Big organizational changes could be coming to the U.S. Forest Service under an effort to restructure its parent agency, the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The plan, released last week by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, would eliminate the Forest Service’s nine regional offices over the next year, including offices in Missoula, Mont., Lakewood, Colo., Albuquerque, N.M. and Ogden, Utah.
The National Association of Forest Service Retirees, which includes all former chiefs, said they were “extremely concerned” about the reorganization in a letter to Senate Agriculture Committee leaders. Board Chair Steve Ellis, who retired after several decades of work with the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management, said he doubts that getting rid of regional offices will lead to more efficiency.
“What they’re doing is just pushing more work down on fewer people at the field level,” he said. “These are the same people that are trying to meet your timber target and provide for recreational services to the public.”
The regional office structure at the Forest Service has been in place since 1908. The offices oversee several forest supervisors, manage budgets and ensure operations are consistent across forests and districts.
Ellis said his organization is open to reorganization efforts. Regions have been consolidated in the past and forests have been merged. But he said the plan to do away entirely with one of the four levels of Forest Service management didn’t appear to consider impacts on the ground.
“They didn't take time to ask what these people do and what impact this will have to the public,” he said.
The outcome for these regional staffers is unclear. During a hearing this week, Deputy Agriculture Secretary Stephen Vaden told senators some could be asked to move as the agency sets up five new hubs away from Washington D.C. He said removing “middle management” is intended to reduce bureaucracy.
He also said the agency chose Salt Lake City and Fort Collins, Colo. as two of its hub locations in part because they’re important to the U.S. Forest Service.
“It makes sense for more of the Forest Service to be located actually close to the forest it's in charge of managing,” Vaden said.
He noted the Salt Lake City site could be instrumental for wildfire aviation resources. The USDA memo said firefighting efforts would not be affected. It also said it would keep in place some human resources functions in Albuquerque, N.M., as well as the Fire Sciences Laboratory in Missoula, Mont.
But other scientists could be relocated as the agency intends to consolidate its five research stations to a single location in Fort Collins. That could include those who study eastern forests across the country.
“You take a scientist from Ashville, North Carolina, where that's where his focus of research is, and move him to Fort Collins? Makes no sense whatsoever,” said Dan Nolan, who retired as a deputy director for the Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain region in Colorado. “They're thousands of miles away from the area where they're focusing their research.”
In response to intense scrutiny of the reorganization plan from senators this week, USDA’s Vaden emphasized that the announcement was just the first step. He said the agency would begin meeting with employees and stakeholders to discuss the changes.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, Boise StateCRED Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Colorado and KANW in New Mexico, with support from affiliate stations across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
