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 Wilder- ness 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.

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