Cutting Down the Forest Service
How a "reorganization" could upend scientific research, conservation, and public lands
For many of us, our first introduction to the work of the US Forest Service was the sight of Smokey Bear on our TV screens, telling us only we can prevent forest fires, or Woodsy Owl on highway road signs urging us to “Give a hoot, don’t pollute!” If it wasn’t one of these national stewardship campaigns that first introduced you to the familiar Forest Service logo with its large yellow pine tree centered on a shield-shaped background, perhaps you enjoy spending your spare time skiing, boating, hiking, or hunting. If so, you’ve likely pursued these outdoor recreations on Forest Service public lands.
A federal agency overseen by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Forest Service manages 193 million acres of land spread across the country. It includes half of all the designated “wilderness” in the lower 48 states and retains the largest road network in the world, much of which passes through or adjacent to private or locally owned land. If you live in rural America, odds are high that you drive on Forest Service roads daily, or that your town’s water supply relies upon one of the critical watershed management projects of the Forest Service.
At first glance, it’s easy to confuse the Forest Service with the National Park Service, as both are federal agencies that manage public lands, but each has its own unique history and priorities. While National Parks strive to preserve their natural and cultural resources unchanged, scrupulously enforcing a “leave no trace” directive, the Forest Service has always followed a multiple-use mandate, managing their lands for many purposes — timber, recreation, grazing, hunting, fishing, wildlife, and scientific research. Across 154 USFS forests — from Tongass National Forest in Alaska, to Coconino in Arizona, Superior in Minnesota, and White Mountain in New Hampshire, just to name a few — this public-land system not only preserves some of the most spectacular wildlands on earth, but it also plays a valuable role in preserving a healthy ecosystem for humans and wildlife.
But the Forest Service’s work is now being threatened. Earlier this month, the Trump administration announced a “re-organization” of the agency. Under the plan, Forest Service headquarters will be relocated from DC to Salt Lake City, three quarters of regional research facilities will be closed and consolidated into a single site in Fort Collins, Colorado, and all nine regional offices will close in favor of a state-level model with 15 politically appointed “state directors” in the capitals of states with large Forest Service holdings.
USDA Secretary Brooke L. Rollins has lauded the “common sense” approach of the proposed restructuring, citing cost savings and the potential for improved employee recruitment. But in reality, the plan threatens to upend the work of a multi-faceted agency that’s served vital functions for industry, recreation, and scientific research for more than a century.
“The greatest good of the greatest number”
In 1876, with Western expansion moving at a thunderous pace and the clear-cutting of forests proceeding relatively unchecked, Congress first created the office of Special Agent in the US Department of Agriculture to assess the state of US forests, followed in 1881 by the expansion of the office into the Division of Forestry. A decade later, passage of the Forest Reserve Act authorized the President to designate public lands in the West into what were then called “forest reserves,” responsibility for which fell under the Department of the Interior.
In the final years of the nineteenth century, the new field of forestry was born and nurtured by a small group of visionaries including Gifford Pinchot, a close friend of Teddy Roosevelt. The efforts of these early forestry crusaders helped to secure millions of acres of forest reserves in the West. In 1905 President Roosevelt transferred the forest reserves from the Interior Department to the Department of Agriculture’s newly created US Forest Service. Pinchot led this new agency as its first Chief, charged with caring for the renamed “national forests.”
Historically, there has always been a tension between the competing demands of conservation, preservation, and optimized commercial use of Forest Service lands. In remarks given at a meeting of the American Forest Congress in January 1905, Roosevelt called upon “forest users…to consider how best to combine use with conservatism.”
An adamant proponent of utilizing the country’s resources wisely, Roosevelt wanted to ensure the long-term sustainability of those resources, not simply their preservation. The original objectives of these working national forests were to improve and protect the lands, secure favorable watershed conditions, and furnish a continuous supply of timber for the use of US citizens.
Roosevelt cared about conservation, but was also a pragmatist, and he knew he needed the buy-in of commercial interests to secure his desired end. In 1907, according to a letter written by Pinchot, the underlying philosophy of the Forest Service was that, “Where conflicting interests must be reconciled, the question will always be decided from the standpoint of the greatest good of the greatest number in the long run.”
