By Kevin Proescholdt and George Nickas, Wilderness Watch
The news is filled with stories of how the Trump administration and its so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have fired thousands of federal employees who work for our public land agencies. Though Trump had been talking about gutting the federal workforce, the way it was done without regard for how it would affect the agencies’ ability to carry out their responsibilities came as quite a shock.
As one U.S. Forest Service wilderness ranger wrote in a recent Wilderness Watch blog:
“The dust has had time to settle, and we can now assess the damage. All probationary Forest Service employees in ‘non-fire’ positions were fired. There are almost no wilderness rangers left in my state and many of my neighboring states. Beyond Wilderness, there are almost no field-going recreation employees left. The temporaries are gone, the permanent seasonals are gone. Without staff, many ranger districts will struggle to even utilize volunteers.”
In a recent meeting that Wilderness Watch attended, the Forest Service described the impacts of cuts to the Alpine Lakes Wilderness in central Washington. The popular and spectacular Enchantments area of the Wilderness typically has 10-12 wilderness rangers each summer who patrol and clean up after the 100,000 visitors that descend on the area each year. This year there will be only one wilderness ranger, who will have to share their time between the Enchantments and another 150,000 acres of Wilderness on the ranger district. It’s an utterly impossible task that will result in significant damage to these priceless lands. Similar stories are playing out in other Wildernesses as the Trump cuts kick in.
The layoffs, firings, and forced early retirements didn’t just hit field-going crews. For the Forest Service, the national program leader has left, and eight of the nine regional offices are now without wilderness staff. Major cuts have hit Bureau of Land Management (BLM), National Park Service, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service programs as well. The combination of chaotic firings and early retirements means the most experienced agency wilderness people are now gone.
Yet the untold story is that the downfall of wilderness programs has been a long time in the making. By the time Trump and Musk started recklessly eliminating jobs, Wilderness was one of the areas already hardest hit—not because of sheer numbers laid off or fired, but because there were already relatively few wilderness staff left. This is especially true for the Forest Service, which historically had far and away the most robust wilderness program, but has been gradually shrinking its wilderness crews for years.
The Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness (SBW) straddling the Bitterroot Mountains along the Montana-Idaho border is a case in point. At more than 1.3 million acres, the SBW is the third largest national forest Wilderness in the entire country. In the early 1990s, the SBW had nine permanent wilderness rangers, eight seasonal wilderness rangers, an entire ranger district—the Moose Creek Ranger District—dedicated solely to the SBW, and a wilderness coordinator for the wilderness programs across the six ranger districts and three national forests that oversee the SBW. By 2019, however, this robust wilderness program had dwindled to just three permanent and one seasonal wilderness rangers. The coordinator position was gone, and the Moose Creek District had been merged with an adjacent multiple-use district.
Last fall, things got even worse, even before DOGE and Trump, when then-Forest Service Chief Randy Moore announced that in 2025 there would be no hiring of temporary (seasonal) employees—a group that has historically made up a significant number of wilderness rangers and trail crew. For many Wildernesses, Moore’s edict was going to result in no field presence at all. And numbers tell only part of the story. What was also being lost was decades of institutional knowledge, the traditional skills necessary to steward Wilderness, and a voice within the agencies standing up for Wilderness when harmful projects are planned.
Wilderness Watch had raised this concern for decades, but it had been ignored by agency leaders, Congress, and the media. The Forest Service, and to a lesser extent the BLM, tried to cover up their lack of commitment to their wilderness programs by bringing on volunteers to replace professional, seasoned rangers. But now there aren’t enough rangers to even manage the volunteers, so in most cases much of that help is now gone too.
So, what can be done? In the short term, we can hope that the recent DOGE firings will be reversed, either by the courts or by urging our elected officials to restore funding for the agency programs. That could help hold off some of the damage that will undoubtedly occur over the next few years. And we must all redouble our efforts to push back against destructive proposals we know are headed our way.
