Last week the Trump administration hid a plan to effectively end the creation of new wilderness areas inside an announcement about rock climbing. I laid out the whole story on Friday.
Here’s the short version. There’s a whole class of country that sits one rung below permanent Wilderness, the wilderness study areas and roadless backcountry the agencies have already judged wild enough to keep and have been holding intact until Congress can finish the job. The Trump administration has decided to throw all of it open for “review,” and the purpose of that review is to stop holding it intact and open it up to roads and machines, so the land is spoiled and can never qualify as Wilderness. They’re even going after country Congress already designated. And they slipped the whole thing out behind a press release about rock climbing.
The worst part is the protections they’re after don’t live in law. They live in policy the agencies can rewrite on their own, without a single vote in Congress, which is why this is moving so fast and so quietly. A 60-day public comment period is open now, through August 14, and it’s the one place your objection lands on the official record. That record is worth far more than it looks.
Why You Need to Comment
By now we know what a public comment is and isn't. We're not commenting because we think they'll listen to us. We're commenting to arm the lawsuits with ammunition. We're commenting to show the overwhelming public opposition to this disgraceful scheme. We're commenting so our descendants can see that we were on the record opposing this madness. And we're commenting because we have an obligation as Americans to.
That's not a consolation prize. It's how we do our part to stop this. When an agency reverses decades of settled protection without a real justification and against a wall of public objection, it hands the people suing it a strong case that the reversal was arbitrary and unlawful. The comment record is the raw material those suits are built from. Every comment is one more piece of evidence that the public was told, the public objected, and the agency bulldozed ahead anyway. And every day this stays tied up is a day closer to an administration that can put the protections back. The places aren't lost yet. This is one of the rare moments where showing up actually changes the odds.
How to Comment
They didn’t make it easy. Each policy has its own docket. Open the link, click “Submit a Public Comment,” or “Comment,” and paste in or write your comment. The BLM ones are buried on regulations.gov, but I’ve linked directly to where you can comment, look for the blue “Comment” button in the top left. The Fish & Wildlife and NPS ones are easier, they have a big green button in the top right that says “Submit a Public Comment.” Follow these links to make your comments, sample comments are below:
BLM Management of Wilderness Study Areas under Manual 6330 — https://www.regulations.gov/document/BLM-2026-0069-0001
BLM Manual 6320 Considering Lands with Wilderness Characteristics — https://www.regulations.gov/document/BLM-2026-0068-0001
Fish and Wildlife Service, Part 610 Wilderness Stewardship — https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2026-11956
National Park Service Wilderness Stewardship Policy Review — https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2026-11958
Three things make a comment really count. If you have the time, put the comment in your own words. Agencies tend to bundle identical comments together and weigh them less than distinct comments. Name a specific wild place you love if you can, because a real account of real land is the most valuable thing you can add to the record. And keep it clean, the agencies have said outright they'll throw out anything with profanity in it.
Sample Comment
I’m writing to oppose any revision to [INSERT POLICY ID HERE] that would weaken protection for wilderness study areas, lands with wilderness characteristics, or recommended, proposed, and eligible wilderness.
These policies aren’t as simple as the phrase “non-binding guidance” makes them sound. They carry out the agencies’ duty, rooted in the Wilderness Act and the statutes governing these lands, to keep wild and roadless country managed so as not to impair its suitability for wilderness designation until Congress decides its fate. They hold a finite inheritance of wild land intact so that a future Congress can retain the option to protect it permanently. Once roads, motorized use, or logging are admitted into these places, the wilderness character that makes them eligible is destroyed, and no future Congress can vote it back. The loss is permanent in a way that almost nothing in public lands policy ever is.
The agency has offered no reasoned justification for reversing decades of settled protection. A change of this magnitude, made without a documented basis and against the clear weight of public objection, would be arbitrary and capricious. I ask that the existing standards be preserved in full, that no revision lower the standard of care for these lands, and that our wild lands continue to be protected as they have been.
[Add two or three sentences here about a specific place you know and why it matters to you.]
These are the policies you need to insert in the first sentence depending on which comment you’re doing:
BLM 6330: “BLM Manual 6330, Management of Wilderness Study Areas”
BLM 6320: “BLM Manual 6320, Considering Lands with Wilderness Characteristics in Land Use Planning”
FWS Part 610: “Part 610 of the Fish and Wildlife Service Manual, Wilderness Stewardship”
NPS: “the National Park Service’s wilderness stewardship policy under Director’s Order 41”
They Also Opened the Vault
There’s one more docket, and it’s different from the rest. The four above have to do with lands that could become wilderness. This one reaches into the Wilderness we already have. It initiates a review of BLM Manual 6340, the rulebook for the lands Congress has already designated and sealed, the strongest protection in the system.
