Protecting a haven for endangered wildlife in Southern California

September 18, 2026-

The Wilderness Land Trust recently purchased a 41-acre private inholding within the Sespe Wilderness of Southern California. The property sits just up the slope from the popular Agua Blanca Creek Trail, and contains a tributary to Sespe Creek, one of the last free-flowing rivers in Southern California. With it now safeguarded from development, we’re helping to ensure the wilderness experience of hikers and backpackers, connected habitat for wildlife, and protected watersheds.

The 219,000-acre Sespe Wilderness is a haven for threatened wildlife. It is home to over 40 endangered species, and about 1/4 of the wilderness area is designated as a California Condor sanctuary. The condor sanctuary was first created in 1947, but despite recovery efforts, the California Condor became extinct in the wild in 1987. In 1992, four captive-bred condors were released into the Sespe condor sanctuary as the start of a multi-year reintroduction effort. Today, it is estimated there are 392 wild condors living in California, Arizona, Utah, and Baja, Mexico. This successful reintroduction would not have been possible without large swaths of protected, intact habitat.

Video of a bobcat visiting Agua Blanca Creek, captured by Los Padres National Forest staff while on a site visit to the Trust’s Agua Blanca property.

The Agua Blanca property, and surrounding wilderness, are part of the fourth-largest contiguous roadless area in the US, and the one closest to a major metropolitan area, Los Angeles. This area provides important recreational access for millions to experience solitude and inspiration in the wilderness.

Agua Blanca is the Trust’s first project in the Sespe Wilderness. In total we have worked to protect 252 properties covering over 38,455 acres in California.

One step closer to wilderness for Snowmass Falls Ranch

September 4, 2026-

The Wilderness Land Trust has been partnering with Pitkin County, Colorado on a landmark conservation project to protect the 650-acre Snowmass Falls Ranch. The property, which is the largest private inholding in the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness, has been on the Trust’s radar as a priority acquisition for three decades. In February 2024, Pitkin County purchased the property for $34M using Open Space funds. Once the purchase was complete, the Trust and White River National Forest began working to secure funding for its transfer. Due to its outstanding conservation and recreation values, it ranked #1 in the region and #5 in the country for Land and Water Conservation Fund projects, and in January of this year, the project was awarded full funding. Last week marked another major milestone for the project, as the Pitkin County Board of County Commissioners voted to move forward with transferring the property to be added to the wilderness area.

Snowmass Falls Ranch contains two miles of valley floor filled with aspen meadows, beaver ponds, and trout streams. Located at the foot of the Elk Range, the majority of the property lies within the boundaries of the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness. As a result, this ranch is home to diverse wilderness values: open meadows, aspen groves, spruce forest, wetlands, and riparian shrublands create a mosaic of habitat types that support a wide range of flora and fauna. It provides summer range for elk, bear, moose, mule deer, and mountain lion and hosts an active beaver complex and many bird species. Two popular public trails run through the ranch, serving as an important access point for hikers to the wilderness area. In addition to its ecological and recreation value, the ranch also holds the most senior water rights to Snowmass Creek, a significant source of water for the valley below. When transferred, 530 acres of the 650-acre property will be added to the wilderness area.

“The Snowmass Falls Ranch project represents an incredible conservation legacy for Pitkin County, and we’re excited to see it move one step closer to becoming part of the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness. As our most durable form of protection for public land, the safeguards of designated wilderness can only be altered by an Act of Congress rather than executive order or administrative rule, and for that reason we believe it to be the best tool for connecting wildlife habitat, protecting clean watersheds, and preserving public access on Snowmass Falls Ranch.” -Anders Reynolds, President of The Wilderness Land Trust

Restoration work is currently being completed on the property to remove cabins, rewild pastures, close mine adits, and improve the popular trailhead. And while several more steps remain in the transfer process, we are excited to see it moving forward with such great momentum and support, and are grateful for the partners who are making it possible.

What the Roadless Rule means for wilderness

August 21, 2026-

This week, the Trump Administration released a new proposed rule and draft environmental impact statement that would fully rescind the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. The 2001 rule limited road building and commercial timber harvests on 45 million acres of National Forest. Some reporting on this has created confusion about which jurisdictions and levels of protected lands this would apply to, so you may be wondering what this rule change would mean for wilderness areas.

