Durango Telegraph: Win for the Weminuche
The Durango Telegraph celebrates the Trust’s addition of the 30 acre Needle Creek Property to the Weminuche Wilderness.
July 7, 2025
Tag Archive for: Wilderness
Denver Gazette: Colorado’s Weminuche Wilderness gains acres of public lands
The Denver Gazette celebrate the Trust’s addition of the 30 acre Needle Creek Property to the Weminuche Wilderness.
July 1, 2025
Denver Gazette: US Forest Service acquires 19 acres of land in Collegiate Peaks Wilderness
The Denver Gazette celebrate the Trust’s addition of the 19 acre Panama Principle Lode to the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness.
October 21, 2024
Gunnison Times – GMUG National Forest obtains 203 acres of wilderness
The Gunnison Times celebrate the Trust’s addition transfer of 203 acres in the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison national forests.
October 16, 2024
Denver Gazette – Forest Service celebrates 203 acres of private land-turned wilderness
The Denver Gazette celebrate the Trust’s addition transfer of 203 acres in the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison national forests.
September 27, 2024
Silver City Daily Press- Nonprofit to add Spring Canyon inholding to wilderness
The Silver City Daily Press celebrate the Trust’s acquisition of 40 acres in the Gila Wilderness.
August 17, 2024
New Mexico Political Reporter- The Wilderness Land Trust acquires 40 acres to add to the Gila
The New Mexico Reporter celebrate the Trust’s acquisition of 40 acres in the Gila Wilderness.
August 15, 2024
Wilderness and the lungs of the planet
July 26, 2024-
Increasingly, summer in the West has become synonymous with wildfire season. As of this week, 89 large wildfires are active in the US and have burned 1,611,409 acres. But the impacts of those fires reach far beyond the communities directly affected by them, as smoke blankets much of the country, reaching through the Midwest and New England and well into the Atlantic Ocean. With it comes impacts ranging from reduced visibility to unhealthy air quality.
Map showing the extent of current wildfire smoke from fire.airnow.gov
It’s hard to say whether to call it irony or a perfect example of the balance and interconnectedness of the natural world that the same forests that cyclically burn also help to purify the air of smoke caused by those fires. Forests are often called the lungs of the world for how they help to remove pollutants from the air, ranging beyond smoke to carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and particulate matter. Our nation’s forests offset around 13% of our greenhouse gas emissions every year. Of course, these benefits are provided beyond the boundaries of wilderness areas: roughly 30% of the US is forested, but only 4.5% is wilderness. Urban trees and forests can be particularly impactful as well, as a single tree can absorb 10 pounds of pollutants and 48 pounds of carbon dioxide each year. Interestingly, some trees are more efficient at removing pollutants from the air: the needles of coniferous trees can continually absorb pollutants for several years, while the broader leaves of deciduous trees have more surface area for particulate matter to attach to. “The various species differed more than we expected. Larch, which is a conifer that sheds its needles each autumn, was best in test. Larch trees absorbed the most particle-bound pollutants, but were also good at capturing gaseous PAHs,” found one study.
Clean air is one of the many benefits that wilderness provides, but it is also one of the requirements of protection of wilderness. While the Wilderness Act does not call out clean air as one of the characteristics of wilderness to be preserved in its natural state, the Clean Air Act does categorize wilderness areas larger than 5,000 acres that were established prior to 1977 (totaling 139 of 806 designated wilderness areas) as the highest level of mandated protection against air pollution (with all other wilderness areas are categorized as the second highest level of protection). Development of private lands in and around wilderness areas can be a major source of local air pollution emissions. By limiting this development we are not only aiding in the protection of wilderness character, we are protecting the forest ecosystems which remove pollution from the air.
More broadly, protecting large connected ecosystems in their natural state allows these natural processes and cycles, which are nothing short of miraculous in their efficiency and ingenuity, to go on unimpeded. While technology can offer additional options for removing pollutants from the air, which will likely be increasingly needed to mitigate the climate crisis, you don’t have to look farther than out your window, at the nearest tree, for the original technology of the lungs of the planet.
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The Best of Field Season
June 28, 2024-
With snow melting out of the high country and summer officially upon us, field season is beginning for our lands staff. Over the next few months our team will be visiting project sites in wilderness areas across the country. Site visits are an integral part of our work: they allow us to do important due diligence on prospective properties, to plan and complete restoration work to return properties to their wilderness character before transfer to public ownership, and to meet with the private landowners and partner organizations and agencies that make our work possible. Having boots on the ground not only allows us to access the specific conservation values of each property in order to maximize our impact, the stunning vistas, wildlife sightings, and moments of solitude remind us why we do what we do.
