Announcing The Stewardship Archive: Safeguarding Essential Information to Protect America’s Public Lands, Waters, and Places of Cultural Heritage
March 19, 2025
There are growing concerns about the removal of public information related to climate change and other topics from the websites of federal agencies charged with protecting the country’s public lands, waters, and places of cultural heritage. Among many examples, the Bureau of Land Management’s climate change adaptive management science and policy directive was rescinded recently, and references to transgender and queer Americans were removed from the National Park Service website.
Anticipating the potential for actions like these, the George Wright Society (GWS) proactively captured more than 3 TB of publicly available information from seven federal agencies from December 12, 2024, through January 19, 2025. The agencies are: the Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Geological Survey, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the National Park Service. Additional material was captured from the Department of the Interior.
The information focuses on content related to climate change; environmental protection and the conservation and monitoring of the nation’s natural/cultural resources; perspectives and experiences of historically marginalized (underrepresented) groups; and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. To safeguard the information, we have created a new repository called The Stewardship Archive.
The information collected was created through decades of scholarship in the natural and social sciences and the humanities. Much of the captured and secured data and information is essential to the scientific and scholarly research needed for sound resource decision-making to protect public lands and waters and places of cultural heritage.
There is a high expectation that removing scientific and scholarly information will continue, and, consequently, that the value of this project (and others like it) will become increasingly important.
GWS is grateful to the dedicated public servants and their partners who collected and published this valuable information, and is committed to preserving public access to these resources.
Currently, GWS is working with independent experts to create a web-compatible, keyword-searchable index to allow ongoing access to The Stewardship Archive in a secure manner.
While we cannot yet provide a detailed list of specific information that was collected, GWS does intend to share an indexed list as soon as it is ready. Please follow the George Wright Society on Facebook and LinkedIn to receive updates when they are available, and share this with your networks.
The George Wright Society supports parks, protected/conserved areas, cultural sites, and other kinds of place-based conservation by encouraging communication among and convenings of researchers, managers, educators, practitioners, and the public to facilitate informed decisions and actions. The organization’s mission was inspired by George Meléndez Wright (1904–1936), an American biologist who conceived of, then conducted, the first scientific survey of wildlife for the National Park Service. Wright pioneered a holistic approach to conservation in the national parks and beyond.