Only Congress can un-designate a Wilderness, and it won’t, so they’ve gone after what the designation protects instead. Manual 6340 is where the Wilderness Act’s Section 4(c) bans on roads, motors, structures, and commercial use get enforced, through a test called the Minimum Requirements Analysis and the definitions of what counts as a prohibited intrusion. Loosen that test or rewrite the definitions, and the machines and hardware the Act was built to keep out can be let into designated Wilderness without a vote in Congress. The first Trump administration tried the smaller version of this in 2018, when the BLM issued guidance softening how 6340 treats prohibited installations. This is the bigger version. Comment on it too, and say plainly that designated Wilderness isn’t a place to go looking for flexibility.
BLM Manual 6340, Management of Designated Wilderness Areas
Sample Comment
I oppose any revision to BLM Manual 6340, Management of Designated Wilderness Areas, that would weaken the protection of lands Congress has already designated as Wilderness. Wilderness is the strongest protection our public lands can carry, and there’s no honest reason to be “reviewing” how firmly to protect them.
Only Congress can take a Wilderness designation away, and it hasn’t. What this review goes after is what the designation means on the ground. Manual 6340 is where the Wilderness Act’s core promise gets kept, the ban on roads, motors, machines, permanent structures, and commercial enterprise inside designated Wilderness. Lower the minimum-requirements test that holds those intrusions out, or quietly redefine a road or a motor or an installation until it no longer counts, and you’ve opened Wilderness to the development Congress placed off-limits, without Congress ever voting on it.
Honor your obligation to Congress and the country and keep the protections in Manual 6340 intact. They work. Designated Wilderness is the one kind of public land that was never meant to be managed for “flexibility,” and dressing it up as multiple-use ground betrays the whole reason it was set aside.
[If you can, add a sentence or two about a designated Wilderness you know, and what it would mean to see motors, structures, or development pushed into it.]
Looking For More To Do?
If you’re still incensed by this attack on Wilderness I have a few more ways you can give the administration a piece of your mind.
Email the agency points of contact listed in the federal register notices.
USFWS: Nick Kaczor, National Wilderness Coordinator, Branch of Wildlife Resources, nick_kaczor@fws.gov
BLM: Sean MacDougall, BLM Division of National Conservation Lands BLM_HQ_410_Wilderness@BLM.GOV
NPS: Michael Michener, Deputy Associate Director, National Park Service michael_michener@nps.gov
Call them!
USFWS: No phone listed
BLM: Sean MacDougall, (970) 256-4934
NPS: Michael Michener (202) 513-7080
Use our Congressional Public Lands Scorecard to contact your representatives and demand they raise hell about this.
The Race Against the Clock
A movement that believed it would hold power forever wouldn’t bother with this. It would take its time and build durable rules. But that’s not this administration. I’ve said it before, they’re looters. They’ve gone looking for the kind of damage a future administration can’t easily undo, and they’ve found it in this wilderness waiting room. Roads and saws through recommended wilderness don’t just suspend protection, they erase the eligibility, and erased eligibility is the rare political act that outlives the people who commit it.
That’s why the target is future wilderness rather than other bigger names. Selling a national park makes the evening news and loses at the ballot box. Building roads that eventually lead to logging and other extractive activities through a roadless basin that was three votes from becoming Wilderness never trends, and it ensures that basin will never be locked away from the extractive industries. The wilderness waiting room is where you inflict lasting loss at minimum political cost, and they’ve figured that out. They aren’t only knocking down the protections that exist. They’re salting the ground so nothing new can take root.
Our reporting is forcing the Trump administration to respond and shining a light on issues they want buried. We need help to keep this work up. Our paid subscribers are that help. They allow us to keep going. We hope you’ll consider joining us.
Thanks for reading. Until next time,
-Jim
I commented!! Thank you for dumbing it down for the concerned masses like myself!!! I will always support the right to public land use exactly as it was intended.
Those currently in power are ogres.
Thanks so much. I forward these to my 94 year old dad. It helps him feel like he is doing something (and he is!)
As a former wildlife biologist and agricultural biologist, might I add that wilderness isn't just about beauty, solitude, and recreation. They provide clean water to agriculture and communities downstream. They provide breeding grounds for birds that help reduce insect loads on crops. They provide reservoirs of biodiversity that might provide solutions to pest problems, resilience to climate change, and more. In other words, there are a lot of very pragmatic reasons to preserve places and not let the world's most dangerous toddler billionaires get their sticky fingers on everything.