Bill Ensuring Active Management of Shawnee National Forest Clears Senate Committee

Illinois advocates and legal experts are applauding a congressional bill that would add key protections for certain areas in the Shawnee National Forest, classifying them with special distinctions that could lead to improved biodiversity, habitats and protections moving forward.

The Shawnee National Forest Conservation Act of 2025, introduced in July by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and co-sponsored by Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), aims to promote conservation and protection of three of the largest uninterrupted areas of the 289,000-acre Shawnee National Forest in southern Illinois, which spans across 13 counties. It is part of a larger package of bipartisan bills that would preserve public landscapes across the U.S. 

The Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry passed the bill in October in a unanimous bipartisan vote.

“We’re hopeful that with that strong bipartisan support, as this legislation goes to the Senate floor, it will pass the Senate and then move on to the House,” said Howard Lerner, chief executive officer and executive director at the Environmental Law and Policy Center (ELPC), a Midwest-based nonprofit environmental legal advocacy organization. 

The act would specifically designate more than 12,700 acres within the Shawnee as special management areas, meaning that they would receive active management to protect habitat and biodiversity and preserve recreational activities from industry activity such as logging and mining. 

The acres that would be designated as special management are within the Ripple Hollow, Burke Branch and Camp Hutchins areas of the forest. 

Under the special management designation, the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) would be permitted to engage in more specialized management activities. For example, if an area has been largely overgrown by invasive species, the USFS will be able to clear up the invasives with large equipment or perform fire-management protocols, methods of preservation that are either prohibited or that forest management lacks funding and resources to perform. 

“The management work that needs to get done is going to help lead to these becoming more protected wilderness areas, but they need the special management practices first before they meet the wilderness standards,” Lerner said. 

Many Illinois conservation groups advocated for the act, commending the increased protections it aims to bring to areas of the Shawnee. 

“There’s a lot underway right now to allow more logging and mining of our public lands in much of the country. So if in this moment, we can find a way to protect these special parts of Illinois’ only national forest, that would be a really big win for the future,” said Sierra Club Illinois Chapter director Jack Darin. 

The Illinois chapter helped Durbin work on the act and advocated for the passage with grassroots organizations of Illinois residents. 

“We wanted to find a way to ensure that these areas are protected from exploitation, but in a way that allows the habitat restoration that’s needed to address the threat of invasive species and restore them to even higher quality than they are now,” Darin said. 

The act would create a new wilderness area within Camp Hutchins because it already meets the conditions for the wilderness standards, such as being undeveloped, retaining its primeval character and having outstanding opportunities for solitude or recreation and is “an area of undeveloped Federal land retaining its primeval character and influence, without permanent improvements or human habitation,” according to the Wilderness Act. 

Lerner said that the goal is to get all three areas to qualify as wilderness areas, but since more management is needed, the act moves to first designate them as special management areas so they can move toward that status.

In order for an area to meet wilderness area standards under the Wilderness Protection Act, it sometimes requires a special management distinction so that the USFS has the ability to restore and protect it to the extent that it needs for qualification. 

Lerner said that if the bill is passed, the wilderness area designations could protect those areas from further federal administrative action that might seek to threaten forest lands.

In June, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said that the USFS would be rescinding the Roadless Rule, which protects thousands of acres in national forests—about 30 percent of National Forest System lands—from logging and road development. The comment period for the notice to rescind the rule concluded in September, with no updates since. 

“If Congress designated an area [as subject to] the Wilderness Act, which is a federal law, the administrative changes to the Roadless Rule can’t undo congressional legislation, just as a matter of law,” Lerner said. 

These protections are also important in preserving the integrity of areas in the Shawnee. Georgie Geraghty, executive director and Midwest partner at the Nature Conservancy, said that the act provides “wilderness protections with a carve-out to allow for prescribed fire, invasive species control and ecological thinning.” 

Geraghty said that due to multiple factors including years of fire suppression and “explosive invasive species growth,” the ecological balance of the Shawnee has changed and therefore requires active management. 

“It is no longer an intact wilderness system and the processes that once used to keep the forest open and diverse and resilient are no longer happening on their own, and so from our perspective, it’s critical that the Shawnee is protected full stop, but it has to be protected with provisions to allow for active management,” she said. 

The Nature Conservancy has a longstanding partnership with the USFS and engages in active management of Forest Service lands in southern Illinois. Geraghty said that it is “neutral” on the legislation, but they are aligned with ELPC, Sen. Durbin “and others in terms of wanting broadly strong protections for the Shawnee National Forest, but our focus is very much on that management and stewardship component.” 

Active management performed by the USFS often has to go through a series of approvals before treatment of certain areas can begin, a process that is often time-consuming and results in issues worsening. Geraghty gave the example of the invasive wineberry that spread from four acres to 40 acres within four years. 

Had it not been addressed, she said, it would have continued to take over native species. 

“Without this active management, the habitat would be overgrown,” she said, adding that areas within the Shawnee that draw tourists—such as Snake Road, Garden of the Gods and the tupelo gum trees in the Lower Cache River area—provide economic benefits for the communities there. “This active management is important for biodiversity, but the implications extend far beyond that.”