Balancing industry with recreation, conservation, and crisis response
National forests comprise 8 percent of the total land area of the US and are logged more than any other public land — and logging in national forests is increasing significantly under President Trump. Forest Service employees engage with the logging industry, including through timber sales that deliver wood to market.
Mining, drilling, and fracked gas pipelines are also allowed on national forest lands, and the forests also contribute roughly 46% of the surface water supply in the US, providing over 83 million people the majority of their drinking water.
But the national forests are more than a source of resources. Millions of Americans visit federal public lands and national forests every year for outdoor recreation — hunters hire outfitters for extended trips into wilderness areas, families purchase bait from local marinas for a day’s fishing excursion, and visitors pay national park entrance fees, all contributing to $128 billion in annual economic activity in outdoor recreation. Additionally, outdoor recreation on US Forest Service lands supports 161,000 jobs nationwide.
To make all this activity possible, USFS employees actively manage and maintain the forests, performing tasks such as road repair, campground maintenance, trail upkeep, signage updates, thinning overstocked forests, and reforestation to build healthy forests.
The upkeep of healthy forests in particular has broader impacts. According to the World Bank, “Forests provide a critical carbon sink to slow climate change, however deforestation and forest degradation contribute about 12% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. [Thus,] protecting existing forests is key to all pathways for limiting global warming.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Forest Service plays a central role in US efforts to mitigate and prepare for the effects of climate change — it’s home to an Office of Sustainability and Climate focused on science, and in 2022 the agency launched the Forest Service Climate Adaptation Plan to work with scientists, managers, and landowners to incorporate climate change considerations into natural resource management.
That work is now at risk. Since the Trump administration’s re-organization plan was announced, conservation groups like Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility have warned that closing specialized research stations will cripple the agency’s ability to understand local forest diversity and combat climate change.
And because shifts in climate have made wildfires more intense, another aspect of the Forest Service’s work has become even more critical: wildfire prevention. The Forest Service conducts prescribed burns that clear the natural deadfall of trees and vegetation in forest areas and mimic natural cycles to reduce the risk of catastrophic fires and promote healthy forests.
The restructuring plan will disrupt the gathering and dissemination of wildfire and climate data as many regions of the US are expecting a catastrophic wildfire season. According to the National Interagency Fire Center, fire activity this year is “well above average,” with close to 17,000 wildfires already reported. Thanks to staffing cuts that began shortly after President Trump re-took the Oval Office, USFS has already lost as many as 1,400 wildfire-certified employees since last year, and a Congressional analysis found wildfire mitigation work declined by 38% in 2025 compared with the previous four years. More instability at the agency means that “the Forest Service will essentially no longer be the world’s leading wildfire research agency,” writes Julian Reyes, Chief of Staff of the Union of Concerned Scientists, and may not be equipped to respond to a challenging fire season.
But wildfires aren’t the only crises USFS works to prevent or mitigate. After Hurricane Helene in North Carolina devastated the Pisgah and Nantahala National Forests and surrounding communities in 2024, the Forest Service and the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission announced a $290 million partnership to support recovery efforts.
The USFS also studies, monitors, and — when necessary — introduces mitigation projects on public lands to protect the vitality of water, air, and soil. For example, 25 years of data collection as a part of the USFS Northwest Forest Plan revealed steady improvements in watershed health, impacting woodland birds, fish populations, streams, timber, and native plant species in Washington, Oregon, and California.
Research disruption and brain drain
Another major function of the Forest Service now at risk is the scientific research conducted in the Experimental Forests and Ranges (EFRs) — the largest and longest-lived ecological research network in the US, with many sites that are more than 60 years old. The network provides a home for long-term science and management studies in most major vegetation types, yielding a wealth of records and knowledge of ecological change in natural and managed US forest and grassland ecosystems. Crucially, much of the research going on in the EFRs is geographically fixed. You can’t pick up a stream or 100 acres of woods or grassland like those in the Northwest Forest Plan and pack them in a truck to ship cross-country.
The re-organization plan doesn’t account for those limitations, and would close 57 of 77 research facilities and all nine of the USFS regional offices across the country. With projects moved across the country, partnerships with local universities and landowners that have taken decades to build will no longer be feasible and will dissolve, and huge datasets will disappear.
