Wildearth Guardians

Summary of accomplishments in 2022, Guardians led transformative work in rewilding and decolonizing the american west. The wins we secured for climate sanity, biodiversity, and wildness at large came both in incremental steps and massive strides. Underlying them all is Guardians' audacious spirit. We take on the campaigns that everyone knows are necessary but not many have the gumption to tackle-much less advance and win. In climate, our unrelenting legal advocacy saved 4 million acres of public lands from extraction and kept countless amounts of carbon in the ground. Our legal advocacy and mobilization of people is enabling the interior department to think more boldly about its climate responsibilities. Organization-wide, we mobilized 180,690 people to press for similar successes in all our work. We secured the first-ever statewide, public lands grazing permit retirement bill introduced in congress and passed out of a key senate committee. This bill is a politically pragmatic, socially just, and ecologically urgent way to address the need for fundamental change on policy that affects public lands, endangered species, and rural communities. In 2022, we challenged the outrageous brutality of wolf-killing plans in Montana in state court. That lawsuit won a temporary reprieve for yellowstone's and Montana's wolves for 13 days when a state judge issued an order that halted hunting and snaring of wolves in key areas. Sadly, it was only temporary. But the case is still alive, and we'll continue the campaign in 2023 and likely beyond. Winning comes in all shapes, sizes, and timeframes. Winning the Guardians way also requires accepting that big, bold change means taking risks-and sometimes more than our share of thumps. We're not daunted. We're in it for the long run. Persistence pays off. Our numbers prove it. Keep it in the ground we're challenging the most powerful industry in the world-and we're winning. Our legal advocacy is shutting down oil and gas. Our mid-year win-a critical milestone and the largest legal settlement affecting fossil fuels on public lands in the history of the interior department-requires the bureau of land management to fully account for the carbon footprint of fossil fuel drilling on public lands and puts wind at the back of the biden administration's moratorium on oil and gas leasing. We're halting production in places like greater chaco, stopping the rosebud coal mine expansion, and challenging every lease, every permit, every pollutant. Every win against fossil fuels matters. Revealing the true cost of fossil fuels drives up leasing costs, so renewable energy is more attractive to investors. Trees of life no carbon-capture technology can hold a candle to mature and old-growth trees and forests. They're crucial to climate sanity. Recent research showed that trees larger than 21 inches in diameter make up about 3% of forests east of the cascades but store about 42% of the carbon. These biodiversity overachievers also contribute to water quality, fire resilience and healthy ecosystems, which is why the u.s. forest service's decision to weaken protections of these climate forests cannot stand. We're in court to stop the logging of ancient pines in national forests and to reinstate the 21-inch rule protecting trees in eastern Oregon and Washington. President biden's earth day 2022 executive order to protect ancient forests gives us a legal toehold to curtail "cut-and-run" culture and instate protections nationwide. Let it flow you can't eat money and you can't drink the paper water rights are printed on. Which is why the whitney creek dam project is absurd. In 2022, the bureau of reclamation announced the first ever water shortage in the Colorado river to meet existing demands. Still, aurora and Colorado springs are proposing a dam to divert water the Colorado river doesn't have to give to front range cities. We're fighting this and all proposals that violate our rivers advocacy motto: no new dams or diversions. In october 2022, we won a major appeal challenging an expansion to Colorado's gross dam that would have made it the tallest dam in Colorado, further draining the Colorado river at the expense of upstream wetlands and downstream users and ecosystems. Good citizens united we stand. Divided we fall. But we're not standing still. Dauntless strategic citizen advo-cacy makes strides that move the dial, so we're dialing up people power to advance environ-mental justice across all programs. The greater chaco and greater gila landscapes are just two examples of where our intentional alliances and shared passions and visions are amplifying our impact. Creative projects like the greater gila essay collection broaden and deepen our reach as we amass allies. We're vocalizing en masse through campaigns, community unity, and comments and letters to lawmakers, gov-ernment agencies, state legislatures, congress, and the biden administration to hold decision makers accountable. Leader of the pack entire ecosystems rest in the hands of a few blood-hungry people in Montana. We're changing that. Last summer, Montana brazenly greenlighted killing 456 wolves, including yellowstone wolves. In november, our bold legal advocacy won a 13-day reprieve for Montana's wolves. We continue to press Montana to integrate science, compassion, and the law into their wolf management. We'll keep wielding fierce legal advocacy to relist wolves in the northern rockies so they're free from killing sprees 365 days a year. We overturned trump's delisting rule, which restored protections for wolves everywhere except the northern rockies. Our successful legal advocacy plan is advancing a citizen mandate to restore wolves to Colorado. Triumph of tenacity congress passed the endangered species act 50 years ago. Since then, government agencies have protected 2,400 plants and animals, preventing the extinction of iconic creatures including the bald eagle, humpback whale, gray wolf, California condor, and Florida manatee. The act is our nation's most powerful environmental law-when implemented. But for the last 25 years, the lesser prairie chicken was in protection purgatory. In 1998 the u.s. Fish and wildlife service deemed the lesser prairie-chicken worthy of esa protection but only listed them in 2022 after decades of Guardians' relentless petitions, lawsuits, and political advocacy. Without us it may never have happened. Extinction is forever. Our tenacity saves species.