The short answer is that this rule change won’t alter protections for designated wilderness areas. The 1964 Wilderness Act that created wilderness designations very clearly laid out a set of strict protections for them. Once a wilderness area is designated through an act of Congress, its boundaries and protections can only be altered by another act of Congress, not through administrative rule changes or executive orders. The Roadless Rule, on the other hand, was an administrative rule adopted by President Bill Clinton. As such, it could always be changed by a future administrative rule, such as the one proposed by the Trump Administration. Recently we’ve seen similar vulnerabilities with National Monuments that were created by executive order being shrunk through executive order. It is the same thing that made passing The Wilderness Act 60 years ago such a monumental feat of bipartisan cooperation that has made it so durable: the 268 votes by Members of Congress needed to alter it. In those 60 years, Congress has never voted to remove protections for a designated wilderness area.

While the proposed Roadless Rule change won’t alter protections for designated wilderness areas, that doesn’t mean it won’t impact them. Many Inventoried Roadless Areas surround designated wilderness, creating buffers of lands with limited human impact which help to insulate wilderness from encroaching development. Of course, these designations and their boundaries mean nothing to roaming wildlife and flowing streams, and together wilderness and roadless areas create important continuous, unfragmented habitat. Inventoried Roadless Areas are also considered for potential future wilderness designations. If this proposed rule change goes through, millions of acres surrounding wilderness areas, acres which might join them in the future, could be opened to road building.

The public process that helps to govern decision-making on our public lands still plays an important role in the future of roadless areas. A 30-day public comment period opened this week, during which groups and individuals can weigh in on the proposed rule change. If the Roadless Rule is rescinded, future management plans for specific roadless areas, which are largely decided at the local level, will also include public comment. We have the pleasure of working with many USFS staff, from local ranger districts to Washington D.C., who are passionate and dedicated to continuing to care for our wild places. We are grateful knowing that they are still on the ground working for these lands.

While it’s easy to feel discouraged and frustrated by the news headlines of the day, we believe that our wilderness and public lands are a legacy greater than any one administration or point in time. Completing designated wilderness areas has always been at the heart of our mission, and we work every day to continue investing in their promise for future generations. The greatest protection for our wild places is how they inspire and touch the lives of people from diverse walks of life, creating wilderness advocates on both sides of the political aisle and a broad coalition of support who speak up when they are threatened.

Read the proposed rule and submit a public comment

Learn more and explore roadless areas near you

Join us in welcoming Maura Sullivan as Director of Major Gifts!

August 7, 2026-

We are excited to announce that Maura Sullivan has joined the Trust staff as our new Director of Major Gifts.

“I’m thrilled to welcome Maura Sullivan to The Wilderness Land Trust as our Director of Major Gifts. Maura brings with her more than two decades of conservation fundraising experience and a proven record of building the kind of trusted, long-term donor relationships on which transformational giving depends. Her gift for translating conservation impact into meaningful opportunities for our supporters will be essential as we grow the philanthropic partnerships necessary to make wilderness whole and healthy,” says Anders Reynolds, President.

Based in Golden, Colorado, her experience in conservation fundraising includes development roles at The Nature Conservancy, Cheetah Conservation Fund, The Wilderness Society, Conservation Colorado, River Network, and the University of Colorado Boulder.

Maura’s commitment to conservation has taken her to Western Australia, where she volunteered with grassroots efforts to protect the region’s native jarrah, karri, and marri forests, and to the rainforests of Central America where she taught rainforest ecology at a field station with the indigenous Mayans.

“I am excited to join The Wilderness Land Trust because I believe protecting our nation’s wild places is one of the most meaningful investments we can make for future generations. I look forward to building relationships with passionate supporters, growing major gifts, and developing a planned giving program that enables donors to create a lasting legacy while advancing the Trust’s mission to protect irreplaceable wild landscapes,” says Maura.

Maura holds a Master’s Certificate in Natural Resources Management from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and a BS in Education from Bridgewater State University.

