper Bay has long opposed a road through Izembek, and dozens of other tribes and tribal entities in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta have passed resolutions opposing the land swap and road, noting the importance of Izembek to critical food resources and subsistence traditions. The Native villages of Hooper Bay, Paimiut, and Chevak also filed a lawsuit challenging the land exchange, and Defenders of Wildlife had filed a third suit. The judge dealt with all three lawsuits together in her recent decision.

Wilderness Watch was joined on this lawsuit by Friends of Alaska Wildlife Refuges, the National Wildlife Refuge Association, Alaska Wilderness League, and Sierra Club. Law firm Trustees for Alaska did a great job representing our coalition.

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On August 14, 2026 the Forest Service announced the first official public comment opportunity regarding US Critical Materials’ plans to “explore” their Sheep Creek mine claim in the Bitterroot National Forest of Montana near the Idaho border.

Location matters, and the Sheep Creek mine could hardly be in a worse place for a mine.

The approximately ten-square-mile area of the proposed Sheep Creek Rare Earth Exploration Project sits at the doorstep of Blue Joint Wilderness Study Area and the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness, and within the Allan Mountain Inventoried Roadless Area. Wilderness values like solitude, silence, and remoteness could be impacted by the close proximity of industrial mining activity and associated development.

The mine site is also in the headwaters of the West Fork of the Bitterroot River, home to threatened bull trout and a unique, non-hybridized and genetically diverse west-slope cutthroat trout population that has statewide significance.The mine site and surrounding area also supports iconic species of resident and migrating wildlife, like rocky mountain sheep, wolverine, elk, mountain goat, and Northern Rockies fisher. The area is also exceptional wildlife habitat suitable for recovery of locally extinct wildlife like Canada lynx and grizzly bears.

In fact, the proposed mining location includes a linkage area critical for connected wildlife habitat. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s recovery plan for grizzly bears, listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, relies on natural migration into this very area. The Idaho/Montana state line near Sheep Creek is a wildland migration corridor through the densely populated Bitterroot Valley heading into the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service designated Grizzly Bear Recovery Area. The proposed mine site interrupts this important and at-risk linkage area.

Mining is fundamentally incompatible with preserving Wilderness, wildlife, and clean water. Incredibly, the Forest Service is conducting the environmental review using a “Categorical Exclusion” (CE), the most superficial analysis available to the agency. Use of CEs is prohibited where significant or unknown impacts are involved.

The Forest Service is accepting public comments on the Sheep Creek Rare Earth Exploration Project through September 13, 2026.

It is very difficult to stop a mine no matter how much damage it would do. A groundswell of public opposition is critical right now, so please submit your own comments by September 13. Comments are not limited to science and economics, though such comments can be effective. Your love for the wildlife, wildlands, and surrounding Wilderness count for a lot.

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We have some good news to share—and you helped make it happen!

Earlier this year, the U.S. Forest Service released a Prescribed Burn Project with plans to burn all 289,000 acres of the Shawnee National Forest in southern Illinois, including all seven Wilderness areas totaling nearly 30,000 acres. Incredibly, forest Service officials proposed to burn 25,000 acres annually, seemingly in perpetuity, including setting a torch to the Bald Knob, Bay Creek, Burden Falls, Clear Springs, Garden of the Gods, Lusk Creek, and Panther Den Wildernesses.

The type of sweeping manipulation proposed on the Shawnee National Forest is precisely what the Wilderness Act’s “untrammeled” mandate seeks to prevent—humans imposing their will on Wilderness to try to create managers’ desired conditions rather than allowing nature to shape the wild.

Over 8,300 of our members and supporters heeded our call to action and joined with us in opposition to this sweeping habitat manipulation in Wilderness. Earlier this summer, Wilderness Watch filed an official objection to the Shawnee National Forest, standing firm in our opposition to this misguided project, which called for tree cutting, burning, and motorized use—even in Wilderness.

On August 21, we got a letter from Shawnee National Forest Supervisor Felipe Cano informing us that our objection was successful and the agency was withdrawing the entire project!

This victory would not have been possible without the actions of our members and supporters—thank you!

