Protecting Public Lands

WildEarth Guardians uses grassroots campaigns, administrative processes and the courts to challenge destructive public land management policy and proposals. We closely monitor the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, as well as other state and federal land management agencies for proposals that will harm or destroy the lands, waters and wildlife that we all enjoy and should to pass on to future generations as their natural heritage.

Clean Waters, Wild Forests

WildEarth Guardians is using proactive, novel campaigns to secure permanent protection for undeveloped, roadless forests and their  waterways. With a little-used provision of the Clean Water Act, WildEarth Guardians is working to bring permanent protection to critical headwaters in the West and the roadless and wilderness areas where they are most often found.  Sign our petition and show your support.

Off-highway Vehicles

The rise in popularity of off-highway, motorized vehicles or OHVs is a growing threat to wild public lands, waters and the plants and wildlife that live on those lands. Not only are OHVs  a threat to our environment but a threat to the health and safety of people as they rely more and more on these loud machines for “recreating” in nature. Though just a fraction of the users of our wild public lands, OHVs have a far larger impact than others. WildEarth Guardians is working through administrative process, education and organizing campaigns to limit OHV use and impacts of public lands.

We recently sent an emergency petition to the U.S. Forest Service with our conservation partners calling for immediate closure of 27 motorized routes that are damaging sensitive wildlife habitat. Read the petition here.

Wildland Fire

One of WildEarth Guardians' priority campaigns is to reform public lands policies regarding wildland fire.  Though much more ecologically complex than policy debates acknowledge, fire is a fundamental element in every forest ecosystem in the Southwest.

While the Park Service has long realized the utility of fire, fires and fire policy are now the catalyst for increased logging and changed budget priorities for the U.S. Forest Service, as it claims it can log these forests back to health rather than allow natural processes such as fire to take place.

Until the 1930s, when serious fire suppression efforts began, fire mostly fulfilled its natural role. Historically, fire has burned at various intensities even in ponderosa pine forests depending largely upon climatic cycles. New evidence demonstrates even largefires occurred and are important for allowing a diversity of wildlife and plants in forests.

The uniqueness of  Southwestern forest ecosystems, the wildlife they sustain and the abundant clean water they provide are seriously threatened by government fire policy and continued abuse by livestock.

WildEarth Guardians is working to transcend this paradigm of fear-driven fire policy by promoting positive economic and biological values of forests ecosystems. Our  forests were born of fire and, just as rainforests need rain, forests need fire’s rejuvenating properties to perpetuate and thrive.

As an acceptable forest management technique, prescribed fires and managed wildland fire must take a prominent role on public lands. But first forest communities must be protected with common-sense safety measures and financial incentives from state and federal governments.  WildEarth Guardians knows that we will never fire-proof our forests, but we can fire-proof our communities.