New documents reveal the extent of the Biden administration’s “eco grief” workshops, in which U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employees were encouraged to channel feelings of ecological anxiety into “lifesaving changes” for the planet.
The documents, obtained through an open records request by the Functional Government Initiative, show that the grief workshops were more widespread than officials acknowledged, and agency officials considered it a “high priority.”
The Fish and Wildlife Service took the grief problem seriously enough that its main national training center was working to develop a permanent “course on ecological grief” for struggling employees.
When The Washington Times first revealed the workshops in 2023, agency officials downplayed the extent of their efforts. They acknowledged just three workshops, though internal emails said at least four eco-grief sessions were held, and probably others were held under different names.
Officials at the time also did not reveal the separate course that the National Conservation Training Center was developing.
“It’s apparent that the Fish and Wildlife Service officials behind this eco-grief training understood it was a boondoggle,” the Functional Government Initiative told The Times. “They realized how Congress would react and how this would look to taxpayers, and that’s why they scrambled to respond to the story and probably why they followed up with incomplete information.”
The Trump administration has ordered all diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) employees across the government to be put on leave.
It’s unclear whether the directive covers the eco-grief efforts, but one Fish and Wildlife Service employee said Mr. Trump has ignited a scramble to hide DEI activities to preserve jobs and offices.
“At the same time our conservation professionals beg for resources to fulfill their mission, or even to keep their field employees safe, we’ve diverted millions and tens of millions to radically impart an extreme socialist agenda,” the employee told The Times, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of internal retribution.
The Times sought comment from the Fish and Wildlife Service for this article.
Eco grief is the name activists have given to a sense of trauma some people say they feel about environmental change around them, particularly the perceived effects of climate change.
It’s a fuzzy concept. In a 2020 article, the American Psychological Association said that “not much is known about climate grief” and that no clinical studies were available on how to treat it.
Fish and Wildlife Service employees acknowledged those underpinnings in emails strategizing a response to The Times’ initial inquiries in 2023.
“We’re responding to warnings from APA that people that are on the frontlines of conservation may be experiencing rapid change and we want to take care of our people. (On a very brief search though, I could not find a quick journal reference that we could point to, can dig around if we’d like to pursue this line),” wrote Katherine Hill, who organized the eco grief workshops for the Fish and Wildlife Service’s southwest region.
Agency leaders anticipated blowback from The Times’ report.
“It may not be an awesome story, but it could be a short one. Transparency, speed/timeliness and discipline are important to navigating this,” Jeffrey Fleming, a regional deputy director, wrote to colleagues.
The documents show that the agency paid $4,000 for each virtual workshop. Up to 70 employees could attend while taking a half-day off from work.
They were encouraged to understand the roots of their anxiety and then wrestle with it openly.
“Acknowledging the pain and grief, naming it, sitting with it, and allowing it to move through the body in a compassionate manner is really vital to resilience. Moving from Despair to Active Hope — we have to feel in order to heal,” one training slide urged.
Another slide read: “There’s frustration that nature isn’t a higher priority in society and politics, anger about greed that rips up more soil, sadness over people suffering from storms and drought, guilt at being a consumer and contributing to the demands on the earth, anxiety about what future generations will deal with, and disbelief in loss of species and what that means.”
The training also hit positive notes: “Nature is resilient, and it will not give up. Neither can we. We are free to choose our own version of reality and reframe. We can choose our response.”
Some employees were excited about the workshops. One called it “amazing and extremely helpful.”
Others were embarrassed.
“This agency has gone freaking, over the edge, crazy!!!! Ecogrief ………………. give me a break!!” one employee wrote to a colleague.
In the newly obtained emails, Fish and Wildlife Service employees said the eco grief workshops were so popular that a senior official at the agency’s national training center was developing a permanent course.
“This is a high priority for the NCTC,” one official said.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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