Longer term, we need a durable response to the decades- long neglect and animus toward Wilderness that, for many years, has been the hallmark of the four agencies that manage Wilderness. We need a fundamental change to how Wilderness is administered and safeguarded across the land.
Twenty-five years ago, the four federal land agencies commissioned the Pinchot Institute for Conservation to do an assessment of their wilderness programs. The panel consisted of a number of wilderness luminaries, and it took input from wilderness conservationists and wilderness critics around the country. But it spent most of its time talking with federal agency wilderness leaders themselves. The report recognized the unique challenges of protecting and preserving Wilderness and the dedication of many of the staff involved, but nonetheless concluded that the agencies’ collective lack of commitment would lead to the eventual loss of the Wilderness System.
One of the panelists, former Secretary of Interior Stewart Udall, who served in both Congress and the Cabinet (as well as on the Wilderness Watch board of directors), was unequivocal in his conclusion that the four land management agencies weren’t up to the task. He urged the panel to recommend that the overarching responsibilities for Wilderness be placed in a new agency, one dedicated solely to the wilderness task. In calling for creating a new “National Wilderness Service,” Udall wrote:
“We must show the courage to suggest and promote alternatives that will create real change. We should pursue them with the energy and boldness of people like Bob Marshall and Howard Zahniser, who promoted an idea that seemed extreme in their day, but that most Americans now take for granted.”
When the dust settles, attempting to recreate the situation that existed prior to the Trump raids would be a fool’s errand, destined to condemn our precious National Wilderness Preservation System to the dustbin of history. Rather, we should see the near total elimination of the current failing programs as an opportunity to create something much better, a new entity that is passionate about the challenge of protecting and preserving our incomparable National Wilderness Preservation System. Udall’s call for a National Wilderness Service totally dedicated to that cause, and filled with public servants truly committed to that charge, is a great place to start.
Kevin Proescholdt is the conservation director and George Nickas is the executive director of Wilderness Watch.
Photo: Trail crew in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness by USFS
220 Comments
Trumps actions are egregious. We need people to advocate for nature, our biggest gift. Seriously consider that you are damaging people’s lives by not taking this seriously. Nature is where we live. Without it we have nothing.
I certainly hope something positive can be done. It would be a terrible shame if this country lost its wonderful wilderness.
Thank you so much for this information: while I was appalled by the cuts to these services enacted by the Trump Administration I was not aware of the previous deterioration of Wilderness Area services. Our planet is in extreme crisis, ourselves with it, as well as all the other life for which we SHOULD be concerned, and we MUST be protecting Wilderness, especially, both Nationally and Worldwide. It is of the utmost importance to start DOING this in meaningful ways, before it is too late.
I strongly believe in the exceptionally high value of wilderness to America. I’ve been fortunate to visit several wilderness areas and enjoy the wildness and solitude. Cuts to wilderness staff must be reversed.
Wilderness areas are precious for many reasons: ecological, recreational, promoting the mental and physical health of our populace, and symbolic (representing a cultural commitment to our land). As such, these areas need to be protected and cherished, not abused and dismissed.
Invest in these treasured lands; invest more than ever before.
Implement Secretary Udall’s proposal for an agency dedicated to Wilderness protection.
We must save the wilderness. Taking the time to do so is better than not doing anything. We all need to go out and explore the wilderness it gives you energy and a place to think.
Removing 99.9% of wilderness rangers will cause untold harm to our Wilderness areas. It will be MUCH more costly to remedy that harm than it would be to pay for standard wilderness care. So that’s wasting money on a huge scale, totally unavoidable if one uses common sense.
I embrace Stewart Udall’s suggestion of a National Wilderness Service. We can’t afford not to maintain our beloved wilderness. I’ve enjoyed the trails 55 of my 74 years! Prior to that I enjoyed the national forests with my family. Thank you for helping to preserve our wilderness.