Not only did this proposal violate the basic tenets of the Wilderness Act, but the science that the Forest Service was using to justify this project is highly contested. While the agency claims that the Shawnee National Forest is an oak-hickory ecosystem degraded by fire exclusion, a robust body of work has demonstrated that the forests of southern Illinois are mesophytic, adapted to moderately moist environments created by nearly 50 inches of precipitation annually. In a mesophytic ecosystem, manager-ignited fire like that contemplated in the agency’s plan would trammel a complex, evolving system that is home to over 500 wildlife species.

Alarmingly, this project also actively sought to undermine transparency, accountability, and meaningful public participation by foregoing important site-specific analysis until after the National Environmental Policy Act process was finished. Projects such as the Shawnee Prescribed Burn, which aim to carry out landscape-level manipulation with the use of chainsaws, helicopters, and drones, have no place in Wilderness.

While we celebrate the Forest Service’s decision to withdraw this project, we must remain vigilant in our defense of Wilderness. Not only could the agency bring back an altered version of this project, but the agency is also seeking permission for more aggressive habitat manipulation projects in Wilderness throughout the country.

Your actions and your support help us keep Wilderness wild.

Dear Supporter,

We have a very special newsletter coming your way, one that marks the bittersweet start of a new era for Wilderness Watch and looks back on how far we’ve come together. As many of you know, George Nickas, Wilderness Watch’s Executive Director of 30 years, has moved on to a well-deserved retirement. George will stay involved in our work and remain an important touchstone—he’ll just be spending more of his hours on the ridgelines than in the office. As it should be.

I could not have asked for a better mentor, colleague, and friend over my 12 years with Wilderness Watch, and I’m honored George handed me the reins of a strong organization ready to take wilderness defense into its next chapter. We’re ready because Wilderness Watch under George’s tenure was never about generating professionals and careers, it was about fighting collectively for the wild places we love and finding the joy in doing it. Like the wild communities that thrive on interdependence, George knew that the success of an organization, and a movement, can never rest on the shoulders, or the ego, of any one person.

George steered Wilderness Watch through some pretty lean times into what it is today—a wildly strong and dedicated membership base, an exceptional board of directors, and eight staff spread across the country. Wilderness Watch has grown, but George made sure our growth was intentional and that the driving force was always a 100 percent feisty, strategic, and unapologetic passion for Wilderness and wildlife. This is why our amazing members continue to fund the work we do, why our staff are so dedicated and effective, and why Wilderness Watch—with just a small crew—persistently hits well above its weight in defense of the National Wilderness Preservation System.

Your support has been crucial in getting us where we are today, and it will remain important as we navigate the challenging terrain ahead.

As we all know, the Wilderness Act and Wilderness System are increasingly at risk, and the coming years will demand a new ferocity of the heart from those who defend them. We rely heavily on our members to take action and we will continue to call on you to stand with us in defense of Wilderness.

We are also unique in that we rely, almost entirely, on our members to fund our work. That funding keeps us scrappy and independent, and your generous support is an ongoing testament to the work we’re doing to ensure a National Wilderness Preservation System thrives against the odds.

Will you make a special donation in honor of George’s 30 years of unrelenting dedication to Wilderness, in honor of the wild places and wildlife we defend—and in preparation for the tough work to come?

This is a pivotal moment for Wilderness. The natural world, and the bedrock laws that protect it, are facing unparalleled threats. Agencies are defunding and deprioritizing their wilderness programs, wilderness staff are leaving in droves, and agencies are increasingly outsourcing wilderness administration and decision-making to third parties, many of whom have significant conflicts of interest. Technology is a rapidly growing threat to solitude and to the natural rights of other animals to exist free from persistent surveillance and trammeling. Secure pockets of space for our wild friends are shrinking. The pressures on these last remaining wild places are increasing and multi-directional, and Congressional wilderness champions are few and far between. And yet, with great trouble comes new opportunity.

On the 60th anniversary of the Wilderness Act in 2024, I wrote about how hard it is to envision the next 60 years of wilderness protection. Many of us feel that uncertainty in our bones. But it seems that if the future will be aided by anything, it will be remembering what it is to be a human animal who exists as part of a broader community of life and finding ways to tell that story from the gut. We absolutely need the lawsuits and public comments and the technocratic data and lingo—we have to play that game better than our opponents to hold the line—but we can’t get so wrapped up in those boxes that we forget how to tell the right stories.

