The Wilderness Land Trust

Protect Access to Achenbach Canyon-Organ Mountains Desert Peaks National Monument

The First $5,000 in donations will be matched by a generous donor. Donate today and double your impact!

The Organ Mountains Wilderness of southern New Mexico is a 19,916-acre landscape established in 2019 and managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Working with Friends of Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks, The Wilderness Land Trust is working to secure a property adjacent to the wilderness and scenic entrance to Achenbach Canyon. Acquiring this land would protect access to the popular Achenbach Canyon trail, which provides a unique place to observe desert wildlife, plant habitat and stunning scenery.

The Trust is raising $75,000 to purchase and protect this special landscape, and the access it provides to Achenbach Canyon. The local community has spent years protecting the Organ Mountains Desert Peaks National Monument and now needs help finishing the job to ensure access for generations to come.

About Organ Mountains Wilderness – Desert Peaks National Monument

The Organ Mountains Wilderness provides a stunning backdrop to the Mesilla Valley and New Mexico’s second largest city: Las Cruces. These mountains offer recreation, important wildlife habitat and watershed protection. The striking granite crags and spires of the Organ Mountains range from 4,600 to just over 9,000 feet in elevation, and are so named because of the steep, towering spires that resemble the pipes of an organ.

This picturesque area of rocky peaks, narrow canyons and open woodlands range from Chihuahuan Desert habitat to ponderosa pine in the highest elevations. This special landscape provides opportunities for photography, hiking, horseback riding, mountain biking, camping and wildlife viewing.

Please help The Wilderness Land Trust acquire the Achenbach Canyon trail property to protect public access to the trail head in the Organ Mountains Wilderness.


About The Wilderness Land Trust 
The Wilderness Land Trust has a national reputation for tenacity, fairness and professionalism. Since its founding in 1992, the Trust has successfully protected 493 parcels in 108 wilderness areas across nine western states totaling nearly 53,000 acres. The completion of these projects removed a direct threat to the surrounding wildlands, including residential and resort development, road construction, mining and logging.

Designated wilderness protects vital habitat for threatened and endangered flora and fauna. Every acre we acquire and transfer is part of a collective effort to remove the threat of private development and make our treasured wilderness areas whole. Each project is an opportunity to fulfill our vision for a complete, secure and accessible wilderness ecosystem across the American west.

The Wilderness Land Trust  is partnering with the Siskiyou Land Trust to save Little Castle Lake, largest remaining private property within the designated Castle Crags Wilderness. This 637-acre property is home to a portion of Castle Lake and all of Little Castle Lake. If we don’t protect it, private ownership could result in blocked access to the hiking trail to Heart Lake, as well as blocked access to lake activities, fishing and hunting. Logging and development would also compromise old growth forest, critical habitat and a major source of clean water for California and the West.

WE NEED YOUR HELP to raise $300,000 to purchase, protect and undergo the multi-year process to transfer this land to public ownership within the Shasta-Trinity National Forest.

Help Protect Lundy Canyon in the Eastern Sierra!

The Wilderness Land Trust is working with the Mono Lake Committee and Eastern Sierra Land Trust to acquire 49 acres of private property within the Inyo National Forest  east of Yosemite National Park.

We need your help TODAY to raise $10,000 to complete this purchase and transfer the property to public ownership within the Inyo National Forest.

Major support for protecting this land has been given in honor of the late Sam Dietrich, loving father, husband and avid hiker who enjoyed these mountains with his family. The Dietrich family will generously MATCH all GoFundMe donations dollar for dollar until we reach our goal.


Why is Lundy Canyon Special?

This 49-acre former mining claim sits adjacent a popular hiking trail into the upper entrance of Lundy Canyon, an iconic Eastern Sierra landscape that includes dramatic waterfalls and vital habitat for endangered Sierra Nevada Bighorn sheep.

The Wilderness Land Trust, Mono Lake Committee, the Eastern Sierra Land Trust and the Inyo National Forest have identified this land as a high priority to protect from private development in order to conserve Mill Creek, safeguard wildlife habitat and ensure recreational access for the public.

Who We Are

The Wilderness Land Trust  is the only national conservation organization solely dedicated to purchasing privately owned lands within designated and proposed wilderness areas to remove land management conflicts stemming from commercial, industrial and residential development.

Private land (inholdings) is one of the greatest threats to the globally unique, 110-million-acre preservation system that millions of people have spent 54 years creating. When private inholdings are developed, they essentially tear a hole in the fabric of surrounding wilderness.

Some 180,000 acres of private inholdings remain within federally designated wilderness areas in the lower 48 states, not including Alaska, and the work of The Wilderness Land Trust to remove these inholdings ensures our nation’s wilderness areas remain forever wild for future generations.

Since its inception in 1992, The Wilderness Land Trust has protected 453 parcels, comprising 47,934 acres of wilderness inholdings in 104 designated and proposed wilderness areas. The Wilderness Land Trust is responsible for completing 15 wilderness areas by removing the last privately held lands within their wilderness boundaries.

Help The Wilderness Land Trust save a piece of the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness in Colorado from development!

This 19-acre property is just off Independence Pass within the beautiful viewshed of the world-renowned Scenic Highway 82 (Independence Pass) with the popular Green Mountain Trail running through it. In the wrong hands, this beautiful land is vulnerable to mining, residential development, and road construction, and the Green Mountain Trail could be cut off from public use.

The Wilderness Land Trust has the opportunity right now to buy this land, which holds the last remaining development rights in this portion of the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness, and protect this area of the wilderness forever. But we need your help.

The Trust needs to raise $150,000 to acquire this critical piece of land. A very generous donor has offered to match, dollar for dollar, all donations toward this project up to $75,000. By meeting this match, you will help us purchase and transfer this incredible land to public ownership to be incorporated into the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness.

About Collegiate Peaks Wilderness
The Collegiate Peaks Wilderness of central Colorado is one of iconic beauty. Located southeast of Aspen, Colorado, this wilderness is dotted with high alpine lakes, hanging valleys and 14,000-foot peaks. The world-renowned Colorado state Highway 82 borders the Collegiate Peaks as it winds through the Roaring Fork Valley and up to 12,000 feet over Independence Pass, displaying for all who drive it the impressive terrain that makes up this special wilderness area.

As with all wilderness areas, the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness brings with it a steadfast certainty that, although its incredible landscape changes with the seasons, over the years and decades it remains the same – a wild place where man is merely a visitor.  

Yet, there is land within our wilderness areas that can destroy this certainty. Private land (inholdings) where development, mining, and road construction are all possible, threaten the very thing that makes the wilderness areas so special. They allow the landscape to be developed or mined, disrupting the delicate balance of flora, fauna and wildlife habitat, and threatening recreational access to the public. These inholdings create opportunity for man to take root where no man should.


Please consider helping The Wilderness Land Trust save this piece of the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness and protect it for future generations to enjoy. If you donate now, your donation will be matched dollar for dollar.

If you have any questions about this land, please contact Lands Specialist Kelly Conde, [email redacted].