Please join us in welcoming Maura! You can reach her at maura@wildernesslandtrust.org

280 acres protected in New Mexico’s Cebolla Wilderness

July 27, 2026-

Periodically, the Trust sends out letters to landowners of private inholdings within designated wilderness areas introducing ourselves and letting them know that if they are ever interested in selling, we’d love to work with them. This, along with partners bringing projects to us and landowners hearing about our work from neighbors or news stories, are the primary ways we identify potential projects. In late 2025, we sent out one such mailing to inholding landowners in New Mexico. One of the responses we received was from the owner of the 280-acre Pinyon Camp property in the Cebolla Wilderness. Originally homesteaded by their family in the 1930s, they were now interested in selling the property and seeing it protected.

The Trust recently completed the purchase of the Pinyon Camp property. It sits on a bluff between two drainages, with easy recreation access in the heart of the wilderness area. It is also located within a larger conservation complex: The Cebolla Wilderness, along with the West Malpais Wilderness and three wilderness study areas, are part of the greater El Malpais National Conservation Area, which encompasses over 262,000 acres and adjoins the El Malpais National Monument. El Malpais means “the badlands”, and its landscapes are dominated by volcanic fields, dramatic sandstone cliffs, canyons, and arches. It is also home to over 190 species of birds, including excellent nesting habitat for a variety of raptors.

Pinyon Camp was one of only two remaining private inholdings left in the Cebolla Wilderness. With it now protected, we are one step closer to completing the wilderness area. The Trust will now work to transfer Pinyon Camp to public ownership to be added to the wilderness area. As designated wilderness, it will have the highest protections available for public lands, which can only be altered by a majority vote of Congress, not executive order or other administration directives.

Conservation as caretaking: protecting California’s central coast

July 10, 2026-

Three years ago, The Wilderness Land Trust purchased a 160-acre parcel in California’s Ventana Wilderness from the San Francisco Zen Center. Previously part of their Tassajara Mountain Zen Center, the Church Creek property overlooks the ridges and valleys of the interior coastal range. Last week we completed the transfer of the property to public ownership.

“There’s an old Zen saying: ‘If I take care of the mountains, they will take care of us.’ We share this quality of intimate connection with nature with The Wilderness Land Trust, and we deeply appreciate the protection and care this land will continue receiving in the future.” —Sozan Miglioli, former President of San Francisco Zen Center

For centuries the connection between Zen practice and nature has been interwoven. In Japan, where the Zen school of Buddhism began in the 13th century, many training monasteries and temples were built in the mountains, and many Zen teachers would include the name of the mountain where they trained in their own name. In Zen practice, the mountains mirror back what you are trying to create in yourself, to find stillness in the midst of the hum of life around you.

So, when the San Francisco Zen Center was founded in 1962, they began looking for a site for their own mountain monastery. The old Tassajara Hot Springs and Hotel, located a few hours south of San Francisco, provided the perfect opportunity. The Zen Center purchased several properties around the hot springs in 1967 and established the Tassajara Mountain Zen Center. Just two years later, the land around it was designated as the Ventana Wilderness. Since then, generations of Zen students have come to Tassajara to be in the wilderness, walking its trails, sitting beneath its trees, and learning its lessons.

For the Zen Center, the decision to work with the Trust to protect the Church Creek property came easily: “One of the main tenets of Zen is the understanding that there is no separation. When one thing happens it has an effect in the whole universe. This means there is no separation from nature— the way we take care of nature is the way we take care of ourselves. Conservation is an expression of this caretaking” says Sozan Miglioli.

With incredible vistas, flat building sites, and access via a public road, the Church Creek property would have been at high risk of development had it sold to a private buyer. The property contains a spring-fed tributary to Church Creek, as well as a trailhead and popular trails. The cost to the surrounding wilderness if developed would have been great.

Now protected as public lands, with about 65 acres of the property added to the wilderness area, that threat has been removed. The Church Creek property also adjoins another 160-acre property which the Trust added to public lands in 2008. These properties connect to over 2 million acres of public lands in the Central Coast, one of the U.S.’s largest biodiversity hotspots.

These lands, like all wild places, need our care. One of the many reasons we work to protect them is to ensure generations to come will have the opportunity to visit them to find stillness, inspiration, and connection.

For the Love of Wilderness: Share your stories, roll up your sleeves, and give with impact

May 29, 2026-

There are so many reasons to love wilderness: from the adventures and moments of solitude it provides us, to the room it gives wildlife to roam, to the clean air and water we depend on. And, there are just as many ways to show your love for it!

