Entries by Ingrid Ougland

Another Santa Lucia Wilderness Success Story

July 9, 2021 – The Santa Lucia Wilderness is located near San Luis Obispo, California, and is a unique refuge for plants, animals and humans that covers the interior coastal range mountains. Designated in 1978, it totals 20,241 acres and is known for its mountain peaks, chaparral-covered slopes and ancient oaks. This landscape is part […]

Little Castle Lake Permanently Protected

June 25, 2021 – Our 2019 purchase of the 637-acre Little Castle Lake property in California represented the largest remaining private parcel in the Castle Crags Wilderness. This land straddles the wilderness boundary and includes a portion of Castle Lake and all of Little Castle Lake. To people familiar with this area, this purchase meant […]

Connecting With Our Projects Online

June 18, 2021 – Our team is hard at work protecting federally designated wilderness across the western United States by removing the threat of private development, mining and other uses inconsistent with wilderness conservation. With the breadth of our work, it is hard to keep you, our  supporters, informed without flooding your inbox. To make it […]

Achievement in Alaska

May 7, 2021 –  In 2017 the Trust purchased the largest remaining private inholding in the Chuck River Wilderness in Alaska. This project was particularly meaningful for our dedicated lands staff because it represented our first land acquisition project in Alaska. The 154-acre property is located at the head of Windham Bay, approximately three hours […]

Adding Wilderness to Washington’s North Cascades

April 23, 2021 –  The Wild Sky and Henry M. Jackson Wilderness areas, located within the fabled North Cascades ecosystem, serve as ideal wildlife habitat for the charismatic gray wolf, Canada lynx, wolverine and even the occasional grizzly bear. And yet, there are a large number of privately owned parcels located within the boundary of […]

The Trust Welcomes a New Board Member

April 2021 – We are thrilled to introduce Joaquin Murrieta-Saldivar, PhD, as a new addition to our board of directors. Joaquin is originally from Mexico and lives in Tucson, AZ, where he works for a watershed management organization as a cultural ecologist. Joaquin splits his professional time between Mexico and Arizona implementing community-based approaches to […]

A Special Field Trip to Achenbach Canyon

April 9, 2021 – This week we had the opportunity to visit our 109-acre project adjacent the Organ Mountains Wilderness with U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich of New Mexico. Aimee Rutledge, our vice president and senior lands specialist, hiked the Achenbach Canyon Trail with the senator, as well as project partners from the Friends of Organ […]

Perspective is How You Look at Things

March 19, 2021 – The Sangre de Cristo Mountains within the Columbine-Hondo Wilderness in New Mexico are 20 million years old, yet they are one of the youngest mountain ranges on earth. Designated in 2014, the Columbine-Hondo Wilderness contains the headwaters of the Rio Hondo and Red River, both major tributaries of the upper Rio […]

Conserving Canyon Country

February 26, 2021 – New Mexico is home to some of our nation’s wildest landscapes. However, only 2.5 percent of the total land area is protected as designated wilderness. The Organ Mountains Wilderness is a beautiful and popular destination, known for its spring wildflowers, seasonal streams that flow through rugged canyon bottoms, abundant wildlife and […]

More Protection for Wild Sky Wilderness

February 12, 2021 – Exploring the Wild Sky Wilderness in Washington state is like stepping back in time before early settlers began to dramatically alter the landscape. Thickly forested slopes and valleys lie in the shadow of high jagged peaks, protecting nearly all of the flora and fauna that existed hundreds of years ago. Old-growth trees […]