Humans tend not to know what they’ve got until it’s gone. (Remember the song to that effect?) Due to marketing, most Americans have sold their souls in exchange for consumerism that puts thoughts of Nature, the environment, conservation and protected lands at or near the bottom of the list of their priorities. Politicians are especially guilty of allowing themselves to be held hostage by those who promote counterproductive legislation that prevents or cripples sustainability simply for reasons of greed and short-term profits. I’m 73. It’s extremely disappointing, demoralizing, and disgusting to know how completely wrong my generation has allowed most everything to go in our country. It is SO SHAMEFUL and IRRESPONSIBLE. The one problem with a democracy is that it’s possible for a majority of the electorate to be ignorant and easily brainwashed — as we’ve seen with the results of too many elections. How do we educate and inform the general public, and especially children/young people, when leaders at all levels of government (including school boards) and within religions do not want and do not allow people to become informed by facts and enlightened? I appreciate the thoughts and perspective you have expressed in your article. Thank you for that and for all of the good, necessary work done by Wilderness Watch and your partners. I grieve with you.
A National Wilderness Service is the way to go.
Please bring them back!
The staff are great.
I would love to see a new National Wilderness Service created to help preserve and protect our precious lands.
protect wilderness
Dismantling our wildernesses is one of the most disheartening things Trump has done to the United States. Without nature us humans will perish.
Promote alternatives that will create real change. We should pursue them with the energy and boldness of people like Bob Marshall and Howard Zahniser, who promoted an idea that seemed extreme in their day, but that most Americans now take for granted.” SAVE THE WILDERNESS DON”T BE A FOOL!
I agree that it would be a wise move to create a new, robust, National Wilderness Service that would preserve and maintain what wilderness we have left. Much better than using taxpayer money to enrich the oligarchy.
Without wilderness what happens to our world? What happens to all these people getting fired? How are they supposed to find new jobs? What happens to all the animals and nature that’s being abandoned and uncared for now because of firing the caretakers? We need to think through the consequences of our actions before going through with them.
Yes and i work as an active memeber for:
https://www.stopecocide.earth/
And nature has to have a voice above the human voices.
And i also try to work for Climate Justice and sun energy.
The earth is a marvelous place.
Pls continue your good work. We have only a dwindling area of true wilderness!
I’m happy to see this first step. There are so many caring people concerned about this issue. Together we can find a way forward. I NEED the wilderness!
Trump is entirely too ignorant to appreciate wilderness areas. Very likely, he has never been in one. Perhaps wilderness will make a come back before long, when the next change comes.
We need to save as much wilderness as possible!!!
I am not backpacking anymore but wilderness is a passion in my heart and walking regimes. I hope new efforts restore wilderness for generations to come.
Perhaps, this stripping of the heart has awakened the core to preserve the wilderness. The whole situation is a travesty. But obviously, something new has to be created. So, I support that. I pray the control and power of this administration falls and balance will be restored, to even a greater sanctity for nature and her wilderness.
May it be so.
We should have a national wilderness service that’s federally funded. Thank you and God Bless all of you!
The wilderness is precious. It must be protected, not sacrificed for corporate profits.
Preserve our wildernesses, every single acre of it, and grow it where possible. We cannot exploit every square inch of this planet, we will destroy ourselves. We need these wildernesses to safeguard our future, and that of biodiversity.
Please keep this area beautidul and wild, don’t spoil it,
I agree with Udall’s sentiments that our country needs a National Wilderness Service.
“We must show the courage to suggest and promote alternatives that will create real change. We should pursue them with the energy and boldness of people like Bob Marshall and Howard Zahniser, who promoted an idea that seemed extreme in their day, but that most Americans now take for granted.”
It’s a sad day, for sure, that our national wilderness areas are suffering greatly due to cutbacks. But what is just as bad, is that the American people that use these areas are so rude as to leave it so disrupted! They boast “leave no footprint” but that must be “for the other guys” – “not me”. That’s incredibly selfish.
If the American people want the use of these treasures, then they should show some responsibility and respect for them.