Wilderness touches all of us whether we realize it or not.The National Wilderness Coalition’s Voices for Wilderness project collects stories, experiences and perspectives about why wilderness and wild places matter.

Explore the voices and add your own!

Next Saturday, June 6th, is National Trails Day! Groups across the country will be hosting volunteer events to maintain and care for trails from local parks to wilderness areas. Many wilderness stewardship groups also have volunteer opportunities, ranging from one day to multi-day trips, throughout the summer. Or, if trail work isn’t your cup of tea, citizen science projects, environmental education groups, and even public lands agencies are often seeking volunteers!

Find a National Trails Day Event

Find other volunteer opportunities

Edward Abbey said, “The idea of wilderness needs no defense; it only needs defenders.” While there are many ways to defend the wilderness you love, at The Wilderness Land Trust we’re focused on protecting it from development that fragments it from within. Acre by acre, we’re working on the ground in wilderness across the country, having real impact as we ensure these cherished landscapes won’t be scarred by roads, resorts, or mines.

We believe that our shared legacy of public lands and wilderness is greater than any one moment in time- that our systems for protecting them will endure just as the wild places themselves have. Wilderness knows how to recover, adapt, and endure, if we give it the chance. That is what your support of The Wilderness Land Trust makes possible. Not just protecting what wilderness is today but preserving its capacity to surprise us tomorrow. To come back stronger than we expected. To be there, whole and healthy and wild, for future generations.

Give today!

The Cost of Private Inholdings in Wildfire Management

June 26, 2026-

Right now, somewhere in the West, a wildfire is burning and fire managers are studying maps, calculating risk, and making decisions that will shape a landscape for the next century. When that fire burns near one of the 3,000 private properties that sit in the middle of designated wilderness, how those decisions are made can change drastically.

When a fire starts naturally in wilderness, and only forest or grasslands lie in its path, fire managers can choose to let it burn under safe conditions, allowing it to reduce fuels, create habitat, and restore the ecological processes the Wilderness Act was designed to protect. But when a private inholding enters the equation, particularly when it contains a cabin, resort, or mining operation, the ‘values at risk’ calculation that drives fire management decisions shifts. And rather than managing the fire to promote ecological integrity, private property protection often becomes the priority.

We know that there is a hard cost associated with defending private inholdings: wildland firefighting costs increase as much as 50x when structures are threatened. But there is also a second cost— the missed opportunity cost of not allowing fires to burn naturally. For much of the 20th century, public land management operated on the premise that fire was bad, and putting it out was good. We now know that isn’t always true, especially in wilderness. Fire is not a disaster that happens to forests. It is a process that forests evolved with, depend on, and in many cases require to stay healthy. Fire is what ecologists call a “keystone process”, one that structures entire ecosystems. When fire moves through a landscape, it doesn’t destroy uniformly. It burns hot in some places and cool in others, kills some trees and spares others, opens the canopy here and leaves it intact there. The result is called pyrodiversity: a patchwork of habitats at different stages of recovery, supporting a far wider range of plants and animals than any single-aged, fire-suppressed forest can. Research increasingly shows that this diversity of fire history directly promotes biodiversity, including among pollinators and flowering plants. This isn’t new knowledge; indigenous communities across the West understood and practiced it for thousands of years, deliberately burning to manage landscapes, protect communities, and support the plants and animals they depended on.

There are many instances where fires in the wildland-urban interface cannot safely be left to burn, when communities, homes, and lives are at risk. And as many of our finite firefighting resources as possible should be directed to those areas where so much is at stake. But deep in wilderness, many miles from the nearest road, there is great value in letting them burn. One of the many benefits of the Trust’s work to remove private inholdings from within wilderness is simplifying the calculations that fire managers must make to allow the natural fire cycles, which ecosystems evolved to rely on, govern themselves. In some wilderness areas we’ve removed as many as 36 private inholding properties, and we have successfully removed every last inholding from 18 wilderness areas from New Mexico to Washington. In each of these instances, we’ve made it an incrementally easier decision to truly allow these wild places to be wild, to follow the natural cycles they have for millennia, untrammeled by human interference.

