Despite the Greater Gila’s globally significant cultural and national value, its free-flowing rivers and vast, connected wild lands are under threat.
An onslaught of new mining proposals would pollute water and destroy habitat. Dams, diversions, and speculative mining schemes threaten to rob water from lands and rivers. Excessive roads break up wildlife habitat and connectivity. Too many cows from grazing mismanagement damage streams and destroy habitat for threatened and endangered species.
WildEarth Guardians has worked for years to improve protections for this globally unique bastion of culture and nature. We helped secure permanent water quality protection for all perennial and intermittent waters in the Gila Wilderness and secured the first voluntary waiver of a grazing permit for 28,000 acres on Forest Service land. Guardians has also been a leading champion for the Gila’s Mexican wolves (“lobos”) by expanding where they can roam, advocating for the release of more wild wolves, and limiting their killing and removal.
