Viewpoint: What the Forest Service reorganization means for Missoula
Erin Clark and Zachary Bashoor
Last September, the City of Missoula passed a resolution about the pending U.S. Forest Service reorganization. The resolution emphasized the important role federal employees play in our community. In fact, at the end of 2024 there were 1,500 federal employees employed in Missoula County collectively earning more than $125 million.
Not all of these employees worked for the Forest Service, but they make up a large portion, along with Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) staff, and others.
In addition to being the home of many Forest Service employees, our community is surrounded by public lands. As Missoulians we can, in one afternoon, easily recreate on in-town trails that allow us to enjoy Missoula City, Missoula County, Montana Department of Natural Resource and Conservation, Forest Service, and University public lands. The reorganization impacts not only people our community cares about, but the Forest Service lands that we love - from the Rattlesnake to Pattee Canyon to Blue Mountain.
Last month the wait over Forest Service reorganization details ended when official guidance was released. Knowing that there would be many questions, a public website was launched at https://www.fs.usda.gov/about-agency/reorganization. This page and the resources linked to it are helpful, but they don’t answer many questions and explain what it all means for our Missoula forests and community members.
As the Forest Resources Committee for the Missoula Area Chamber of Commerce, we strive to help our community understand what’s happening on our public lands and with our public agencies. In this moment of change, we’d like to do our best to offer some clarification from our perspective about what this reorganization is likely to change and also a bit about what it's likely going to impact here.
Across a lot of the administration’s changes in the last year, including this reorganization, Forest Service leadership has emphasized investing in and reinforcing forest-level staffing and decision-making. This means that we’re not likely to see many direct changes from the reorg in our local Forest Service staff who work for the Lolo and Bitterroot National Forests.
Our local District Rangers aren’t impacted by this reorganization directly, nor are the recreation, timber, and trails staff who work to manage and steward our greater Missoula area National Forest lands, trails, and recreation areas. This is great – it means our on-the- ground, local National Forest teams are relatively unimpacted.
The real impacts could be felt by our local Forest Service employees who aren’t working directly on the Lolo and Bitterroot National Forests. Missoula has been the home of a U.S. Forest Service Regional Office since 1908, and this designation is going away.
Indications are that the staff who have been part of this regional team are largely not going to be asked to move, and the Missoula office will instead now be called an Operations Service Center. The Missoula Regional Office has substantively contributed to our nation’s Forest Service history and even a name change feels significant, although there’s no indication that a service center will have less influence.
With the dissolution of the Forest Service Regional Offices, state-level offices are being formed. Montana’s will be in Helena, and it will maintain a small team led by a State Director. All National Forest Supervisors in Montana will report to the State Director, and not Regional Directors. Montana’s State Director is in the process of being hired, this process is open to the public, and applications are being accepted through May 20 at usajobs.gov.
There were several other key Forest Service offices in Missoula. They’re likely to be impacted the most significantly, although this is also where the reorganization details are less clear.
These offices include the Rocky Mountain Research Station, Technology Development Center, and Fire Lab. Changes to these facilities and teams may tangentially impact University of Montana research programs that have worked closely with these U.S. Forest Service research offices. It is likely some of these research professionals will be asked to relocate to the new, national research center in Fort Collins.
Having this research expertise in our community has provided benefits well beyond our National Forest lands. It’s part of why we have a County wildfire program that’s been a model for other communities around the west. We’ll have to see if the Forest Service retains the knowledge and expertise of these outstanding researchers in Missoula with these changes.
There is tremendous value in having researchers close to the systems and places they are studying, and we hope our western Montana forests can continue to benefit from world-class researchers who reside right here.
And, it’s important to not get too fixated on the Forest Service changes as the only dynamic agency and natural resource teams serving our community. The BLM Missoula Field Office, Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation (DNRC), and NRCS are also important contributors. Although these agencies aren’t undergoing reorganizations, there are lots of staff changes happening there as well.
Soon Montana will have a new, state-level BLM director, new community and outreach foresters and other positions are being hired at the DNRC presently, and the NRCS’ new state director was named in late winter (Gail Berry who is Bozeman based).
The amount of change impacting our public lands management right now is enormous, with implications for Forest Service employees, agency partners, and communities enmeshed with Forest Service lands and offices. There are hidden costs and consequences to reorganizations of this scale and so far it’s hard to know the full scope of what they will be for the Forest Service. There are also questions about the legality of the reorganization. There is a possibility it won’t fully come to fruition, and even if it doesn’t there are pieces being shifted now that realistically can’t be put back together.
As Missoula’s Forest Resources Committee, we want to help our community constructively engage with and understand agency management of our community public lands. Going forward, we’ll be making an effort to share pieces like this to help unravel some of the complexity. We also encourage you to keep an eye on the Missoula Area Chamber of Commerce social media feeds, as we’re going to start introducing new agency staff our community should get to know there.
And we’ll, as always, be hosting a Forestry Tour in October during Forest Products week. If you bump into a Forest Service employee any time soon – on the trails or off – please thank them for their service and their commitment to continuing to serve our public lands.
Erin Clark and Zachary Bashoor, Missoula Chamber of Commerce Forest Resource
Committee co-chairs Erin Clark and Zachary Bashoor are Director of Development and Partnerships and CEO for Montana Forest Consultants, a Missoula-based forestry consulting company. They also serve as co-chairs for the Missoula Area Chamber of Commerce’s Forest Resources Committee.
The Missoula Chamber’s Forest Resources Committee brings together forest resources-focused businesses, non-profits, and land management agency partners to discuss forest and natural resource management in the Missoula area. The committee coordinates an annual ForestryTour, as well as various other educational events around natural resource s that are open to the public.