The Wilderness Land Trust has been working to clean up a number of mining claims throughout federally designated wilderness in the Northern Cascades of Washington state since 2017. Each project includes two phases: acquisition by Wilderness Land Trust and transfer to the federal agency that is managing the surrounding wilderness so that the property automatically becomes part of that designated landscape.
In 2022 and 2023, over 650 acres were successfully protected. In 2024, The Wilderness Land Trust completed the acquisition and transfer of an additional 319 acres of land. This includes the 128-acre Rambler lode claim within the Wild Sky Wilderness in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, and the 160-acre Hazel lode claim and 31-acre Idaho lode claim as new additions to the National Forest. Each of these individual transactions helps expand public lands in this region and protect this landscape for future generations.
