Photo: Kristen M. Caldon Along the Spine of the Continent in western North America, we and our partners are working to reconnect a vast network of protected, connected land: the 5,000-mile Western Wildway. We’ve created the following resources as part of this ambitious initiative.
The Western Wildway Newsletter collects some of the news and accomplishments from our partners around the Wildway. This edition from April 2018 includes updates from the U.S.-Mexico borderlands in addition to stories about the longest mammalian migration on earth and the Bozeman Pass wildlife corridor protection effort.
The Western Wildway Newsletter collects some of the news and accomplishments from our partners around the Wildway. This edition from February 2018 includes stories about Yellowstone to Uintas Connection’s Landowner Conservation Campaign, the USFWS decision to delist Canada Lynx, and the importance of landscape conservation cooperatives.
The Western Environmental Law Center provided this notice of intent to sue the federal government for violating the Endangered Species Act in its final Mexican Wolf Recovery Plan, on behalf of WildEarth Guardians (“Guardians”), Western Watersheds Project (“WWP”), Wildlands Network, and the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance. Guardians, WWP, Wildlands Network, and the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance have significant, concrete interests in ensuring the long-term survival and recovery of Mexican wolves in the contiguous United States and ensuring the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (“the Service”) utilizes the best available science and complies with the ESA when preparing a recovery plan for the Mexican wolf.
Many consider the monarch butterfly to be one of the most beautiful butterflies in the world. What some people may not know is that, each year, monarchs travel 2,500 miles to Mexico and southern California to escape freezing temperatures and lack of food during the winter. Through the designation of a National Wildlife Corridors System, we can support monarchs by protecting strategic habitat along their flyways, thus providing them with necessary resting areas, food, and the ability to reproduce.
Grizzly bears don’t follow human boundaries, and often, our parks are simply too small for this wide-ranging species. Just like how people need highways to get from one place to another safely, grizzly bears and other species need wildlife corridors to move from protected area to protected area in search of food and mates. The Wildlife Corridors Conservation Act would provide these essential paths—protecting grizzlies and drivers from dangerous wildlife-vehicle collisions, and helping to reduce conflicts with people by giving grizzlies a safer route around cities and towns.
Each winter, pronghorn make a grueling, 150-mile migration from Wyoming’s Upper Green River Basin to Grand Teton National Park. Without this migration, pronghorns would not be able to find feeding grounds to get them through such harsh winters. Unfortunately, many of our roads, fences, and cities block pronghorns from making this critical migration. The Wildlife Corridors Conservation Act would make it possible for pronghorn to reclaim their migration route and secure it for future generations.
This bill would establish the National Wildlife Corridors System to provide for the protection and restoration of native fish, wildlife, and plant species. The conservation of landscape corridors and waterways, where native species and ecological processes can transition from one habitat to another, is critical to conserving biodiversity and ensuring resiliency for wildlife—especially in the face of climate change. Read case studies about how this act would benefit Florida panthers, grizzly bears, monarch butterflies, and pronghorns.
The Western Wildway Newsletter collects some of the news and accomplishments from our partners around the Wildway. This edition from December 2017 includes stories about the victory at Wolf Creek Pass, the victories of Western Environmental Law Center, and the successes of the partnership between Yellowstone to Unitas Connection, BLM and Forest Service.
The final Mexican Wolf Recovery Plan from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service aims to establish and maintain a minimum of two resilient, genetically diverse Mexican wolf populations distributed across ecologically and
geographically diverse areas in the subspecies’ range in the United States and Mexico. The USFWS’s stated recovery goal is to conserve and protect the Mexican wolf and its habitat so that its longterm survival is secured, populations are capable of enduring threats, and it can be removed from the list of threatened and endangered species.
This report summarizes the most relevant and up-to-date information on four charismatic species affected by the fragmentation of habitat and disruption of movement corridors resulting from the existing and proposed border infrastructure and associated militarization. It focuses on the Arizona-Sonora border and covers a small portion of western New Mexico’s border with Chihuahua, but its framework and broad themes are relevant to any evaluation of impacts to wildlife across the entire U.S.-Mexico border.
The Western Wildway Newsletter collects some of the news and accomplishments from our partners around the Wildway. This edition from October 2017 includes stories about the protection of Bonanza Flat and the reconsideration of the sage-grouse conservation plans.
Wildlands Network responds to the USFWS’s draft plan for Mexican wolf recovery: Our immediate concern is the draft plan falls far short of the mark needed for recovery of these critically endangered wolves, and that these shortcomings are driven by politics rather than the science of wolf recovery. If implemented, it would allow fewer than half the number of wolves in the wild that most of the previous recovery team scientists say are needed in the U.S. for recovery—with another small isolated population in Mexico—at which time the states would assume full management responsibility for Lobo survival. The prospect of premature downlisting and delisting, exacerbated by the relevant states’ record opposing wolf recovery discussed below, affords a recipe for extinction—not recovery— for one of the most critically endangered wild mammals in North America.
The Western Wildway Newsletter collects some of the news and accomplishments from our partners around the Wildway. This edition from August 2017 includes stories about the Oracle Road Wildlife Bridge and Outdoor Industry Association’s march for public lands in Salt Lake City.
Wildlands Network signed on to this letter to the U.S. House of Representatives, urging them to vote no on funding for the continued construction of the border wall. Not only is the wall an ineffective tool at managing border migration, it will also irreparably harm biodiversity in the Rio Grande Valley. Nearly 90 environmental, faith, immigration, and civil rights organizations signed on to the letter opposing the border wall.
The Mexican wolf (Canis lupus baileyi) is an endangered subspecies of gray wolf protected by the Endangered Species Act (ESA) since 1976. Following the near extinction of the Mexican wolf due to predator eradication efforts in the mid to late 1800’s to mid-1900’s, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Mexico, and partner agencies initiated a binational captive breeding program with 7 wolves and began efforts to re-establish Mexican wolves in the wild in the United States (in 1998) and Mexico (in 2011). Our recovery strategy for the Mexican wolf is to establish and maintain a minimum of two resilient, genetically diverse Mexican wolf populations distributed across ecologically and geographically diverse areas in the subspecies’ range in the United States and Mexico.