About Us Staff Board Contact

Wild Forests: BCA is a guardian of wild forests throughout our region. Our National Forests are much more than a collection of trees. These public lands provide important habitat for wildlife and rare plants, clean water, and a quiet place of refuge for public recreation. We focus on protecting backcountry areas that still remain roadless, and on safeguarding key habitats and connecting corridors used by forest wildlife and fish.  And we keep watch over logging and motorized use to ensure that they will be compatible with maintaining native wildlife and healthy forests. Restoring the health of the Medicine Bow and Black Hills National Forests, which have been damaged by excessive logging, are special priorities.  However, we also work to protect and restore the Bighorn, Arapaho-Roosevelt, Bridger-Teton and Shoshone National Forests.  

• Thanks to advocacy from BCA members and staff, the Forest Service listened to requests to protect quiet recreation, wildlife, wetlands and soils.  The new Laramie Peak Travel Management Plan promises to reduce motorized impacts to the landscape and native species, and minimize user conflict.
• BCA advocacy succeeded in keeping off-road vehicle trails out of pristine roadless areas in the recent Snowy Range Travel Management Plan with one exception, which is currently under appeal.
• Early conversations with Forest Service officials convinced them to protect Canada lynx corridor habitat which they would have otherwise sacrificed in the upcoming "Spruce Gulch" logging project.  BCA will still press to stop clearcutting in other areas as well.

Wild Deserts and Grasslands: Wyoming's sagebrush deserts and grasslands are strongholds of native wildlife, from the pronghorn antelope to the sage grouse and prairie dog.  With a special beauty born of remoteness, these public lands contain spectacular desert wilderness such as Adobe Town and the Honeycomb Buttes, some of the last great blank spots on the map that await today's explorers.  The Bureau of Land Management oversees these magnificent remnants of the Wild West, with the Forest Service managing the Thunder Basin, Wyoming's only National Grassland.  BCA works to protect special places and sensitive wildlife habitats within these landscapes, and provides sustainable solutions to reform drilling, mining, and grazing practices so they can become compatible with the needs of wildlife and public recreation.

• The Wyoming Environmental Quality Council voted 5-1 to protect Adobe Town, Wyoming's largest desert wilderness (180,000 acres) from the looming threats of uranium and oil shale mining.  The protective designation, "Very Rare or Uncommon," is due to a petition drafted by BCA and supported by 7 other conservation groups, and the testimony of hundreds of hundreds of concerned citizens that we organized.
• BCA led negotiations stimulating a new state rule restricting the discharge of pollutants, particularly coalbed methane wastewater, upstream from "Class I" waters.  The new rule brings strong protection for the Miracle Mile, a blue ribbon trout fishery on the North Platte below Seminoe Reservoir, which had been slated as the dumping ground for millions of gallons of salty CBM wastewater.
• The Bureau of Land Management provided strong protection for the Wild Cow Creek and Pedro Mountains Citizens' Proposed Wilderness Areas in its recently published Final Environmental Impact Statement for the 4.6 million acre Great Divide area management plan.  The plan also provides "Area of Critical Environmental Concern" designation for the Shirley Mountains and the Ferris Dunes.  These bright spots in an otherwise dreadful plan can be traced directly to BCA advocacy, and BCA is working to correct the flaws through the public comment process.

Wild Species: BCA is committed to the premise that each of our region's native inhabitants should survive and flourish.  Each plant, animal and insect has an important role to play, and the loss of even a seemingly insignificant creature can cause the entire web of life to unravel.  We work to restore populations of native species that have become rare, and to protect our region's abundance of native fishes, plants and wildlife.  The Endangered Species Act has saved 99% of the creatures it protects from extinction, and BCA has won virtually all of our legal challenges to the Fish and Wildlife Service over the protection of wildlife.  Endangered Species Act protection serves as an effective umbrella to protect habitats and entire ecosystems. 

• A judge overturned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife's denial of Endangered Species Act protection for the greater sage grouse due to a petition filed by a coalition of conservation groups including BCA.  Numerous studies show sage grouse populations declining precipitously in areas developed for oil and gas, and sage grouse protections could have implications for west-wide reform of drilling practices and public lands wildlife protection rules.
• BCA petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect the Wyoming pocket gopher under the Endangered Species Act.  BCA's effort to protect one of North America's rarest and least known mammals is essential, because its entire range is currently threatened by three major gas drilling projects, most immediately the Atlantic Rim Coalbed Methane project.
• Icons of our western waters, several species of cutthroat trout are dwindling across their ranges.  BCA, supporting our partners Center for Biological Diversity and Pacific Rivers Council, won our appeal, and now the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will reconsider protecting the trout under the Endangered Species Act by October of 2008.
• Supporting our partner Western Watersheds Project, BCA won a lawsuit compelling the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to consider protecting the imperiled pygmy rabbit and its old-growth sagebrush habitat under the umbrella of the Endangered Species Act.

Links to USDA Forest & Grassland Offices