Far more than just a name, WildEarth Guardians stands as a force for nature. WildEarth Guardians envisions a world where wildlife and wild places are respected. This vision drives their commitment to sustainability for all beings.
WildEarth Guardians believes in nature’s right to exist and thrive. They fight to protect what remains of our wild spaces. They also work to restore what has been damaged. WildEarth Guardians strives to build human communities that celebrate diversity. They want communities to live in greater harmony with the natural world.
Since its founding, WildEarth Guardians has centered its work on defending the rights of nature. This means protecting the vulnerable and voiceless. It also means confronting the powerful people and unjust systems that stand in the way. WildEarth Guardians believes social and environmental justice are deeply intertwined. The organization does more to create a more just, equitable, diverse, and inclusive world.
WildEarth Guardians has four main programs. These programs include wildlife, wild places, wild rivers and climate and energy.
The wildlife program focuses on staving off the biodiversity crisis. WildEarth Guardians protects imperiled species. They create an ethic of coexistence between human interests and native carnivores across the West. They reform systems of wildlife governance to be more science-based, democratic, and ethical. In Colorado, WildEarth Guardians’ main focus in the wildlife program is ensuring wolves brought back to the state can survive. They led advocacy efforts around the creation of Colorado’s wolf recovery plan. The plan includes no trophy hunting of wolves. It helps include coexistence measures.
Now, WildEarth Guardians is fighting for the future of wolf restoration in the state.
WildEarth Guardians promotes healing and restoring public lands across the West. This connects large, protected landscapes for native wildlife. In Colorado, they fight to protect national forests from the impact of motorized vehicles. WildEarth Guardians pushes to remove unmaintained roads. These roads fragment critical wildlife habitat and degrade streams and rivers. They are also challenging domestic sheep grazing allotment approvals. This stops disease transmission to vulnerable bighorn populations.
Living rivers are vital to the diversity of life on Earth. At WildEarth Guardians, they fight to ensure that rivers across the West have a right to their own water. Their primary effort in the Centennial State is protecting the headwaters of the Colorado River. WildEarth Guardians fights new dams and diversion projects. These projects would drain water from this already over-allocated river system. They devastate irreplaceable wetlands. They also destroy key habitat for the Canada lynx and other imperiled species.
WildEarth Guardians is a leading advocate in the fight to transition our nation off fossil fuels. They want to embrace a clean energy future. One hot spot in the West is along the Colorado Front Range. It is suffering through a clean air crisis. WildEarth Guardians uses a diversity of tactics to help clean Colorado’s air. The tactics include legal engagement and political lobbying.
In May, the Environmental Protection Agency ruled in a WildEarth Guardians legal case. Colorado’s air pollution permit for Arch Coal’s West Elk coal mine failed to meet Clean Air Act requirements for monitoring harmful smog-forming compounds.
Founded in 1989, WildEarth Guardians has grown into a formidable force for environmental protection. It has over 67,000 members. From its headquarters here in Santa Fe, New Mexico, WildEarth Guardians continues to champion the cause of a sustainable and harmonious world.