USDA Plan to Gut the Forest Service Threatens America's Forests, Water, and Wildfire Preparedness
Trump Administration sabotages agency by eliminating regional offices, shuttering research stations, and setting the stage for privatizing public lands
WASHINGTON, D.C. — USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins announced a sweeping restructuring of the U.S. Forest Service that seeks to relocate the agency's headquarters from Washington, D.C. to Salt Lake City, Utah, replace regional offices with politically appointed state directors, and consolidate more than 50 place-based research stations into a single facility in Fort Collins, Colorado. The overhaul is expected to affect approximately 30,000 staff responsible for the research and management of 193 million acres of public land.
Following is a reaction from Gabrielle Berthel, forest advocate at NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council):
“The Forest Service has done much to safeguard our nation’s forests for more than a century, and while it could benefit from thoughtful reform, this is not that. It is sabotage. By gutting the agency's capacity, this administration is setting it up to fail, and that failure will inevitably be used to justify privatizing our public lands.
“This plan hands the reins of regional offices to political appointees and directs the agency to manage our forests for the sole benefit of the timber and fossil fuel industries. This move effectively forces out irreplaceable scientific expertise at the world’s largest forestry research institution at a time when wildfires and climate-driven threats demand more research. We all depend on these forests for clean air, clean water, wildlife habitat, and recreation. This so-called ‘restructure’ puts all of it at risk.”
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NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) is an international nonprofit environmental organization with more than 3 million members and online activists. Established in 1970, NRDC uses science, policy, law and people power to confront the climate crisis, protect public health and safeguard nature. NRDC has offices in New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Beijing and Delhi (an office of NRDC India Pvt. Ltd).