Climate change in wilderness: A wildly wicked problem with RAD solutions

Congressionally designated wilderness areas are under the highest level of federal land protection possible. Despite this, they face impacts of climate change such as increasing temperatures, altered precipitation patterns, and altered disturbance regimes. The very protections afforded by the Wilderness Act of 1964 make addressing climate-driven ecological changes especially challenging for wilderness managers, who are often faced with the “wicked problem” of balancing competing qualities of wilderness character. In a new study, research scientists explain how climate change poses a wicked problem for wilderness managers and use four illustrative cases to explore how the resist–accept–direct (RAD) framework can help untangle this wicked problem by encouraging managers to consider strategies that resist transformation, accept it, or direct it toward preferred new conditions.

Actively Managing Forests for Health and Productivity

This work expands active forest management by giving land managers a concrete decision space to protect highly vulnerable species, such as whitebark pine, which is currently projected to lose 80 percent of its climatically suitable habitat across the U.S. by the mid-21st century.

Strengthening Partnerships that Deliver Results on the Ground

This initiative models "shared stewardship" by successfully uniting all four federal wilderness lands management agencies and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to solve real-world ecological challenges across multiple jurisdictions.

This framework transitions theoretical science into active fieldwork. It validates the immense challenges managers face and helps them weigh tradeoffs through three simple strategic pathways:

1. Resist: Fight the change to maintain or restore past ecological conditions, for example, planting resilient whitebark pine seedlings.
2. Accept: Intentionally step back and allow natural processes to unfold without human intervention.
3. Direct: Actively guide the ecosystem as it transforms toward a preferred, viable new condition.

Award-Winning Collaboration 

This milestone publication is the culmination of a project that was co-produced with all four wilderness land management agencies, as well as many state, tribal, NGO, and private partners.

By examining diverse, real-world case studies—ranging from climate adaptation for the Sonoran pronghorn to landscape transitions in Isle Royale National Park—this nationally focused effort earned the prestigious national Excellence in Research Application Award for Wilderness.