Our Mission

The mission of Western Watersheds Project (WWP) is to protect and restore western watersheds and wildlife through education, public policy initiatives, and legal advocacy.

About Us

Western Watersheds Project is a non-profit environmental conservation group that works to influence and improve public lands management throughout the western United States in order to protect native species and conserve and restore the habitats they depend on. Our primary focus is on the negative impacts of livestock grazing, including harm to ecological, biological, cultural, historic, archeological, scenic resources, wilderness values, roadless areas, Wilderness Study Areas and designated Wilderness.

Western Watersheds Project was founded in 1993 and has 1,500 members. Our staff cover 250 million acres of public land spanning all of the western states and we have field offices in Idaho, Colorado, Montana, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and Oregon.

Partners

WWP works in partnership with a broad array of conservation groups including the Oregon Natural Desert Association, WildEarth Guardians, the Center for Biological Diversity, among others.

With these groups, WWP has organized a broad coalition to promote environmentally protective grazing regulations and to advance nationwide legislation to authorize the buy-out and closure of public land grazing leases on a willing-seller basis, nationwide.

WWP’s long-term partner in our efforts to bring the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service into compliance with national environmental laws is the non-profit environmental law firm Advocates For The West in Boise, Idaho.

Litigation

In 1993 WWP pioneered competitive bidding for grazing leases on Idaho state school endowment land and continues a program of competing for high conservation value school endowment land grazing leases in three states. That effort resulted in April 1999 in WWP winning three unanimous decisions at the Idaho Supreme Court in one day including the first reversal of an Idaho Constitutional amendment in more than 65 years.

At this time WWP holds over 4000 acres of these school endowment land leaseholds that are being managed for wildlife habitat and conservation purposes.

Through vigorous litigation under the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act and Federal Land Policy Management Act, WWP has successfully challenged public-lands grazing practices that threaten watersheds and a diverse array of threatened and endangered species.

Our many legal successes since our founding have resulted in millions of acres being spared the ravages of livestock grazing, enabling the land to heal and wildlife to thrive.

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Range Monitoring

WWP's state directors and seasonal field technicians work to identify damaged watersheds and document abusive land-management practices. Our staff report on livestock numbers on grazing allotments; turnout times; abusive grazing; degradation of streams and stream banks; destruction of riparian and upland habitat; degradation of cultural, historic, archaeological, and scenic resources, illegal diversions of water, and negative impacts to wilderness values, roadless areas, Wilderness Study Areas and designated Wilderness.