Leave our beautiful spaces the way they found them so others can enjoy them, too.
When the Evil Enemy destroys your Homeland ~ Rebuild, Restore, Reunite in a New Homeland. A Stronger, Better, Eternal Homeland!
Once we are finally rid of the disaster dumpster fire currently inhabiting the White House (in between his golfing adventures) we will have to rebuild everything he has destroyed and build it all bigger and better and create some safeguards to ensure no other insane wanna be king can do so again.
👍 I agree 💯!
I support the suggestion of Former Secretary of Interior Stewart Udall that the overarching responsibilities for Wilderness be placed in a new agency, one dedicated solely to the wilderness task. In calling for creating a new “National Wilderness Service.”
We should see an opportunity to create a new entity that is passionate about the challenge of protecting and preserving our incomparable National Wilderness Preservation System. Udall’s call for a National Wilderness Service totally dedicated to that cause, and filled with public servants truly committed to that charge, is a great place to start.
As I look at the aftermath of the decimation of an agency who’s impact on future generations being able to enjoy the wilderness is almost non-existent. Firing forest rangers just for the sake of money is not my idea of a well thought out plan. Money will not bring back what will be lost if these people are not there to protect our wilderness from being overrun with unwanted actions of those who do not have the earths best interest at heart. I am ashamed of how this government is being allowed to wipe out whole departments simply by the flourish of a pen.
As a native Mikmaq woman I am broken inside with the sad events of these times.
This cannot be allowed to happen. Please restore this agency to its full capacity immediately before irreparable damage is done to our wilderness areas.
Please protect our wilderness and the programs that protect it.
Sad
Trump just doesn’t care
The idea of a National Wilderness Service may sound noble on its face—a dedicated agency solely tasked with protecting America’s last wild places. But from an ecocentric perspective, such a proposal risks repeating the same cycle of mismanagement, marginalization, and eventual dismantling that has plagued every other wilderness program under the American government. The problem isn’t just bureaucratic incompetence or political neglect. The problem is systemic: the United States, at its core, is built on an economic and political ideology that is fundamentally incompatible with wilderness.
True wilderness—lands that remain self-willed, uncommodified, and free from industrial domination—challenges the very premise of Western civilization’s relationship to the land. It resists control, refuses profit, and serves no master but itself. In contrast, America’s governance model is anthropocentric and extractive: it measures land by its utility to people—timber, oil, grazing, tourism, even recreation. As long as that is the metric, wilderness will always be undervalued, underfunded, and ultimately undefended.
The existing land management agencies—USFS, BLM, NPS, USFWS—were all born from this utilitarian ethos. Their structures, budgets, and political oversight are shaped by Congress, which responds not to ecological imperatives but to economic pressures, political donors, and cultural myths of “useful land.” A new agency created within this same framework will be no different unless the legal and constitutional values of the system itself are transformed.
Even the Wilderness Act of 1964—while historic—was a compromise, riddled with exceptions and loopholes, allowing for mining claims, motorized “emergencies,” grazing rights, and other human-centric uses. Without codifying strict, non-negotiable wilderness protections into law—protections that treat wild ecosystems as having intrinsic rights—any agency, no matter how well-intentioned, is merely a steward on borrowed time.
Consider what happened to the Forest Service’s wilderness programs. Once vibrant and staffed by passionate professionals, they’ve been hollowed out not just by political whim, but by a systemic aversion to long-term care for land that cannot “pay its way.” The recent DOGE-led purges under Trump are only the most dramatic example of how vulnerable these programs are. The next administration—regardless of party—could just as easily gut a National Wilderness Service if it is inconvenient to the economy or inconvenient to industry.
Wilderness doesn’t need a new agency. Wilderness needs a revolution in values.
We must stop pretending that rearranging bureaucratic furniture inside a collapsing house will save it. What’s required is a paradigm shift—a codification of wilderness protections that are non-negotiable, insulated from political sabotage, and rooted in ecological ethics. We need to enshrine the idea that wild lands are not resources—they are beings, systems, communities, with an inherent right to exist, evolve, and remain free from human domination.
