Smokey Bear serves as a crucial reminder that safeguarding against wildfires is a collective responsibility, which also involves supporting wildfire science—a resource currently at risk. President Trump’s strategy to curtail our understanding of wildfires, especially during a super El Niño year with heightened drought threats, is far from prudent.
In a recent piece, I discussed how the Trump administration’s initiative to overhaul the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service and close 57 out of its 77 research and development (R&D) centers is less about efficiency and more about dismantling yet another scientific body aimed at safeguarding people, environments, and livelihoods.
The Forest Service has since clarified on its website that these R&D closures are “possible” rather than definite. Nevertheless, the emerging details of the restructuring paint a clear picture: this plan would effectively dismantle the world’s leading and largest wildfire research organization at a time when wildfire risks, climate impacts, and economic losses are intensifying. With future prospects of drier and hotter conditions, along with more severe wildfires, losing this research would severely hamper our ability to manage forests effectively in the context of climate change.
Our cherished mascot, Smokey Bear, understands that President Trump’s intent to halt climate research, which would let forest fuels accumulate and diseases proliferate, severely limits our ability to avert wildfires without evidence-based scientific guidance.
Let’s examine what is at stake if the Trump administration proceeds with this plan.
Vital Research for Safe Evacuations—at Risk
Consider the Pacific Wildland Fire Sciences Laboratory in Seattle, slated for closure under the reorganization. Scientists there conduct research on fire impacts concerning human health, ecosystem functionality, and wildlife habitats. Current initiatives involve updating fire threat maps for rural communities and supporting land managers and firefighters in identifying the optimal times for prescribed burns to mitigate fire hazards and enhance forest resilience.
The lab is also responsible for the Fire and Smoke Map, a tool used annually by millions to monitor fire activities and smoke exposure, with significant public health and economic implications. Additionally, the lab conducts fire and smoke modeling research, fire behavior, and examines the air quality impacts of wildlife. This research is instrumental in informing fire evacuation strategies that determine whether families have minutes or hours to evacuate safely.
Closing the lab would not only slow research but also compromise a real-time safety tool that communities depend on.
Loss of Generations of Scientific Investment
Long-term research is crucial because it uncovers patterns, causes, and effects that are not visible in short-term studies. This is particularly true for complex forest systems. For instance, understanding how fuel treatments influence wildfire behavior or how recurring droughts impact forest health requires years of observation and comparison. That’s what makes the Forest Service’s experimental forests, some over a century old, so invaluable. These forests provide long-standing data that would be irreplaceable if this administration were to literally destroy them.
In Montana
At Hungry Horse, shutting down operations would interrupt research affiliated with the nearby Coram Experimental Forest, where Forest Service scientists have spent decades studying western larch regeneration, silviculture, post-fire forest recovery, and climate-informed management, generating datasets and management strategies that rely on consistent on-site monitoring and cannot be simply relocated. Western larch forests are diverse, productive, and vital for timber production. Additionally, western larch regenerates well in exposed soil and sunny settings, making it an essential species for reforestation, especially in a changing climate.
The Rocky Mountain Research Station in Bozeman, MT, also scheduled for closure, supports the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program, which provides long-term data on forest conditions and resources across the US. The Coram Experimental Forest helps support FIA through a better understanding of specific species like western larch. Reducing support for this pivotal long-term research weakens essential forestry science in Montana.
In the White Mountains of New Hampshire
At Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, over 60,000 samples of water, soil, plants, and physical cores have been collected over decades. These samples are meticulously stored and archived in environmentally controlled facilities, yet the recent Forest Service reorganization puts these samples at risk should the facilities be closed.
Anthony Veltri, a former USDA Forest Service senior policy analyst, succinctly highlights the importance and grave risk of losing these crucial long-term ecological data:
“Hubbard Brook’s real value is not just what it tells us today. It is the fact that it preserves reality in a form future scientists can still interrogate. The long-term environmental record at Hubbard Brook represents profound option value: the ability to ask future questions of past reality. Nobody collecting water samples in 1963 was thinking about PFAS [“forever chemicals”]. The instrument outlasted the question it was built to answer and became the foundation for questions nobody had thought to ask yet. That argument applies equally to PFAS baseline contamination tracking, acid rain attribution, watershed chemistry, and climate monitoring continuity.”
In the US South
The Southern Institute of Forest Genetics in Saucier, MS serves as a central hub for forest genetics and long-term tree improvement research in the US South. It is also facing closure, putting the Harrison Experimental Forest and their work on Southern forests at risk. This research site holds decades-old genetic field trials and experimental plantings that track tree growth, pest, and disease resistance, and climate responses over time—research that cannot be replicated or relocated once abandoned, and that directly informs tree improvement programs used across the South.