We are a world in crisis—in ecological crisis, in climate crisis, in a crisis of community and belonging. If there were ever a time for a radical retelling of how we exist on this planet, it is urgently now. Restraint—the thing that creates space for other species to exist—must be at the forefront of the conversation.

Wilderness tells this story. Our task going forward is to gather more people around the campfire, to reinvigorate a movement for wildness, and to unapologetically demand its protection.

Thank you for your unwavering support. If you’re able to make a special donation, please do. You can rest assured we’ll put it to good use.

For the Wild,

Dana Johnson
Executive Director

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A U.S. District Court today held that the Interior Department violated several federal laws when it gave away federally protected lands to the King Cove Corporation to make way for a road on a narrow isthmus in Izembek National Wildlife Refuge and Wilderness. The decision vacates the land exchange.

If built, the road through the Izembek Wilderness would be catastrophic for the critters that live there and would essentially cut the 307,982-acre Izembek Wilderness in two.

Located near the tip of the Alaska Peninsula in southwest Alaska, the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge—over 95 percent of which is designated Wilderness—is a remote stretch of land where a quarter-million migratory birds, including virtually the entire population of Pacific black brant, congregate each fall.

Nearly 7,000 caribou make their annual trek into the Wilderness where they overwinter, and hundreds of sea otters swim with their young in the Izembek Lagoon, occasionally in the vicinity of migrating orcas, gray whales, minke whales, and Steller sea lions. Massive brown bears—as many as nine per mile—lumber through Wilderness streams during peak summer salmon runs.

“The ruling confirms the extraordinary value of these lands for wildlife conservation, including the world’s entire population of nesting black brant along with salmon, brown bears, caribou, and local subsistence harvests, was clearly recognized by its inclusion in the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge through the passage of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act,” said Marilyn Sigman, president of Friends of Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. “We are profoundly grateful for today’s decision, and we will continue to advocate for stewardship of all of Alaska’s 16 unique national wildlife refuges.”

The exchange endangered the health of a vast and thriving ecosystem vital to animals like caribou, brown bears, and globally vital migratory birds such as Brant and Emperor geese. The deal would also have set a dangerous precedent by allowing an agency appointee to trade away designated wilderness land across Alaska for a road in order to circumvent congress.

“The Court found that the Secretary tossed the rule book out the window to push through a project with destructive consequences,” said Michelle Sinnott, senior staff attorney with Trustees. “Today’s ruling rightly calls out Interior for abandoning its obligations to protect public lands.”

The land exchange announced by Interior in October 2025 swapped lands owned by King Cove Corporation for Izembek Refuge and Wilderness Area lands managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Our lawsuit challenged the agency for violating the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, Administrative Procedure Act, and National Environmental Policy Act.

The Native Village of Hooper Bay has long opposed a road through Izembek, and dozens of other tribes and tribal entities in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta have passed resolutions opposing a land swap and road, noting the importance of Izembek to critical food resources and traditions. The Native villages of Hooper Bay, Paimiut, and Chevak also filed a lawsuit challenging the land exchange.

Friends of Alaska National Wildlife Refuges and allied groups sued over several similar land exchanges from the first Trump term.

Law firm Trustees for Alaska represents five clients in the case: Friends of Alaska Wildlife Refuges, the National Wildlife Refuge Association, Alaska Wilderness League, Wilderness Watch, Sierra Club.

“This is a profoundly critical victory for Izembek and all of Wilderness, Refuges and National Parks in Alaska, and for the Alaska Natives who rely on them for subsistence,” said Kevin Proescholdt, Wilderness Watch’s Conservation Director. “Successive administrations have tried to undermine the essential wildland protections in ANILCA, but fortunately those of us who care about these special places and the wildlife that live there have the law on our side.”

“Today’s decision is a victory for one of America’s most extraordinary wildlife refuges and for the laws that protect our public lands. Izembek is irreplaceable, and this ruling affirms that these special places cannot simply be traded away without consideration of the impacts,” said Andy Moderow, senior director of policy, Alaska Wilderness League.