Until that happens, a National Wilderness Service will be just another nameplate on the same colonial cabinet—a temporary caretaker of land destined to be betrayed again. What wilderness needs is not management. What it needs is respect, restraint, and release from the anthropocentric chains that have bound it for centuries.
Only then will wilderness truly be preserved. Not for us—but for itself.
Thank you, Steve, for your thoughts and ethics that have prompted what you’ve written. You’ve hit every nail squarely on the head. We need you as POTUS and clones of you in Congress and on the benches of the courts.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. As a wilderness ranger for NPS for two decades I agree wilderness should never be considered a “resource”. That implies exploitation. Wilderness must stand on it’s own rights regardless of budgets, priorities, or any other such bureaucratic nonsense. The powers that be clearly see this as a impediment to their goal of creating a world where everything bows to the needs of human consumption creating a cage like existance for humanity. As Aldo Leopold said- what good are forty freedoms without a blank space on the map?
Another government bureaucracy will be subject to the same limitations and dare I say shenanigans of those that now exist. Take the abolishment and downgrading of national monuments that has happened before and is happening once again now. We need a national movement to create something like a wilderness constitution that is inviolate. Something like a new religion that recognizes these places are sacred and absolutely essential not only for our lives but all life. This will certainly be controversial and one hell of a fight. However, it should not be hard to convince any reasonable person that this is not only the morally right thing to do, but it is also a big part of our species continued existence with any modicum of health, happiness, and a good life.
Leave The National Wilderness personnel ALONE
For our future generations of children and youth, they deserve better than what we have been doing. This mess needs to be cleaned up and a new program that deals with the everyday reality of saving our precious natural resources. It needs to be fully staffed because I don’t want people to miss out on all of the beauty I have seen and witnessed from the early 1970s! Thanks!
We must get drumpy out of the White House while we still have some remnants of our country left. He is beyond despicable…beyond evil.
Wilderness preservation is vitally necessary. Thank you for sharing this!
Bring back the staff and the Rangers to our protect our environment. As American citizens, this is our land not the Trump administration’s land do right by the people that you have sworn to serve. Bring back those who enforce environmental laws and help protect the environment and land that has made this America great.
What can we do to help. Ordinary citizen asking and thank you
We need to keep our open spaces and natural areas to protect our climate, animals, and plants. Please do not open these lands to drilling and logging, or anything to spoil them.
Close off all access to parks and public lands including all grazing and lease rights. Focus remaining resources totally on preserving public ownership of every square inch of these lands and fighting any attempts to sell off even one acre of these public lands. This will preserve these uniquely American treasures for future generations who more fully appreciate the value and importance of maintaining these lands as undeveloped nature areas. Harsh but necessary medicine for these tough times.
Please leave all wilderness areas alone, so the wildlife habitat can thrive, and not be subject to loss of food, or death of their companions
Trees, wildlife, nature, should not be removed or destroyed by humans.
Please stop the destruction of our wilderness areas
It is scarey enough to see the damages done by DOGE in all corners of our county, but the added fact that our Wilderness management was already under stress is really crippling. The idea of trying to use this as an opportunity to underscore better replacement programs is encouraging, and I hope it is successful, for us and all future generations. Thank you.
“We must show the courage to suggest and promote alternatives that will create real change. We should pursue them with the energy and boldness of people like Bob Marshall and Howard Zahniser, who promoted an idea that seemed extreme in their day, but that most Americans now take for granted.”
When the dust settles, attempting to recreate the situation that existed prior to the Trump raids would be a fool’s errand, destined to condemn our precious National Wilderness Preservation System to the dustbin of history. Rather, we should see the near total elimination of the current failing programs as an opportunity to create something much better, a new entity that is passionate about the challenge of protecting and preserving our incomparable National Wilderness Preservation System. Udall’s call for a National Wilderness Service totally dedicated to that cause, and filled with public servants truly committed to that charge, is a great place to start.
