ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.— The Center for Biological Diversity filed a Freedom of Information Act request today with the U.S. Forest Service seeking to protect a massive, century-old archive of historical documents, scientific research and cultural records about the nation’s public lands. The materials, currently held at 10 regional offices, are at imminent risk of being lost or destroyed amid the Trump administration’s reorganization of the agency and planned regional office closures.

“These massive troves of documents contain more than a century of research and knowledge, built with taxpayer support and belonging to all Americans,” said Brian Nowicki, a biologist at the Center. “If the Trump administration closes Forest Service offices with the same incompetence and recklessness it’s shown in cutting staff and funding at federal land management agencies, these crucial records are sure to be lost forever.”

The Center has alerted the National Archives that these priceless, unique Forest Service documents are at risk of disappearing. They include critical records on the condition and management of national forests, entire libraries of data from taxpayer-funded research, historical documents and photographs dating to the 1800s, and raw data that has yet to be catalogued, researched and analyzed.

In March the Trump administration announced plans to restructure the Forest Service and move its headquarters to Salt Lake City, where federal land managers could be under more direct control of Republican-led state legislatures. As part of the restructuring, the administration plans to close the 10 regional offices that coordinate national forest operations and replace them with 15 state directors and a slimmed down staff. The plans also call for closing 57 of the Forest Service’s 77 research facilities in 31 states.

The announcement did not acknowledge that the regional offices house extensive archives of historical hard copy materials that exist nowhere else.

For decades, these collections have grown to fill an enormous collection of filing cabinets, occupying thousands of square feet in some offices. The archives represent decades, and in some cases more than a century, of taxpayer-funded research and knowledge over the Forest Service’s 120-year history and institutional knowledge that has been greatly diminished by cuts to federal land management agencies over the past year.

“These records are invaluable. They’re central to understanding how our national forests have evolved over generations and how they may change in the future,” said Nowicki. “They must be preserved and made available to agency staff, researchers and to the public who rightfully own them. If the Trump administration doesn’t protect these treasures, we’ll see them in court.”

Examples of these records include documentation of land purchases, logging projects and wildfires that shaped national forests since their earliest years. Such documentation is crucial in understanding what forests looked like before logging began, where wildfires burned and at what intensity, and how plants, wildlife, soils and water flows have changed.