“Today’s ruling reaffirms a simple principle: our public lands cannot be traded away behind closed doors to sidestep the law. The Izembek National Wildlife Refuge was set aside because it is one of the most important wildlife habitats on Earth, and Congress established clear legal protections to safeguard it. Those protections exist for a reason,” said Dan Ritzman, the Lands, Water and Wildlife director for the Sierra Club’s Our Wild America campaign. “This decision helps ensure that decisions affecting treasured public lands are made lawfully, transparently, and with the public interest—not private interests—at the forefront. We’ll continue working to protect Izembek’s wildlife, subsistence resources, and wild character for future generations.”

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The U.S. Forest Service has approved a tree-cutting project in the Washakie Wilderness in Wyoming behind closed doors. Does it promote a wilderness ethic? Certainly not. Will it violate the Wilderness Act? Most likely. Will the public know the full details about this project before it is complete? Unlikely. Should the Forest Service still hear from you on this? YES, ABSOLUTELY.

There are two parts to this story. The first is the utter absurdity of the project itself. The second is how the Forest Service cut the public out of any notice or engagement. You should be furious at both—I am.

Last month one of our fellow conservation groups alerted us about a Forest Service project in the Shoshone National Forest’s Washakie Wilderness to cut down a tree. At that point, just about the only information available originated from a news article about the Wyoming state legislature’s debate on funding this project.

The Forest Service approved a project to cut down a tree and helicopter it out of a protected Wilderness so it may stand in a museum and remind us that we should preserve—and not log—our federal lands. Kind of like paving paradise to put up a parking lot, but then adding an interpretive sign describing the paradise that once existed.

What motivates this project? A survey crew stranded in a snowstorm 133 years ago carved their names into a tree outside of Yellowstone National Park. The survey crew was marking the Yellowstone Forest Reserve in early efforts to preserve forests instead of logging them. That forest reserve eventually became the Shoshone National Forest. The Washakie Wilderness was later established with the original passing of the 1964 Wilderness Act. Congress expanded this Wilderness in 1972, and then again in 1984. The survey tree is within the Washakie Wilderness—over two dozen miles from the nearest trailhead.

The survey crew might have even been proud that what they sought to preserve was ultimately protected by our strongest environmental law. But they didn’t count on others valuing their carvings over actual wilderness preservation.

When I connected with the Forest Service project lead on July 31, 2026, he confirmed that the plan was to go into the Wilderness to cut down and remove this tree. The Forest Service had decided a couple weeks before that to do the project under a categorical exclusion. He told me that they had already cut out trees and brushed out a user-created trail to get to this tree. Flooding had blown out a trail, delaying their project, but on August 7, 2026, a state-contracted crew would haul equipment in on this new trail to image this tree for historic preservation purposes. Then, the project lead said, the plan was to go back in, cut the tree down, and helicopter it out of the Wilderness later this year when a slowing fire season freed up a helicopter. Neither of these later two action items have dates, though they seem imminent. The tree would be displayed in a museum to tell the story of our public lands.

On August 4, 2026, Wilderness Watch sent the project lead and the Shoshone National Forest Supervisor Ken Coffin a letter asking the Forest Service to delay this project until the agency could meaningfully engage the public. The Forest Service hadn’t notified the public of this project—it wasn’t even listed as a project on their website when I went looking for it in July. We reminded Supervisor Coffin that the Forest Service’s primary obligation in administering Wilderness is to protect wilderness character, which includes “preservation and protection in their natural condition.” To the extent that the Wilderness Act allows narrow administrative exceptions for prohibited tools, it’s only when necessary to further the purpose of the act: an enduring wilderness resource for future generations. We noted that this project has no wilderness purpose.

We asked for the Forest Service to minimally pause this project until they at least meaningfully engage interested folks and organizations in a public process.

Supervisor Coffin emailed back on August 13, 2026, declining our request. Even though the U.S. Department of Agriculture has current regulations that allow the agency to engage the public on projects, Supervisor Coffin’s response email indicated that he intended to move forward without public input because it wasn’t “required.” He said he believed that this project would “benefit” Wilderness because telling a story about public lands achieved the “greater good,” particularly, “why it’s important for us to hold [public land] in the highest regard now and into the future.”