We NEED to continue to protect our precious forests and wildlife!!! What are you thinking???!!! You’re destroying our earth!!!!
There is much at stake for our wilderness, our wildlife, our ecosystem, and ultimately our environment due to such cuts of staff and volunteers in our National/wilderness parks. As one U.S. Forest Service wilderness ranger wrote in a recent Wilderness Watch blog:
“The dust has had time to settle, and we can now assess the damage. All probationary Forest Service employees in ‘non-fire’ positions were fired. There are almost no wilderness rangers left in my state and many of my neighboring states. Beyond Wilderness, there are almost no field-going recreation employees left. The temporaries are gone, the permanent seasonals are gone. Without staff, many ranger districts will struggle to even utilize volunteers.”
With this in mind, not only do our parks suffer, BUT visitors are not monitored, risky activities are not prevented, wildlife is not protected from cruel actions of visitors. There is nothing smart about these cuts as our parks will suffer, our beautiful open land will not thrive without rangers to take necessary actions to protect.
Proper steps need to be taken to reinstate necessary employees because we do not SEE BEHIND THE SCENES of what these employees deal with daily.
The lack of wilderness and National Forest Rangers on our public lands is a testament to the short-sightedness of the present administration. This is a dangerous precedent and puts the lives of rangers, tourists, and animals at risk in these beautiful places of the American landscape.
As a father of three young daughters, member of the armed services, and federal employee, I entreat you to reconsider these downsizings and do justice to the America my family and I, and the rest of us in these United States love so much.
It is so sad and disturbing that it seems no matter what committees, agencies, professionals, non- professionals, organizations, groups, volunteers, so-called pro wishers get involved, distraction and oversight seems to be winning in our destruction of our wilderness and the wildlife. And now, as government cuts are needed to be examined and some applied, but hopefully those cuts should be used to increase the areas needed. No matter what government funding that provides, we all lose when our environment, wilderness and wildlife are doomed. We shouldn’t need excess of committees, groups, etc. to protect what is priceless. It should be automatic. Protection of the land you stand on, is a fact, an automatic protection.
Whatever is left after Trump is gone, can be a starting point for better wilderness programs and protections. I volunteer in the Great Smoky Mountains already. Keep in touch with me.
I agree with the idea that a unique agency dedicated to wilderness planning and preservation is a great idea! What I wonder about is the origin of reasons that wilderness efforts have been decreasing over the last decades in the four land management agencies. I think we have to ferret those reasons out and find solutions to them before a wilderness agency can be successful. Maybe that would/should be the first objective of such an agency. I’m sure it has something to do with Americans’ general malaise regarding environmental issues. The wilderness and other lands, protected and not, are literally burning down in front of us and the majority of Americans seem content to let them do so, as long as they can still drive their car wherever they like and use as much electricity as they want and jet to vacations wherever they please. It’s not totally hopeless, but it’s a bigger problem than any single person can entirely wrap their head around, much less solve. Environmental “extremists” have a place in the world, if nothing more than to drag the rest of us off the fence we sit on so obliviously.
We need qualified people working in our government that work for us/we the people. No criminals, no liars. Wake up people! Save our Democracy.
👍 Michael, I agree 💯!
Wilderness management is serious business! We cannot afford to leave our precious land & forests to go unsupervised. The tragic result will not be able to be reversed & repaired. We need devoted public servants to manage & make sure we can protect our lands.
In the short term, we can hope that the recent DOGE firings will be reversed, either by the courts or by urging our elected officials to restore funding for the agency programs. That could help hold off some of the damage that will undoubtedly occur over the next few years. And we must all redouble our efforts to push back against destructive proposals we know are headed our way.
Longer term, we need a durable response to the decades- long neglect and animus toward Wilderness that, for many years, has been the hallmark of the four agencies that manage Wilderness. We need a fundamental change to how Wilderness is administered and safeguarded across the land.