Mike Garrity Can't Count

The lawsuits Alliance for the Wild Rockies celebrates, the forests that then burned, and the public costs no one tracks

Mike Garrity likes to count.

He counts lawsuits filed. He counts lawsuits won. He counts projects stopped. He counts acres Alliance for the Wild Rockies claims to have protected.

In its 2025 annual report, AWR lists its courtroom victories and nine new lawsuits filed during the year. Litigation is the first tool identified under “How We Work.” The organization says it wins more than 80 percent of its cases, and it lists expanding its litigation capacity as its first priority for 2026.

In a separate fundraising report, Garrity says AWR filed 86 - 46.7 percent - of the previous 186 environmental lawsuits brought against the federal government to protect wildlife habitat.

“We did this by filing lawsuits,” Garrity writes.

AWR claims its courtroom victories protected 1.7 million acres in 2025 alone. It declares that no other environmental organization came close.

That is quite a victory lap.

But Garrity’s accounting stops at the courthouse door.

How many projects challenged by AWR were intended to reduce wildfire danger or improve forest health? How many were delayed, reduced, or abandoned? How many of those project landscapes subsequently burned?

How much did taxpayers spend planning and defending those projects, paying the litigators’ attorney fees, suppressing the fires, rehabilitating the landscapes, and rebuilding what was lost?

How much wildlife habitat that Garrity claims to have “protected” was subsequently damaged or destroyed by wildfire?

How much stored carbon was released? How much future carbon sequestration was impaired? How many watersheds, homes, businesses, jobs, and communities were affected?

AWR does not say.

The organization counts the acres it claims to protect when a project is stopped. Does it subtract those acres when the same landscape later burns?

Who follows the project after AWR announces another victory?

Who is counting the cost?

AWR Tells Us How It Works

We do not need to characterize AWR’s enthusiasm for litigation. The organization does that for us.

Its 2025 annual report says:

• Litigation is one of its principal methods.
• It wins more than 80 percent of its lawsuits.
• Donations are essential because it cannot bring new cases without financial support.
• Its first stated priority is expanding its litigation capacity.
• It intends to keep its legal wins coming.

AWR says it filed 86 of the previous 186 environmental lawsuits against the federal government involving wildlife habitat. The organization describes itself as responsible for nearly half of those cases.

This is not an organization reluctantly going to court as a last resort.

Litigation is part of AWR’s identity. It is part of its fundraising appeal, its measure of success, and its plan for growth.

What AWR does not provide is a corresponding list showing:

• The original purpose of each challenged project
• How long treatment was delayed
• How many acres were ultimately treated
• How much the government spent defending the project
• How much AWR and its attorneys received in fees
• Whether the project landscape subsequently burned
• How many acres burned and at what severity
• What happened to the habitat AWR claimed to protect
• How much suppression and rehabilitation cost
• Whether homes, businesses, infrastructure, or lives were lost
• How much stored carbon was released
• How much future carbon sequestration was impaired
• What nearby communities paid

That missing report is where this investigation begins.

We don’t back down when the mission is daunting; we’re in until the fire is out.

So. Many. False Narratives.

Garrity tells the public that stopping agency action is the same as protecting the forest.

It is not.

An acre is not protected merely because a proposed treatment was stopped. Its condition must be followed.

Did the forest remain healthy? Did insects or disease kill it? Did fuels continue accumulating? Did it burn? At what severity? What happened to wildlife habitat, soil, water, carbon storage, and nearby communities?

Until those questions are answered, AWR is not counting acres permanently protected. It is counting acres where it stopped someone else from acting. It is a grandiose gesture of “saving” that serves the few while leaving everyone else to live with what follows.

What I find most disturbing about Mike Garrity’s rhetoric - aside from its apparent indifference to human consequences - is how completely it centers on Mike Garrity and what he has decided is best for forests and communities.

He does not ask the people who live there. He does not show up to hear what they know. When their experience does not fit his worldview, he dismisses it.

That absence of curiosity, humility, empathy, and compassion is more than arrogance. It is a warning. Anyone who seeks the power to determine the future of forests and communities, but demonstrates so little concern for the people who must live with the consequences, should not be trusted with that power.

Conviction without compassion is not conservation. It is dangerous.

Communities facing wildfire, families dependent upon forest employment, firefighters placed in danger, and taxpayers left with the bill rarely appear in the Garrity counting method.