Building impact across a landscape in the San Juan Mountains

June 12, 2026-

The Wilderness Land Trust recently acquired Eastern Rebel Boy, a 6.7-acre property within the Red Cloud Peak Wilderness Study Area of southwest Colorado. Like so many of the small properties we work to protect, there is inherent value in removing every opportunity for development within our wild places, no matter the size. But the impact of protecting Eastern Rebel Boy spreads beyond its boundaries as part of a landscape-scale effort the Trust has undertaken in recent years.

The Uncompahgre Wilderness meets the American Flats, Handies Peak, and Red Cloud Peak Wilderness Study Areas in the high alpine and sweeping vistas of the San Juan Mountains. Remnants of the area’s rich mining history scatter the mountainsides, including the Alpine Loop Scenic Byway— 63 miles of old mining roads turned off-road vehicle destination, which winds through seven ghost towns and traverses two high passes. In addition to OHV users, the area draws recreationists of all kinds, with several 14,000’+ peaks, the famous views and summer wildflower displays of American Basin, the Lake Fork of the Gunnison River, and many alpine lakes.

Over the past 3 years, the Trust has acquired a total of 32 properties covering just shy of 300 acres in this area. In addition to securing access for hikers, backpackers, and climbers on several popular trails, and preserving scenic viewsheds for all recreationists who visit the area, our cumulative impact has helped to unify ownership across the landscape, removing barriers for possible future wilderness designations. The Eastern Rebel Boy property now joins this effort. Located on a flat, buildable rocky bench carved into the slopes rising from the Alpine Loop Scenic Byway to the 14,005 ft summit of Sunshine Peak, the property adjoins one of the Trust’s other previously acquired properties.

We are currently working with other conservation-minded property owners in the area to pursue additional acquisitions that would add to this landscape-scale impact, securing even more public recreation access, preserving connected wildlife habitats, and removing management conflicts. Join us in this work by making a donation today!

Protecting the slopes of Colorado’s Mount Champion

May 15, 2026-

The Trust recently completed the transfer of 194 acres on the slopes of Mount Champion, just outside the Mount Massive Wilderness, to the San Isabel National Forest in Colorado.

The Champion Mine South property, which stretches from the North Fork of Lake Creek almost to the summit of Mount Champion, includes remnants of the Champion Mine which was active from 1907-1940 mining gold, silver, copper, and lead. The property is being transferred to public ownership in two phases— this first 194-acre phase, and a second 40-acre phase that will follow at a later date.

Along with the remnants of Champion Mine, a mill site where ore was processed was also located on the 40-acre portion of the property that will transfer later. The 50-ton mill used mercury to dissolve gold from ore that was pulled from the mine and crushed, resulting in a denser material that could more easily be separated from the remaining ore. It was then heated to distill off the mercury for reuse, leaving behind gold particles. This process commonly resulted in waste tailings contaminated with heavy metals.

Last year the Trust completed extensive environmental testing for mercury and other heavy metals on the property in partnership with the EPA-led Mixed Ownership Group, which consists of federal and state agencies, local governments, and non-governmental organizations focused on completing assessments and remedial actions on abandoned mine lands throughout Colorado. The testing all came back within safe levels, an important step to ensure the property is wilderness-ready before becoming public lands. With this due diligence completed, the second phase of the transfer is moving forward.

Collecting samples on the property with members of the EPA-led Mixed Ownership Group.

The property was generously donated to the Trust in 2023 by local landowner Amy Margerum Berg: “My late husband, Charles “Chuck” McLean, had the foresight to purchase these mining claims with the intent of protecting them from development. My son, Slater McLean, and I are so proud to be donating this land in his honor. He loved this land more than anything and spent hours exploring and hiking every inch of this spectacular backcountry wilderness. He would be very happy to know that the land will now be protected forever.”

The popular North Fork Lake Creek Trail leads hikers, backpackers, and horsemen into the 30,000-acre Mount Massive Wilderness and runs through the base of the Champion Mine South property. Protecting the property under public ownership ensures public access on the trail and mitigates the management and liability concerns that have recently cut off access to several of Colorado’s 14ers. The project also protects important wildlife habitat, spanning from streamside riparian zones to alpine meadows above treeline, and is home to bighorn sheep.