Stop the Forest Service from torching 30,000 acres of Wilderness on the Shawnee National Forest

The U.S. Forest Service is proposing to burn almost 30,000 acres of Wilderness on the Shawnee National Forest in southern Illinois under the guise of “fuels reduction” and “ecological restoration.” This type of sweeping manipulation is precisely what the Wilderness Act’s “untrammeled” mandate is meant to avoid—humans imposing their will on Wilderness to try to create managers’ desired conditions rather than allowing nature to shape the wild.

The management strategy now being proposed on the Shawnee, which averages nearly 50 inches of precipitation annually, started in the more arid West, where agencies stoked fear of wildfires to justify massive landscape-level projects—including tree cutting, burning, and motorized use, even in Wilderness. Now, as the Forest Service tries to implement the same strategy in the Midwest, they give away the game. Such proposals reveal it was never about wildfire prevention to begin with. It was about taming wildness.

The Shawnee National Forest’s Prescribed Burn Project would allow the agency to burn all 289,000 acres of the Shawnee National Forest, including seven Wilderness areas totaling nearly 30,000 acres. Managers would burn in 25,000-acre increments, annually, seemingly in perpetuity. The project would set a torch to the Bald Knob, Bay Creek, Burden Falls, Clear Springs, Garden of the Gods, Lusk Creek, and Panther Den Wildernesses.

We need you to speak up for Wilderness on the Shawnee National Forest by March 2.

The Forest Service’s draft environmental assessment gives no indication that it would treat federally protected Wilderness any differently than the rest of the National Forest—that means unlawful activities such as chainsaws and lighting fires via drones or helicopters in Wilderness. This is another example of agencies not only willing to ignore the Wilderness Act’s ban on motorized and mechanized tools, but attempting to alter whole ecosystems in Wilderness instead of respecting wildness and letting nature call the shots.

Not only does this proposal violate the basic tenets of the Wilderness Act, but the science that the Forest Service is using to justify this project is highly contested. While the agency claims that the Shawnee is an oak-hickory ecosystem degraded by fire exclusion, a robust body of work has demonstrated that the forests of southern Illinois are mesophytic, adapted to moderately moist environments. This is an important distinction. In a mesophytic ecosystem, manager-ignited fire like that contemplated in the agency’s plan would trammel a complex, evolving system that is home to over 500 diverse species of wildlife. In short, the Forest Service’s fires would likely be harming the wildlife and ecosystems they are claiming to help.

Unfortunately, this project also actively undermines transparency, accountability, and meaningful public participation by foregoing important site-specific analysis until after the National Environmental Policy Act process is finished. Projects such as the Shawnee Prescribed Burn, which aim to carry out landscape-level manipulation, have no place in Wilderness.

The comment period for this proposal is open until March 2. Please let the Forest Service know that Wilderness should be kept wild!