{"id":12712,"date":"2026-04-02T00:40:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T00:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/12712\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T00:40:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T00:40:10","slug":"forest-service-overhaul-sows-confusion-concern","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/12712\/","title":{"rendered":"Forest Service overhaul sows confusion, concern"},"content":{"rendered":"

On March 31, the U.S. Forest Service announced plans to move its headquarters from Washington, D.C., to Salt Lake City, Utah. It will also close or repurpose all nine of its regional offices, create 15 state offices, and shutter research and development facilities in more than 30 states. According to a news release<\/a>, the plan is intended to make the agency more \u201cnimble, efficient [and] effective.\u201d Forest Service leaders told staff on a call after the announcement that no changes will be made to fire and aviation management programs or field-based operational firefighters.<\/p>\n

Since first announcing its intent to reorganize the agency last July, the Trump administration has marketed the plan as a way to streamline Forest Service operations, with a focus on boosting timber production and communicating more closely with local communities. But during a congressional hearing and public comment period on the subject last summer, more than 80% of the 14,000 public comments submitted were negative, with many tribal representatives, conservation groups and former Forest Service staffers opposing the move<\/a>. A U.S. Department of Agriculture summary of public comments included concerns that relocating Forest Service staff and further cuts to its budgets \u201ccould compromise ecological management, public access, and employee morale.\u201d The current plan incorporates many elements of the original proposal, including the move to Salt Lake City and the closure of regional offices.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody is asking for this,\u201d said Robert Bonnie, who oversaw the Forest Service as a Department of Agriculture undersecretary during the Obama administration. \u201cNone of the farm groups want this. No one in conservation wants this. Nobody.\u201d To Bonnie and other former Forest Service staff, the plan, which will uproot thousands of employees, looks like it will only make the agency\u2019s existing troubles worse, especially given the past year of deep cuts and chaos.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not going to strengthen the Forest Service, it is going to weaken it,\u201d Bonnie said. \u201cIt\u2019s not about solving problems, it\u2019s about blowing things up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNone of the farm groups want this. No one in conservation wants this. Nobody.\u201d<\/p>\n

MARY ERICKSON, a retired Custer Gallatin National Forest supervisor, had more questions than answers after the announcement. \u201cI\u2019m not going to say if it\u2019s good or bad at this point,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s just such a sweeping change with no real analysis about if there would be cost savings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under the new proposal, some states will have their own offices and others will be lumped together, similar to the organization of the Bureau of Land Management. This will be a new approach for the country\u2019s 154 national forests, which have long been managed by the nine regional offices that will be shuttered or repurposed. Now, forests in Washington, Oregon, Montana, Alaska and Idaho will each be managed by their own state office. Forests in Nevada and Utah, however, will be managed together, as will forests in Colorado and Kansas.<\/p>\n

Some Forest Service research facilities, including the Rocky Mountain Research Station in Fort\u00a0Collins, Colorado, will stay open. Others, including the research station in Portland, Oregon, which is responsible for critical work on species like spotted owls, will be closed. Losing local leadership \u201cis not going to improve the programs,\u201d said former Forest Service wildlife biologist Eric Forsman. Forsman, who retired in 2016, studied spotted owls and red tree voles at the agency\u2019s Forestry Sciences Laboratory in Corvallis, Oregon, which will remain in operation. \u201cIt may help budgets,\u201d he added, \u201cbut it won\u2019t improve the quality of the research or the amount of research that gets done.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"The Sidney R. Yates building in Washington, D.C., where the Forest Service headquarters are currently located. On March 31, the Trump administration announced its plans to relocate the agency\u2019s headquarters to Salt Lake City, Utah. Credit: Forest Service<\/p>\n

Erickson and others were also concerned about the plan to move high-level bureaucrats out of D.C., where the nation\u2019s law- and policymakers reside. \u201cI would push back on this idea that moving out of D.C. is moving closer to the people you serve. That\u2019s not the role of the national office,\u201d Erickson said. The national office, she added, is supposed to coordinate and create guidance based on national policy. \u201cForests and districts have always been the heart of local communities and local delivery.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI would push back on this idea that moving out of D.C. is moving closer to the people you serve. That\u2019s not the role of the national office.\u201d<\/p>\n

After talking with current and former Forest Service staffers following Tuesday\u2019s announcement, she also worries that, at least in the short term, disarray created by the reorganization will hamstring the agency\u2019s ability to address the complex and worsening challenges that modern forests face. Those include tree disease outbreaks, the growing wildland-urban interface and climate change-induced drought. The Forest Service is already reeling from the loss of thousands of employees during the last year, through the terminations and deferred resignations effected by the now-defunct Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The reorganization may also lead to states playing an even bigger role in forest management, said Kevin Hood, executive director of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics<\/a>, who retired in 2025 after decades working in the Forest Service throughout the West. While local coordination isn\u2019t bad in theory, he said, he\u2019s concerned the new structure will be a step toward ceding the management of national forests and other public lands to states.<\/p>\n

Tribal representatives, several of whom declined to comment for this story, voiced concerns during the July public comment process that the reorganization would lead to losses of expertise and fractured relationships. Mass staff relocations, one representative wrote, would \u201cdestroy irreplaceable knowledge about Treaty rights, forest conditions, and working relationships built over decades, and new staff unfamiliar with the land will make mistakes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"An entrance sign to the Custer Gallatin National Forest in Montana. Credit: Forest Service<\/a><\/p>\n

FOR MANY PEOPLE in conservation, the Forest Service reorganization feels like d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu, or even a recurring nightmare.<\/p>\n

In 2019, during Trump\u2019s first term, his administration announced a plan to move nearly all Bureau of Land Management staff out of the agency\u2019s D.C. headquarters to Grand Junction, Colorado \u2014 then a 66,000-person city located hundreds of miles from a major airport. As with the March 31 Forest Service announcement, the administration said the change would put high-level staff closer to the mostly-Western lands they manage. Instead, many of those staff left the agency altogether, said Tracy Stone-Manning, who directed the BLM under President Joe Biden and is now president of The Wilderness Society.<\/p>\n

In fact, by the time the Grand Junction office opened in 2020, only 41 of the 328 BLM employees expected to move West chose to do so, according to a High Country News investigation<\/a>. For many, moving meant uprooting their entire family, and required a spouse to find a new job in a much smaller market.<\/p>\n

The reorganization cost taxpayers $28 million. And the Biden administration ended up moving many high-level positions back to D.C., though it did keep some agency leaders in the Grand Junction office, which it renamed the agency\u2019s \u201cWestern Headquarters.\u201d John Gale, who headed the office for two years under Biden, sees merit in searching for ways to improve public-lands management. But restructuring and relocation need to be done thoughtfully and carefully to be effective, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because agencies lose irreplaceable institutional knowledge when people with decades of experience are forced out the door, said Stone-Manning. And while that may not have been the first Trump administration\u2019s intention, it was indeed the outcome of the BLM reorganization. She and others expect the Forest Service to suffer the same fate, with even more dire results for the public.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur public lands are not being cared for the way they need to be,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd what that means is ultimately people will throw up their hands and say the federal government can\u2019t manage them, let\u2019s sell them off.\u201d<\/p>\n

We welcome reader letters. Email\u00a0High Country News\u00a0at\u00a0editor@hcn.org<\/a>\u00a0or submit a\u00a0letter to the editor<\/a>. See our\u00a0letters to the editor policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This story is part of High Country News\u2019 Conservation Beyond Boundaries<\/a> project, which is supported by the BAND Foundation and the Mighty Arrow Family Foundation.<\/p>\n

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