A grizzly bear taking a stroll in Yellowstone National Park.
(Terry Tollesfbol / USFWS)

Nearly 50 million acres of America’s most pristine public forest lands remain protected today, thanks to a decision this afternoon by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals denying a last-ditch effort by the State of Wyoming and the Colorado Mining Association to overturn the U.S. Forest Service Roadless Area Conservation Rule, more commonly known as the Roadless Rule.

Earthjustice has been in the courts for the past 13 years fighting to protect the Roadless Rule, a landmark conservation measure that protects wild national forests and grasslands from new road building and logging. Protection of these forests secures vital habitat for some of our nation’s most sensitive wildlife. From condors of the southern California mountains, to grizzly bears and wolves near Yellowstone National Park, to migratory songbirds among the Appalachian hardwoods, many species would no longer exist—or would be severely depleted—but for the forest lands protected by the Roadless Rule.

Flathead River. Photo: Garth Lenz

A United Nations investigation is focusing much-needed international attention on mining and drilling threats to the Flathead River basin, home to the highest density of grizzly bears in the Rocky Mountains, and to bull trout, bald eagle, bighorn sheep, elk, moose, deer, mountain lion, lynx, wolves, and wolverines.

The Flathead River stretches from southern Canada into Montana and along the way flanks Montana's stunning Glacier National Park. The region comprising Glacier N.P. and Waterton Lakes—Glacier's Canadian sister park—is a World Heritage site and Biosphere Reserve known as Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park.

"The world has a stake in what happens here at Waterton-Glacier," declared Kishore Rao, deputy director of the World Heritage Centre for the United Nations' Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), upon beginning a week-long inquiry into mining and drilling on lands adjacent to Glacier N.P. and Waterton Lakes.