Due to the remote nature of our project sites, each visit comes with its own set of challenges and rewards. Your support makes these visits, and in turn our work, possible.
Most Rugged 
Access: Wild Sky Wilderness, Washington
The Trust has protected 28 properties in the Wild Sky Wilderness, and its steep terrain coupled with the thick undergrowth of its temperate rainforest have earned them a reputation for some of the most difficult to access. The many hours of off-trail bushwhacking aren’t without payoff though, as breaks in the vegetation provide incredible views of pristine alpine lakes and craggy high-peaks. Despite the challenging access, with 15 active projects in this one wilderness area, our staff is able to visit them all relatively efficiently, and is working to transfer the majority to public ownership in one package.
Best Company: Spring Canyon- Gila Wilderness, New Mexico
This week our staff visited the 40-acre Spring Canyon property we are working to acquire to assess its condition and characteristics. While our site visits often include partners such as agencies, local nonprofit, tribes, and technical services like appraisers and surveyors, the company on our Spring Canyon visit was notable. We visited the property with the US Forest Service on horseback, and our trusty mounts Pablo and Sino not only safely carried us across high mesas and down steep canyon walls, they brought smiles to our faces all day. Sino was recently featured in a NY Times article celebrating the centennial of the Gila Wilderness, so we were all very humbled to be in the presence of such a celebrity.
Most Surprising Find: Wheeler Creek- Kootznoowoo Wilderness, Alaska
Every property we work to protect has its own unique history, and oftentimes traces of that history are left behind. Our staff has found no shortage of surprising and sometimes baffling remnants deep in the wilderness, from school busses to mining equipment to metal drums full of mystery chemicals. Visiting projects to assess what restoration work will be necessary to return it to its wilderness character is an important step in our work. But the most surprising site visit find in recent memory wasn’t what we found on the property, it was finding that the property itself had grown. Throughout Southeast Alaska, as glaciers shrink the land is rising in response to the reduced weight of the glaciers in a process known as isostatic rebound. As it rises, more land is exposed above the high-water line. In completing a survey as part of our due diligence we found that the Wheeler Creek property had actually grown by less than an acre since its last survey.
Most Likely to Need Rental Car Insurance: Cougar Canyon Wilderness, Utah
Most trips into the wilderness start with a long drive on rough roads, but some really take the cake. Having largely washed out from spring runoff, the road in to our Cougar Canyon property in SW Utah made for a particularly adventurous trip in for us and our poor rental truck on our last visit. The road forms the boundary of the wilderness area and provides access to the 700-acre property. Despite the current state of the road, in the Washington County real estate market which includes both St. George and the property (and is the fastest-growing metro area in the US) the property is highly vulnerable to development. So, to the folks at Enterprise and Hertz, you have our apologies and thanks for helping us protect this special place!
This week marks the end of our fiscal year. If you haven’t already, please consider making a donation to help fund not only our summer field season, but our work all year round.
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Holy Cross wilderness expands with new transfer in Colorado
June 14, 2024-
The Wilderness Land Trust recently transferred our 22nd property in Colorado’s Holy Cross Wilderness to public ownership.
Just down the ridgeline from Homestake Peak, the 10-acre Northern Lode property straddles the Continental Divide in an area once active with mines. It sits just above the the West Tennessee Lakes basin and is a short scramble from the popular trail accessing the lakes.
Throughout the property a series of scree slopes and grassy alpine meadows are home to high alpine inhabitants like the American pika. The potato-sized pika is found in the high country throughout the rockies, typically above 8,000 ft. You may have heard their loud squeaking “EEEP” calls or seen them dashing through the talus with mouth full of grasses. In order to make it through the harsh alpine winter without hibernating, the pika will spend all summer stockpiling grass under rocks to dry, creating ‘haypiles’. It’s not uncommon for a single pika to make 25 foraging trips an hour between the talus and meadows through the summer!
The same adaptations that make pika well suited for life in high alpine also make them vulnerable to the climate change. Scientists (including many citizen science programs like the the Colorado Pika Project who rely on volunteers to collect data) are studying how the range of pika habitat is changing, in order to better understand the impacts of climate change. Protecting available habitat, like the Northern Lode property, is important to ensuring these resilient, and adorable, critters continue to thrive.
With five more properties currently held by the Trust awaiting transfer in the Holy Cross Wilderness, our impact there will only continue to grow.
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