In USFS reorg, Missoula loses regional office, retains ops, research
Laura Lundquist
(Missoula Current) Missoula knew the Trump administration had its sights on U.S. Forest Service regional offices, but Tuesday’s announcement of the final reorganization went far beyond what was predicted in July.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service, announced it would be moving the Forest Service headquarters out of Washington, D.C, to Salt Lake City, Utah.
"Establishing a western headquarters in Salt Lake City and streamlining how the Forest Service is organized will position the Chief and operation leaders closer to the landscapes we manage and the people who depend on them. This includes supporting our timber growers across the country, including those in the Southeast by prioritizing a regional office and promoting policies that boost timber production, lowering costs for consumers,” said USDA Secretary Brooke L. Rollins in a release.
It’s a move similar to one made by the first Trump administration when it relocated the Bureau of Land Management headquarters from Washington, D.C., to Grand Junction, Colo. In 2019, the Public Lands Foundation, an organization of retired public land managers, believed the move would make communication with decision makers more difficult. It also resulted in the loss of institutional knowledge and scientific expertise as 287 of 328 headquarters employees resigned. The Biden administration reversed the move in September 2021.
In addition to moving the headquarters, the Forest Service will transition to a state-based model. Instead of eight regional headquarters, state directors will be established in 15 state capitals to oversee Forest Service operations in one or more states. Three of the directors will be in eastern U.S. states. Like regional superintendents, they will oversee forest supervisors and operational priorities in their states, and they will have a small support staff.
In Montana, the regional headquarters in Missoula will be closed, although some of the functions currently housed in regional offices will be moved to six operational service centers across the nation, one of which will remain in Missoula. The state director will operate out of Helena and will oversee Montana’s seven national forests. It’s uncertain what will happen with national forests like the Bitterroot, which overlaps into Idaho.
The Lolo National Forest supervisor will remain in Missoula. It’s anticipated that the Lolo Forest Plan Revision meetings scheduled for later this month will still take place.
The Forest Service will also consolidate its research efforts under a single Forest Service research organization in Fort Collins, Colo. However, Missoula is one of 20 cities nationwide still slated to retain research facilities, although the announcement doesn’t mention which ones. Missoula is home to the Forest Service Fire Laboratory and the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute. Other Montana research facilities in Bozeman and Hungry Horse will close.
After the change was announced over social media on Tuesday, some commenters questioned the choice of Utah for the headquarters, since Utah’s politicians regularly sponsor legislation to sell off public land or transfer federal land to the states.
“This is a costly bureaucratic reshuffle that will hand more power to corporations and states like Utah to log, mine and drill the public’s forests for private profit. It punishes career staff by forcing them to move across the country,” said Taylor McKinnon at the Center for Biological Diversity. “National forests belong to all Americans. Our nation’s capital is where federal policy is made and where the Forest Service headquarters belongs.”
Mary Erickson, a retired Custer Gallatin National Forest supervisor, told High Country News that she was concerned about the headquarters move.
“I would push back on this idea that moving out of D.C. is moving closer to the people you serve. That’s not the role of the national office,” Erickson told High Country News. The national office, she added, is supposed to coordinate and create guidance based on national policy. “Forests and districts have always been the heart of local communities and local delivery.”
People also worried that putting state directors in state capitols would mean governors and legislatures could pressure state directors to approve more industrial projects on the national forests.
The Montana Department of Natural Resources Conservation already controls a lot of logging projects on federal land through the Good Neighbor Authority. In June, Governor Greg Gianforte and Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz signed a stewardship memorandum of understanding to accelerate logging and timber production by executing large-scale logging projects initially on 200,000 acres in northwest Montana. In Utah, Governor Spencer Cox signed a similar agreement in January to increase timber production on 8 million acres of Forest Service land.
On Instagram, one commenter, cast_drift_row, wrote, “Reading through a few of the articles today, and it dawned on me that this is a strategy for states, like Utah, to eventually take ownership of federal land. I hated leaving this agency before I was ready - but this admin is burning it down.”
Some people challenged Rollins’ claim that the new model would be more efficient, pointing out that 15 state offices is an increase over eight regional offices.
Back in July, Rollins issued a memorandum that wouldn’t have moved the D.C. headquarters, but it would have relocated more than half of the D.C. 4,600 staffers to one of five hub locations: Raleigh, N.C.; Kansas City, Mo.; Indianapolis, Ind.; Fort Collins, Colo.; and Salt Lake City, Utah. The regional offices would have been eliminated, but instead of creating state directors, national forest supervisors were to answer directly to the Chief of the Forest Service.
During a congressional hearing and public comment period on the subject last summer, more than 80% of the 14,000 public comments were opposed, including many tribal representatives, conservation groups and former Forest Service staffers.
Contact reporter Laura Lundquist at lundquist@missoulacurrent.com.