Mission

Fly above the Dubois Badlands Wilderness Study Area to provide a dynamic way to engage and educate conservationists and stakeholders, and bring the area’s unique geology to life.

The towering buttes and stratified, multi-colored rock is home to fragile and unique wildlife habitat, recreational opportunity, and incredible scenery. The Dubois Badlands WSA is 4,520 acres and about 7 square miles.

Our flight partners are working to protect the Badlands. Many WSAs, including iconic landscapes like the Dubois Badlands, Sweetwater Canyon, Copper Mountain, and Honeycomb WSAs are threatened by proposed legislation, illegal off-road activities, and trash/waste dumping.

Senator Barrasso introduced the Wyoming Public Lands Initiative Act (WPLI) in 2023. The bill addresses sixteen Wilderness Study Areas (WSA) in Wyoming, and it has some good elements but overall is a poor plan that does not serve the people of Wyoming or its wildlife. The WPLI would protect 20,00 acres of Wilderness, but it would release about 130,000 acres of Wyoming’s best-protected BLM lands with lesser or no protections, and would prevent these lands from acquiring future Wilderness designations.

This release would open lands to oil and gas development, mining, new roads, and inadequate management of resources and values. Many Tribes carry strong connections to this landscape and the WPLI ignores Tribal consultation and sovereignty.

Our partners are working to protect Wyoming’s amazing badlands, towering butters, rivers, and canyons into perpetuity by advocating for more permanent protections, not less.

Click for the photos, aerial GoPro video, and geo-referenced photos (download then open in Google Earth).