Does 1) building a non-system trail in Wilderness; 2) cutting down trees in Wilderness to access this “survey” tree; 3) cutting down that tree, which is well over a century old; and 4) helicoptering it out of Wilderness hold our most protected places in the “highest regard now and into the future?” Or is this human folly? The names that were carved into this tree 133 years ago were carved into a tree that was big enough to carve names into it 133 years ago. Dead or alive, this tree (and the others cut down to access it), could have been preserved and protected in its natural condition within the Wilderness. This survey tree and the space around it might have been, still are, or might become home to a community of life larger than our human sphere. Keeping the tree where it is—and saying no to whoever had this truly perverse idea—is how we act to hold Wilderness in the highest regard now and into the future.

This past summer, I visited a famous site for Ediacaran fossils in Newfoundland. Ediacaran fossils existed over 540 million years ago—when life transitioned from single cell to multi-cell organisms. It was life before dinosaurs. These fossils, on slabs of rocks right next to the Atlantic, are slowly eroding away. But instead of drilling them off of their rocks and putting them in a museum, archeologists took a cast for replicas, and will allow people to enjoy it in situ while nature takes its course. If the Province of Newfoundland can do that for ancient fossils, surely there are alternatives that the State of Wyoming could suggest to the current course so 133-year-old carvings can be preserved without removing the tree from the Washakie Wilderness?

There is a lot we don’t know about the project, and this is the much shorter second part to this story. When will they cut the tree? How many miles of work did the Forest Service allow on a non-system trail in Wilderness and how intensive was that trail work? Did they use chainsaws? Are chainsaws involved in plans moving forward? Do they have to land a helicopter in the Wilderness to remove the tree? Do they have to cut down more trees in the Wilderness for a helicopter landing pad?

I submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for decision documents on July 30, 2026, the day before the Forest Service project leader called me back. I asked for “expedited processing” because there was so much the public doesn’t know about a project that is imminent. If granted, it would have shortened the response time to 10 days instead of the statutorily mandated 20, and we would have had the documents by August 13. When I spoke with the project leader, he indicated the Forest Service had done a “minimum requirements analysis” and considered that their decision document. Even though the project leader referenced their decision document, which presumably is at their fingertips and an easy “search” for a responsive record, even though the forest supervisor received a copy of my targeted FOIA request the same day I submitted it, and even though the supervisor responded to Wilderness Watch’s letter that they wouldn’t engage the public, the Forest Service has yet to provide this decision document.

There can be a third part to this story—it’s one I hope our members and supporters write. The Shoshone National Forest Supervisor and project lead should hear from you. Though they have not sought public involvement, the public should involve itself. This must have been someone’s pet project, and the Forest Service circumvented all of us to accomplish it. This is not unlike going behind the public’s back to let outfitters loose with chainsaws in Wilderness, allowing permanent private cabins to persist in Wilderness, or finding vacant grazing allotments in Wilderness that are recovering and permitting the reintroduction of cows at the behest of ranchers without notifying or engaging the public. All of these developments are happening right now. Though it’s not selling off your public lands, it is the agency’s alternative plan—letting private interests have their way with Wilderness without the public’s knowledge or involvement.

Please email the Shoshone National Forest supervisor and copy the project lead for this survey tree.

Shoshone National Forest Supervisor, Ken Coffin: kenneth.coffin@usda.gov
Shoshone National Forest Project Lead, Mike LaFrentz: robert.lafrentz@usda.gov

Ask them to delay the project and engage the public. Also, tell them what you think about this project based on the limited information available, and ask for them to publish the decision document and any other analysis they conducted. Let the public employees who administer your Wilderness know that this doesn’t hold America’s wilderness heritage in high regard, and you don’t appreciate the clandestine way the Forest Service handled this project.

Wilderness deserves better.

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The U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) is seeking public comment on proposed guidance for recreational rock climbing in our national parks, national wildlife refuges, and BLM-administered public lands, including guidance required by the EXPLORE Act for climbing in Wilderness.

