AWR Blog
Remove non-native fish without poisoning our streams
Photo: N. Herbert NPS Two weeks ago, Laurie Brown, a licensed nurse practitioner, called the Alliance for the Wild Rockies out of concern for the Game Creek watershed. She lives just south of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and gets her drinking water from a well adjacent to...
Alliance for the Wild Rockies Files Second Lawsuit to Stop North Idaho Logging in Grizzly Habitat
Photo by Roger Hayden In response to the U.S. Forest Service violating a court order and injunction against the Hanna Flats logging project in Northern Idaho, the Alliance for the Wild Rockies filed a second lawsuit on June 7th seeking to force the government to...
Biden administration a welcome change in forest service plans
One of the Trump administration’s worst projects, which would have burned a million acres of the Caribou-Targhee National Forest, has been halted in its tracks by Biden’s Forest Service after the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Native Ecosystems Council, and...
Federal Court Rules Idaho Pipeline Challenge Can Proceed
On March 8th, a federal court in Idaho ruled that a legal challenge to a natural gas pipeline can proceed. The lawsuit was filed by two grassroots conservation groups — Yellowstone to Uintas Connection and the Alliance for the Wild Rockies — and it challenges the...
Conservation Groups Sue To Stop Massive Logging and Burning Project in Castle Mountains
The Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Native Ecosystems Council recently filed a lawsuit in federal court to stop the Castle Mountains logging and burning project in the Lewis and Clark National Forest. The Castle Mountains are a pristine, island mountain range in the...
Conservation Victory! Biden administration pulls massive Henry’s Fork logging and burning project next to Yellowstone National Park
Last December the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Native Ecosystems Council, and Yellowstone to Uintas Connection took the Trump administration's Forest Service to federal court over plans to massively log and burn over 40,000 acres in the very headwaters of the...
AWR Mission Statement and 2020 Annual Report
Mission Statement and 2020 Annual Report The Alliance for the Wild Rockies (AWR) was formed in 1988 to meet the challenge of saving the Northern Rockies Bioregion from habitat destruction. We are thousands of individuals, business owners, and organizations taking a...
Massive logging and burning project next to Yellowstone National Park challenged over impacts to old-growth forest
Photo Canada Lynx by Eric Kilby The Middle Henry's Aspen Enhancement Project violates a host of federal laws, threatens the Henry’s Fork, will harm grizzly bears and lynx, and log much of what little remains of old-growth forest in the Targhee National Forest. The...
Alliance for the Wild Rockies challenges plans to log grizzly habitat in Ninemile
Clearcut on national forest land in Montana. Photo: Steve Platt. https://missoulian.com/opinion/columnists/alliance-for-the-wild-rockies-challenges-plans-to-log-grizzly-habitat-in-ninemile/article_307c87e0-a8a2-565f-b571-7e68ebbf3648.html Alliance for the Wild Rockies...
Forest Service not only loses money logging, it makes fires worse
Image: Cleacut in West Fork of the Crooked River Roadless area in Idaho. Photo: Bryce Poplawski In the middle of yet another big wildfire seasons, some reporters finally listened to fire scientists when they quoted people like Dr. Higuera, an associate professor of...
Bitterroot’s ‘largest project in recent memory’ cancelled after Alliance for the Wild Rockies files lawsuit
The Bitterroot National Forest formally withdrew its decision authorizing the Gold Butterfly Project after the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Friends of the Bitterroot filed a lawsuit challenging the project this summer. The Gold Butterfly logging project was...
Alliance for the Wild Rockies stops Trump from logging and burning another 85,000 acres of national forests in Idaho
Two years ago, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Lost Creek-Boulder Creek Project in Idaho violated the Payette National Forest Plan and the National Forest Management Act. President Donald Trump’s lawless Forest Service disregarded the court’s decision...
Trump Loses Again in Big Win for Bull Trout River and the ESA
The Alliance for the Wild Rockies defeated the Trump administration yet again this month when a federal judge ruled against its request to dismiss our case against the Bureau of Reclamation’s illegal killing of hundreds of threatened bull trout each year near Glacier...
Beating Trump and Saving Juniper Habitat for Wildlife
Our nation is in a perilous place when federal agencies refuse to comply with federal court orders. Yet, that’s just what Trump’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) did in its rush to destroy sagebrush, juniper, and limber pine habitat in the Iron Mask area of Montana’s...
Court Denies State, Federal Bid to Strip Yellowstone Grizzlies of ESA Protections Tribes, Conservationists Win; States, Feds Lose
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling today on the litigation over the 2018 de-listing of the Yellowstone grizzly bear population under the Endangered Species Act, affirming a District Court order that blocked the de-listing of the great bears and kept...
Alliance for the Wild Rockies stops Road Building, Logging, and Burning in Critical Roadless Areas
There was never any scientifically-sound reason to clearcut and bulldoze new logging roads into the roadless lands tucked along the Continental Divide in Helena, Montana's backyard. But Trump’s Forest Service is on a cut and run tear and decided to do it anyway using...
Conservation Groups Sue Trump Administration Massive Logging in Steelhead Critical Habitat
The Forest Service calls logging ‘restorative.’ Is smothering steelhead trout eggs with sediment restorative? Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Friends of the Clearwater filed a lawsuit this week against the Trump administration's U.S. Forest Service and National...
Beating Trump Again in the Northern Rockies
For the second time in two days, the Trump administration conceded defeat to the Alliance for the Wild Rockies. The first time was when the Administration was trying to pretend roads magically disappear when the Forest Service dumps a pile of dirt in front of Forest...
Roads Closed: a Big Win for Grizzlies in the Northern Rockies
You can read this post on Counter Punch here: https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/06/10/roads-closed-a-big-win-for-grizzlies-in-the-northern-rockies/ When the Forest Service classifies a road in our national forests as “closed” to protect endangered species like grizzly...
Grizzlies, Lynx, Bull Trout and Elk on the Chopping Block for Trump’s Idaho Clearcuts
Canadian lynx. Photo: US Fish and Wildlife Service. What would you do if you caught Trump’s Forest Service trying to slip through huge clearcuts and bulldozing roads into an already over-cut area? How about if the Forest Service then denied the potential presence of...
Alliance for the Wild Rockies Challange Killing of Yellowstone Grizzlies to Protect Wyoming Cows
There are tens of millions of cows in the U.S. but only about 700 grizzly bears in the remote and wild public lands known as the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem that include and surround America’s first national park. Grizzlies are listed as “Threatened” under the...
Alliance for the Wild Rockies needs your help
Hello. It’s no great secret that the remaining tracts of roadless public lands are threatened every day by logging, grazing, mining, oil and gas drilling and the road-building to support those extractive industries. The effects are likewise no mystery. The wildlife...
Conservation Groups Will Sue Feds to Stop Massive Timber Sale in Critical Habitat for Snake River Steelhead
Since time immemorial Pacific salmon and ocean-run steelhead trout have fought their way up the tumultuous waters of the Columbia and Snake Rivers to spawn in the headwater streams that flow west from Idaho’s towering snow-capped mountains. Their vast numbers fed...
Alliance for the Wild Rockies Files Lawsuit to Stop Logging and Burning Project in Rocky Mountain Front Inventoried Roadless Area
The Alliance for the Wild Rockies filed a lawsuit on April 3rd in Federal District Court in Great Falls, Montana to stop the Elk Smith Project on the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest. The project seeks to non-commercially log and/or burn 10,331 acres in the Elk...