New documents are revealing the extent of the Biden administration’s “ecogrief” workshops, where employees at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 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 the grief workshops were more widespread than officials initially acknowledged, and agency officials considered it a “high priority.”

FWS took the grief problem seriously enough that its main national training center was working to develop a permanent “course on ecological grief” for employees struggling with it.

But when The Washington Times first revealed the workshops in 2023, agency officials downplayed the extent of their efforts. They admitted to just three workshops, though internal emails said there were at least four ecogrief sessions, and probably others that were done under different names.

Officials at the time also did not reveal the separate course being developed by FWS’s National Conservation Training Center.

“It’s apparent that the FWS officials behind this ecogrief training understood it was a boondoggle,” FGI 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 revelations come as the new Trump administration has ordered all diversity, equity and inclusion — or DEI — employees across the government to be put on leave.

It’s not clear whether the ecogrief efforts are covered by the anti-DEI directive, but one FWS employee said Mr. Trump has ignited a scramble to try 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 condition of anonymity for fear of internal retribution.

The Washington Times sought comment from FWS for this story.

Ecogrief is the name activists have given to a sense of trauma some people say they feel about watching the environment change around them — and particularly the perceived effects of climate change.

It’s a fuzzy concept, with the American Psychological Association in a 2020 article saying that “not much is known about climate grief,” and there were no clinical studies on how to treat it.

FWS employees acknowledged those underpinnings in emails strategizing how to respond 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 ecogrief workshops for FWS’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.

According to the documents, the agency paid $4,000 for each virtual workshop. Up to 70 employees were able to attend, taking a half day out of work.

They were encouraged to understand the roots of their anxiety, 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 hit positive notes too: “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.”

Other employees were embarrassed.

“This agency has gone freaking, over the edge, crazy!!!! Ecogrief ………………. give me a break!!” one employee wrote to a colleague.

FWS employees, in the newly obtained emails, said the ecogrief 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.