A wildly wicked problem with RAD solutions

Photo Credit

Forest Service photo by Jaclyn Fox Rushing

Monument Rock is a prominent rock formation in Isle Royale Wilderness, MI, previously shrouded in dense boreal forest vegetation until the Horne Fire in 2021. Ecological transformations like this present wilderness managers with a wicked problem -- whether to support the untrammeled quality of wilderness and not intervene, or to support the natural quality and intervene in the climatic and ecological trajectories.

Despite offering the highest level of federal land protection, congressionally designated wilderness areas still face new impacts from increasing temperatures, altered precipitation patterns, and altered disturbance regimes.

The very protections afforded by the Wilderness Act of 1964 make managing ecological changes very challenging, posing a wicked problem for wilderness managers.

In a new study, researchers explain how wilderness managers can use four illustrative cases to explore how the resist–accept–direct (RAD) framework can help with strategies that resist transformation by maintaining current or past conditions, accept it by not intervening, or direct it toward preferred new conditions.

These findings validate managers dealing with the immense challenge of adaptive management in wilderness and offer a framework that considers important aspects of wilderness character to help illuminate a decision space. For the research community, this work moves theory into practice by applying a wicked problem framing to wilderness contexts.

This research was institute-wide, involving all staff at the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute, and had interagency collaboration, including representatives from all four wilderness administering agencies and the U.S. Geological Survey. The national, interagency, and co-produced nature of this research earned the project the national Excellence in Research Application Award for Wilderness in 2025.

This study is the keystone of a larger, institute-wide project focused on impacts to wilderness and climate adaptive management. The broader project was a national, interagency comparative case study with cases in Black Ridge Canyons Wilderness, Cabeza Prieta and Kofa Wildernesses, Isle Royale Wilderness, and Forest Service administered wilderness areas across the U.S. range of whitebark pine.