You may recall that the U.S. Forest Service recently proposed guidance for recreational climbing on our national forests. Thank you to everyone who commented during that comment period. Now, we need you to speak up again—by August 14—to defend the Wilderness Act and America’s National Wilderness Preservation System!

Wilderness and wildlife are under relentless pressures at this moment in history, including from exploding demand for outdoor recreation. Natural limits are essential to protecting Wilderness.

Some background information:

The PARC Act, incorporated into the EXPLORE Act—which was signed into law on January 4, 2025—is a messy piece of legislation that attempted a de facto amendment of the Wilderness Act to benefit the recreational climbing industry.

The Wilderness Act is straight-forward—installations, including permanent fixed climbing anchors, are prohibited unless absolutely necessary to meet the minimum requirements for administering Wilderness.

But the PARC Act/EXPLORE Act says that permanent recreational bolting is an appropriate use in Wilderness when undertaken in compliance with the Wilderness Act—a wild exercise in circular reasoning—and now the agencies are tasked with making sense of the absurd in their new climbing directives.

While some of the language in the proposed DOI guidance is good, the guidance is undermined by a few serious flaws.

First, the guidance attributes DOI’s strained legal interpretation of fixed anchors to the Wilderness Act when it should be attributed to the PARC Act/EXPLORE Act. The guidance also casts DOI’s wilderness preservation obligations under the Wilderness Act as discretionary rather than required. Furthermore, the guidance suggests that only certain fixed anchors are allowable, but provides little to no guidance on the scope, function, and placement of such allowable anchors, nor does it make the development of climbing management plans mandatory.

Any implication that the Wilderness Act’s prohibitions can be overcome by the desire to enhance recreation is not only flawed, but also ushers wilderness administration to the precarious edge of a slippery slope. Wilderness administering agencies are facing a crossroads. The outdoor recreation industry, and its influence on public land management, is booming, and outdoor recreation pressures that were once front-country issues are pushing steadily into our most protected places. Meanwhile, agency wilderness programs are underfunded and deprioritized, wilderness-trained staff are stretched thin, and wilderness departments are increasingly subsumed by recreation departments.

Combine these issues with decades of agency equivocation over permanent fixed climbing anchors in Wilderness, and you have the untenable situation at hand: exploding demand for developed recreational climbing, proposed agency guidance that confuses statutory language on prohibitions in Wilderness, and wilderness staff lacking resources to effectively protect Wilderness.

In this context, we need defenders of the Wilderness Act and America’s National Wilderness Preservation System to take action!

The three agencies within the DOI are accepting public comments through this Friday, August 14. We know it’s cumbersome, but comments must be submitted individually to each agency via the following links:

• National Park Service: https://www.regulations.gov/commenton/NPS-2026-0101-0001

• U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service: https://www.regulations.gov/commenton/FWS-HQ-NWRS-2026-1618-0001

• Bureau of Land Management: https://www.regulations.gov/commenton/BLM-2026-0034-0001

Please speak in your own words, but make the following points:

• DOI must acknowledge its overriding statutory duty to preserve wilderness character: Make clear that DOI still has an overriding statutory duty under the Wilderness Act to preserve wilderness character and ensure recreational activities—whether they involve generally prohibited activities or not—are administered in a manner that keeps wilderness preservation primary.

• DOI must mandate pre-authorization climbing management plans: Require the formal completion and approval of a Climbing Management Plan prior to authorizing anchor placement, replacement, or maintenance within any Wilderness.

• DOI must establish baseline route inventories: Mandate a public inventory of all established climbing routes existing prior to January 4, 2025. Enforce a strict policy prohibition against establishing new climbing routes requiring fixed anchors within designated Wilderness.

• DOI must prohibit non-anchor infrastructure: Enforce a ban on secondary climbing infrastructure, including fixed ropes, ladders, permanent cables, and slacklines, maintaining their classification as prohibited installations under Section 4(c).

• DOI must prohibit use of motorized drills: Any use of motorized drill to place fixed anchors in Wilderness should be unequivocally prohibited as it constitutes a violation of Section 4(c) of the Wilderness Act.

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