Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness by Heather Hansen/USFS

We need your support to help fuel our legal battles defending Wilderness

The winter solstice is near, and with the darkest day of the year, also comes a return of the light.

Here at Wilderness Watch, we’ve continued to shine a light on agencies’ anti-Wilderness actions all year—and our work to hold these agencies accountable won't stop during the holiday season.


On December 18, we argued in federal court to stop the Forest Service’s Buffalo Creek poisoning project, which threatens aquatic biodiversity in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness adjacent to Yellowstone National Park. The project includes poisoning 46 miles of streams and over 30 acres of lakes and wetlands to eradicate rainbow trout—introduced in the 1930s by the State of Montana—so that Montana can then stock Yellowstone cutthroat trout in these naturally fishless waters. With 81 helicopter landings, aerial chemical spraying, use of more motorized equipment, and construction of temporary structures, this project violates the Wilderness Act's core mandate to keep Wilderness "untrammeled," and also free from motorized intrusions. The court’s decision could set a precedent for safeguarding our 112-million-acre National Wilderness Preservation System from such heavy-handed interventions.

On January 8, a motion hearing on the merits of our lawsuit challenging the Forest Service’s unlawful allowance of excessive commercial, motorized towboat use in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness will take place in Minneapolis. Spanning 1.1 million acres in northern Minnesota, the Boundary Waters is the largest Wilderness east of the Rockies and north of the Everglades, and with its 1,000-plus pristine lakes and 1,200 miles of rivers and streams, the Boundary Waters is unique as our nation’s only canoe-country wilderness—a place where backcountry paddlers can experience solitude and some peace and quiet the same way others have for centuries. Unfortunately, the Forest Service’s decades of failure to control increasing numbers of commercial, motorized towboats in the Boundary Waters, as required by law, has turned many lakes into sacrifice zones with motorboats constantly buzzing back and forth.

Earlier in 2024, we secured some great news for Wilderness, wolves, and grizzly bears in Idaho when a federal court closed wolf trapping and snaring to protect grizzly bears when they’re not denning. This includes the Selway-Bitterroot, Sawtooth, Hells Canyon, Boulder-White Clouds, and much of the River of No Return Wildernesses. The state is challenging the ruling because it gets in the way of its quest to eradicate up to 90 percent of wolves in Idaho. With your support, we’ll defend this important court victory.


We also continue our challenge to the National Park Service’s attempt to reengineer giant sequoia groves by burning, planting, and cutting trees across thousands of acres of Wilderness in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks in California, and our lawsuit challenging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over its determination that gray wolves in the northern Rockies are “not warranted” for relisting under the Endangered Species Act.

Yet the courts are only one place we’ll be fighting to defend America’s National Wilderness Preservation System. We’ll also be tackling efforts in Congress to weaken, or outright effectively repeal, the Wilderness Act itself. And taking on the federal agencies, whose “thousand cuts” are whittling away at the Wilderness System almost every day. We’ll need your help.

This is our most important fundraising time of the year, and over 90 percent of our funding comes from individuals like you.

Please consider making a special year-end donation to help fuel our legal battles defending Wilderness in 2025, and beyond.

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Photo: Sunrise in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness by Heather Hansen/USFS

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P.O. Box 9175  |  Missoula, MT 59807  |  406.542.2048  |  wildernesswatch.org

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