merican Wildlands strategic forte has evolved over the thirty years since our founding, but during that time the primary focus of the organization has remained the same - [1] to work with people on-the-ground to ensure the long-term conservation of the big wildlands, healthy wild waters, and abundant wildlife of the west; and [2] to use the most innovative and inspiring conservation tools available at the time.

When American Wildlands was first established it became a leader in the new wilderness movement and helped secure legal protection for millions of acres of wildlands and hundreds of miles of wild rivers throughout the west and in Alaska. In the late 80’s our focus shifted to a “forest watch” program, where staff watch-dogged logging and other resource extraction activites in the roadless areas of our public lands to ensure these projects were being managed appropriately. In addition, American Wildlands trained over 1,400 citizens to use federal and state laws to monitor, participate in, and positively influence public lands management.

In the early 1990's American Wildlands strategic forte again shifted, as we became a leader in advancing the concept of habitat connectivity and wildlife movement corridors—both figuratively and literally putting wildlife corridors on the map here in the Northern Rockies. Today, American Wildlands is most well-known for working to maintain the ecological connections between the string of pearls that are our core habitat areas - whether they be a wilderness area AWL helped establish to decades ago, or a roadless area we helped keep roadless a decade ago. And as American Wildlands has done all along, we work with as many people, organizations, and agencies as possible through our working group model of conservation action.