The research capacities of the Forest Service also touch many areas of national industry and infrastructure like agriculture, human health and disease, as well as conservation. Among the thousands of studies currently underway are research on improving wood, paper, and pulp products for the timber industry; tracing increased insect and disease outbreaks in the wake of more intense fires that affect human populations; optimizing the use of grazing lands to support US livestock and the meat industry; and testing water filtration systems, to name a few.
The most indispensable part of the Forest Service’s research capability is the agency’s staff, made up of scientists and other experts embedded around the country. The re-organization plan poses a serious risk of continued staff loss at an agency that’s already been hard hit: last year, the Trump administration fired 3400 USFS employees nationwide. In the aftermath, more than a quarter of the service’s full-time employees left through early retirements or resignation buyouts.
Experts and current USFS employees warn that the closing of three-quarters of USFS’s research facilities will only accelerate this brain drain at the federal level and push scientific discovery back decades. Most of the scientists leading research efforts at USFS sites around the country are well-established and may well opt out of the Forest Service in favor of moving into the private sector through resignation buyouts or early retirement, rather than choose to relocate their families and careers. Further, because the plan would also move the agency’s headquarters from Washington, DC, to Salt Lake City, those staff would be pushed to relocate as well, and the agency would be isolated from other federal agencies and high-level decision-making.
According to Government Executive, many current USFS staff expressed skepticism that relocated staff would choose to stay with the agency, calling the plan “poorly thought out” and “incoherent.” One staffer commented, “Most I’ve talked to will not move, but we’ll see when it’s time to make their final decision.”
Similar staff exoduses have already happened in other parts of the federal government under Trump. In 2020 the Bureau of Land Management, a partner to the Forest Service, had its headquarters moved “out West” to Grand Junction, even though 97% of BLM staff were already in the western United States. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that nearly half of the relocated staff declined reassignment, effective reforms were not achieved, and the BLM was practically decimated by the move. Now it seems the Forest Service is headed down the same path.
“They will be hamstrung forever, because they won’t have the right people, the right research capability at the right research stations,” writes Reyes. “We’ll always be feeling these effects, probably for multiple generations.”
Favoring industry
There’s also reason for concern that the new USFS may favor timber and other extractive industry interests over ecology and science. The administration has already moved to eliminate decades-old public participation requirements for environmental reviews, effectively fast-tracking bids for mining, drilling, logging, and other commercial projects on Forest Service lands. It also wants to repeal the “roadless rule” that’s been in place for 25 years. Around 58 million acres, or 30 percent of national forest lands, are inventoried as roadless areas. The rule blocks logging and construction on 44.7 million acres. Without it, that acreage opens to extractive industries.
Tom Schultz
Beyond those rule changes, Trump has appointed Tom Schultz, a man with deep roots in the logging and timber industry, as Chief of this new Forest Service. The administration has made it clear that its priority is the increase of timber harvests by any means possible, from the Allegheny National Forest of Pennsylvania, to Shawnee National Forest in Illinois, to millions of acres of Forest Service lands in Oregon, Wisconsin, and Alaska.
“The biggest change [from the plan] will be that the agency seems to be shifting toward more extraction and development, and away from conservation and recreation,” commented Tania Lown-Hecht of the public lands advocacy group Outdoor Alliance.
What this means for Americans
While the Forest Service’s founding ethos favored providing resources found on public lands for economic growth, in the intervening 121 years the conservation of public lands has become nearly if not equally central to its mission and there has also been a measurable move towards expansive and sounder science conducted on those lands.
Given the scale of Forest Service lands and its research remit, changes to the agency will impact hundreds of millions of Americans, even those who have never stepped foot on Forest Service lands. Some of the effects may not be seen for years, including forest closures; fewer local, community-based conservation and research projects; more cases of contamination in US drinking water due to unregulated chemicals from increased industry in forests; and less scientific research overall.
Rather than chasing the “greatest good for the greatest number,” the Trump administration’s vision for the Forest Service increasingly resembles the pursuit of a more expansive, more profitable path for a few special interests (especially extractive industries) through the exploitation of public goods like our national forests. And it is those public lands and the American people who will ultimately pay the price.
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Once again we’ll have to rely on lawsuits and judges to slow things down until the rest of us can vote to return sanity to the U.S. government before too much damage is done.