He can count legal victories and acres allegedly protected, but he can't count the people, animals, and ecosystems that must live with what follows - the part he cannot count.

A conservation "ethic" that counts every potential disturbance before, but refuses to count what happens to that forest, wildlife, and ecosystems after the fire, is not ethical. Neither is an accounting that ignores homes destroyed, livelihoods lost, firefighters endangered, and communities buried beneath smoke.

To be fair, the false narrative parade extends well beyond AWR. Oregon Wild, the Center for Biological Diversity, WildEarth Guardians, Conservation Congress, and other serial litigators announce their lawsuits, injunctions, settlements, and courtroom victories.

What they do not publish is a long-term accounting of what happened to the forest, its wildlife, or the surrounding communities after they “won.”

That accounting is not in their interest.

It should be required.

Scattered Details is the Devil's Work

The courts track lawsuits, decisions, settlements, and attorney-fee petitions.

The Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management track environmental analysis, project decisions, and whatever treatment is eventually completed.

The Justice Department tracks the government’s legal defense.

Fire agencies track acres burned and suppression costs.

Nonprofits track the cases they file and the victories they claim.

Foundations track the grants they award.

No one appears responsible for connecting the entire chain:

Treatment proposed → project challenged → treatment delayed or reduced → landscape burns → taxpayers and communities pay

These organizations count on that fragmentation.

They know the details are scattered among court dockets, agency files, nonprofit tax returns, federal payment records, fire reports, and suppression budgets. By the time a delayed project burns, the litigators have announced their victory, raised money from it, and moved on to the next forest.

They count on the public never assembling the details.

Let's assemble them.

What Happened After Litigation?

The following nine projects in the PDF below were proposed in different forests, in different states, and under different circumstances.

The lawsuits did not ignite these fires. No forest treatment can prevent every ignition or stop every wildfire.

That is not the claim.

Thinning, prescribed fire, and other treatments can reduce dangerous fuel loading, alter fire behavior, create defensible space, and provide firefighters with safer places to work. When those treatments are stopped, delayed, or substantially reduced, the public deserves to know what happens afterward.

The question is not whether every fire could have been prevented.

The question is:

Why is no one is required to determine what was lost when planned treatment did not occur?

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Only Half the Equation

Nine challenged forest projects, the wildfires that followed, and the costs and consequences no institution assembles.

Nine projects. Multiple organizations. Years of environmental analysis, administrative objections, litigation, settlements, and government legal defense.

In every example, planned work was challenged, delayed, reduced, or prevented.

In every example, wildfire followed. Again, litigation did not strike the match. But that is not the end of the inquiry.

What treatment was proposed?

What treatment actually occurred?

How long was the delay?

What did the litigation cost?

How much did the litigators receive?

Did the project landscape subsequently burn?

What happened to the habitat the lawsuit claimed to protect?

What did suppression and rehabilitation cost?

How many homes, structures, watersheds, jobs, and lives were lost?

How much stored carbon was released, and how much future sequestration was impaired?

No one appears responsible for assembling those answers...

"Not Yet Quantified"
Does Not Mean Nothing Was Lost

Carbon loss must be calculated carefully.

A wildfire does not release all forest carbon immediately. Carbon can remain in surviving trees, standing dead trees, down wood, roots, and soil. Additional carbon is released as dead vegetation decomposes. The forest’s capacity to sequester carbon in the future depends upon burn severity, forest type, regeneration, climate, and subsequent management.

We should therefore distinguish among:

1. Immediate fire emissions
2. Emissions from post-fire decomposition
3. Impaired future sequestration

Where reliable estimates exist, we will report them. Where they do not, we will not manufacture a number.

Keep in mind what these organizations would prefer you forget - the absence of a completed calculation does not mean the carbon cost was zero.

The same is true of habitat, watersheds, soil, smoke-related health effects, lost employment, recreation closures, and long-term community damage.

Not yet quantified does not mean nothing was lost. It means no one completed the accounting.

The Math Isn't Mathing

They counted the injunction.

They counted the settlement.

They counted the attorney fees.

They counted the acres they claimed to have saved.

They did not count the acres that later burned.

They did not count the homes, structures, watersheds, wildlife habitat, stored carbon, or lives lost.

They did not count what taxpayers spent fighting the fire and attempting to repair the damage.

And because no government agency is responsible for connecting those records, they counted on no one else doing it either.

Until now.

Part 2 coming soon...