The Wilderness Land Trust

Mission

We keep the Promise of Wilderness - by acquiring and transferring private lands to public ownership to complete designated and proposed wilderness areas, or directly protect wilderness values.

The Wilderness Land Trust enhances public access to designated wilderness, protects clean water and vital flora and fauna habitat, safeguards corridors for seasonal migrating wildlife, and provides opportunities for soul-nourishing solitude away from the stress of urban life. Wilderness landscapes provide meaning to you and your family, generating stories of adventure, discovery and inspiration. They are special places that you cherish, hopeful for their future and its inhabitants to remain untrammeled, wild and free.

As an organization, we are motivated by the same values as you, a reverence for the land and the complex communities of life it supports. We express this by striving to preserve a rich legacy of protected wilderness through persistent, professional and fair acquisition of private lands that complete the promise of wilderness.

Private land (inholdings) is one of the greatest threats to the globally unique, 110 million acre preservation system that millions of people have spent 54 years creating. When private inholdings are developed, they essentially tear a hole in the fabric of surrounding wilderness.

Some 180,000 acres of private inholdings remain within federally designated wilderness areas in the lower 48 states, not including Alaska, and the work of The Wilderness Land Trust to remove these inholdings ensures our nation’s wilderness areas remain forever wild for future generations.

Description

Wilderness allows visitors the opportunity to unmask, breathe deep and find refuge from the modern world. These unique landscapes leave a person reveling in their raw beauty and the assurance that they will remain wild and free, now and for future generations. And yet, there are dangers within these wilderness areas that threaten their resiliency. 

Founded in 1992, The Wilderness Land Trust is the only organization solely dedicated to removing these threats from within and adjacent to the boundaries of designated wilderness, or directly in the path of future wilderness designations. This is accomplished by purchasing properties from willing sellers and then transferring them over to public ownership to be incorporated into the surrounding wilderness.

We are a small but tenacious organization that has been effectively protecting our treasured wilderness areas across the American West since 1992. To date, we have protected over 58,000 acres by removing the threat of commercial, residential, and industrial development from the wild places you love. The Trust has added 592 parcels to 120 wilderness areas and helped complete 18 designated wilderness areas.