Apart from their scientific value, many Southern forests host iconic landscapes tied to cultural identities, such as coastal cypress swamps and longleaf pine savannas. Moreover, southern communities derive a portion of their drinking water from these forested ecosystems.
For instance, water from state and private forest lands serves more than 16.7 million people in Texas alone. Southern forests are not just a research resource but also a vital part of keeping rural economies strong and prosperous. Southern forestry contributes over $250 billion in economic output and employs more than 1.3 million people. The health, productivity, and ecological services of Southern forests sustain communities, making the research conducted in these areas invaluable.
In the Pacific Islands
The Institute of Pacific Islands Forestry (IPIF) in Hilo, Hawaii, which is the Forest Service R&D’s only facility in the Pacific, is also set to close. Researchers here have spent decades studying the threats of diseases and invasive species to unique tropical plants. R&D scientists also explore topics such as tropical forest conservation, drought, and wildfire risk—issues that are increasingly pressing across Hawaii and other Pacific islands due to climate change.
The closure of the Hawai’i forestry station could lead to the disappearance of Big Island forests within 20 years. Forest Service researchers are striving to understand rapid ʻōhiʻa death (ROD), a fungal disease that has decimated 1 million to 2 million native trees, the “backbone of Hawai’i’s tropical forests.” According to an extension forester with the University of Hawai’i, the Forest Service IPIF facility undertakes about 75% of ROD research.
Long-term drought research in Hawai’i has demonstrated how drought conditions increase wildfire risk during El Niño years, providing essential historical context to prepare for the anticipated super El Niño this year, as well as future climate challenges. Additionally, this analysis uncovered $80 million in agricultural relief payments linked to drought events since 1996. I participated in this multi-agency research, and it is disheartening to witness a reduction in this crucial climate change research. Land managers will lack the necessary information to adapt and mitigate expected climate threats in the near future.
Elimination of Practical Climate Adaptation Tools
In Michigan, a state where forests cover 56% of the landscape, four Forest Service R&D facilities are scheduled for closure. This will have direct consequences on the communities of East Lansing and Wellston, as well as the Upper Peninsula communities of Houghton and L’Anse. Local and state partnerships are at risk, as many Forest Service R&D staff collaborate directly with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and universities. For instance, the Northern Institute for Applied Climate Science (NIACS), located in the Northern Research Station Forestry Sciences Lab in Houghton, MI, might be relocated and consolidated to “nearby” labs, including in Madison, WI. Additional challenges with relocating lab staff to other facilities include storing research equipment and scientific records, as well as providing physical space for staff.
Among the tools developed and hosted by NIACS is a comprehensive set of adaptation menus that guide natural resource management and planning under climate change. These include adaptation strategies, approaches, and tactics for forested ecosystems, carbon management in forests, urban forests and human health, wildlife, and fire management. The underlying research and personnel behind these adaptation menus and related tools could be discontinued amidst this chaotic reorganization.
This is not academic theory. These tools are used by individuals making real decisions about fuel reduction, forest restoration, and community fire resilience—often in rural areas with limited capacity to recover from disasters. Removing these resources under the guise of “efficiency” leaves local managers operating in the dark.
Impact on Local Communities and Knowledge
The Trump administration’s plan to relocate staff not only disrupts research but also affects the communities that support and rely on essential forestry research.
Research does not occur in isolation. As many Forest Service labs are deeply embedded in local communities and universities, dismantling these research projects also erodes the local knowledge, hard-earned trust, and community involvement cultivated over decades, which make the science effective.
For example, Forest Service R&D scientists work on projects to serve natural resource managers and land managers, partner with university faculty to leverage their data and findings, and mentor the next generation of scientists by serving on their research committees. As reported in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, students and faculty at the University of Nevada Reno are losing access to long-term forested sites, jeopardizing critical research on post-fire recovery of seedlings.
Decades of localized knowledge cannot simply be replaced by moving individuals to a central office thousands of miles away.
Smokey’s Verdict
Smokey Bear’s straightforward message, “Only you can prevent wildfires,” emphasizes the importance of taking action and supporting those on the ground.
This reorganization achieves the opposite. It disperses scientists from their local communities, ends irreplaceable research, and weakens our ability to respond to wildfires, climate change, and economic risks at a critically inopportune moment.
This is yet another assault on federal science and scientists. Disregarding science as a public good will not only hinder the American scientific endeavor compared to global competitors but also leave communities less safe and less healthy.
If this plan proceeds, the loss will not be abstract. It will cut off generations of research at the knees, halting the data collection essential for addressing current and future challenges. Relocating research facilities jeopardizes clean drinking water and essential fire safety tools today, and our capacity to recover from drought and wildfires in the future.
Smokey understands the stakes. We should too.
