US Forest Service Restructure

The Trump administration has decided to restructure the U.S. Forest Service, and I condemn that decision.

This is not a minor change. The Forest Service headquarters is being moved from Washington, D.C. to Salt Lake City, Utah, and the agency is shifting to a new state-based structure. Current reporting also says 57 of 77 research facilities are slated to close.

The administration says this will bring leadership closer to the forests. That sounds nice, but it misses the point. A national agency does not just need to be near the land. It needs a seat at the table where policy, budgets, and long-term decisions are made. That still happens in Washington.

And we have seen this mistake before. During Trump’s first term, the Bureau of Land Management headquarters was moved out of Washington. The result was a serious loss of staff and experience. Interior later said that of the 328 positions moved out of Washington, only 41 employees actually relocated.

That matters because forests are not abstract. They are local. They are complex. And they depend on people who understand them on the ground. When you shut down that much research capacity, you are not streamlining government. You are gambling with expertise that takes years to build and cannot be quickly replaced.

This decision deserves far more scrutiny than it has received. If it weakens local knowledge, shrinks research capacity, and pulls leadership farther from where federal decisions are actually made, that is not reform. It is reckless, and it is a step in the wrong direction.