In 2009 WildEarth Guardians' celebrated its 20th Anniversary!

Last year WildEarth Guardians celebrated its 20th anniversary as a force for nature. We're pleased to share with you some of our biggest accomplishments!

Number 1

WildEarth Guardians won a lawsuit in 1996 that protected millions of acres of ancient forests in Arizona and New Mexico to meet safeguards for the Mexican spotted owl. The lawsuit halted logging on 21 million acres, one of the largest injunctions against logging in the history of the U.S. Forest Service.

Number 2

WildEarth Guardians led efforts to achieve major reforms to protect cougars in Colorado and New Mexico - including hunting quotas, banning a pre-emptive snaring program in the Guadalupe Mountains and protections for breeding females and their dependent young.

Number 3

WildEarth Guardians’ efforts to save the Rio Grande silvery minnow have led to a number of reforms that have secured the Rio Grande’s rights to its own waters, sustaining fish and wildlife and spurring more responsible water use in New Mexico.

Number 4

WildEarth Guardians won the first bid in the West to lease state school trust lands for conservation instead of extraction, which was amplified by an Arizona Supreme Court decision.

Number 5

Over our 20-year history, WildEarth Guardians’ Stream Team has planted 250,000 trees during community events on seven degraded waterways in Arizona and New Mexico, creating more resilient areas in the face of climate change and changing the way people view rivers.

Number 6

WildEarth Guardians’ litigation halted livestock grazing on 300 miles of heavily degraded southwestern rivers, allowing streams in the watershed of the Gila River to heal for the first time since Geronimo last roamed the Southwest. The removal of grazing required by the 1998 settlement of the lawsuit was one of the largest in the history of the U.S. Forest Service.

Number 7

WildEarth Guardians ensured that official Colorado policy supports full protection of wolves that travel to Colorado from Yellowstone, allowing them to wander freely wherever they find habitat and prey, and that any problems should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. Our sustained advocacy also resulted in the elimination of Colorado’s antiquated $2 bounty on wolves.

Number 8

WildEarth Guardians launched the Western Ark project in 2008 by petitioning the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list a wide range of animals and plants under the Endangered Species Act - the legal “Ark” for imperiled species. Many of these species, such as the Sonoran desert tortoise and white-sided jackrabbit, are now closer to federal protection as a result of this project.

Number 9

WildEarth Guardians has watch-dogged the U.S Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services, bringing national attention to the agency’s annual indiscriminate killing of millions of wildlife through aerial gunning, poisoning, trapping and shooting. We are now leading efforts to find legislative and administrative ways to reform this agency.

Number 10

WildEarth Guardians has become recognized champions for prairie dogs by working to list all four species under the Endangered Species Act and transforming Groundhog Day - a day of public consciousness for burrowing rodents - into Prairie Dog Day in the American West.

Number 11

WildEarth Guardians’ decade-long work to heal the Santa Fe River inspired Governor Bill Richardson to identify our Santa Fe River project as the model for his river restoration initiatives, which was announced at a press conference on the Santa Fe River in 2007.

Number 12

With the launch of our Climate and Energy Program, WildEarth Guardians is well on the way to forcing major cuts in greenhouse gases from oil and gas drilling and coal-fired power plants to help save imperiled wildlife, wild places, and wild rivers from global warming.

Number 13

WildEarth Guardians convinced Governor Bill Richardson in April 2008 to endorse and adopt our “Clean Water, Wild Forests” campaign, the goal of which is to designate as “outstanding waters” more than 5,000 miles of streams and rivers in roadless national forests.

Number 14

WildEarth Guardians has reclaimed the wild heart of the Interior West as the “Sagebrush Sea” and is working to protect the region’s most iconic and charismatic wildlife, including the greater sage grouse and Gunnisons sage grouse.

Number 15

Over the last decade, WildEarth Guardians saved more than 150,000 acres of critical wildlife habitat and important wildlands, including a portion of the Santa Fe National Forest, from ramped up oil and gas drilling.

Number 16

WildEarth Guardians has advocated for black bear protection in Colorado for more than a decade, including opposing a bill that would have allowed hunters to shoot bears at a time when they have dependent young. We continue to ensure that hunting quotas establish long-term protection of the species while working with communities on black bear co-existence.

Number 17

WildEarth Guardians worked with the City of Santa Fe to institute a low-interest solar loan program in 2008, providing access and opportunity for all low and middle income Santa Fe residents in adopting solar and efficiency measures.

Number 18

Throughout WildEarth Guardians’ 20-year history, we have halted dozens of separate logging and road-building projects on National Forests in Arizona, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico as a result of successful administrative appeals and lawsuits to protect wildlife, rivers and wild and scenic lands.

Number 19

WildEarth Guardians lead a coalition in Colorado that ended “high-body count” contest hunts of prairie dogs, coyotes, and other wildlife, saving hundreds of animals from brutal deaths. We also halted a proposed $2.6 million, eight-year mule deer “study” in western Colorado that would have involved large-scale, indiscriminate aerial killing of coyotes from airplanes and helicopters.

Number 20

Over the past 20 years, WildEarth Guardians has expanded conservation programs seven-fold while keeping administrative expenses less than 20 percent of our overall budget.