Last week, the Trump Administration intensified its efforts against federal research and scientists by significantly reducing the capabilities of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service and its research and development (R&D) branches. Beyond its crucial firefighting role, the Forest Service’s scientists are pivotal in safeguarding nearly 200 million acres of national forests and grasslands, especially through their scientific insights into climate change’s impact on lengthening and intensifying wildfire seasons, as well as rising insect and disease outbreaks.
The agency’s broad restructuring plan, which involves relocating its headquarters to Utah and dispersing staff, poses irreversible harm to the federal scientific community. This change diminishes the nation’s ability to confront escalating climate threats, with fewer experts available to predict and manage wildfires. The move also undermines efforts to protect forests that ensure clean air and water and support rural livelihoods. With rising temperatures and drier conditions expected, the reshuffling of Forest Service personnel presents an immediate risk of heightened wildfire threats in the near future.
Nobody wants this
Based on my experience as a civil servant working alongside Forest Service R&D scientists at the USDA, this relocation is detrimental to Americans, producers, foresters, and rural communities. The plan involves relocating the agency’s headquarters to Salt Lake City and closing 57 out of 77 research facilities across 31 states. Many R&D personnel will likely be consolidated into a centralized office in Fort Collins, Colorado.
The Forest Service’s mission involves managing over 193 million acres of land, including 154 national forests and 20 national grasslands, to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of these areas for current and future generations. The agency’s R&D division provides independent science to the public, forming the basis for many forest management decisions. This work is accomplished on a budget that is about 0.6% of the proposed $1.5 trillion national defense budget. At approximately $9 billion, the entire Forest Service budget would cover only 18 days of military operations against Iran, assuming $500 million is spent daily.
As the National Coordinator for the USDA Climate Hubs program, I collaborated closely with many Forest Service R&D scientists, who are now being forced to leave their research stations. I fondly recall meeting Smokey Bear at the San Bernardino National Forest while learning about wildfire management strategies. The news of this relocation and reorganization deeply saddened me, as it means many of my colleagues will have to leave the agency, move to different states, or change careers entirely. This is truly devastating.
Forest Service R&D scientists have been vital in offering insights into climate-related impacts and forestland adaptation, including their interaction with agriculture. For example, the Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station worked with regional geneticists to develop the Seedlot Selection Tool, which assists forest managers in selecting planting materials based on current and future climates.
Another crucial resource at risk of being discontinued or lost is the Fire Management Adaptation Menu, created by the USDA Northern Forests Climate Hub and Forest Service Northern Research Station. The loss of this information would deprive land managers of tools to anticipate climate change impacts and adapt forests to evolving fire regimes.
Why is relocating researchers significant? The More than Just Parks Substack highlights the impact:
“You cannot move a thirty-year watershed study. You cannot relocate a decades-long old-growth monitoring program. You cannot box up a forest and ship it to Colorado. When these facilities close, the experiments die. The datasets end. The partnerships with universities that took generations to build collapse. And the institutional knowledge of the scientists who ran those programs walks out the door, because the administration damn well knows most of them won’t follow a forced relocation to a single consolidated office that has nothing to do with the ecosystems they’ve spent their careers studying.”
Robert Bonnie, a former USDA undersecretary, expressed a similar sentiment: “Nobody is asking for this. None of the farm groups want this. No one in conservation wants this. Nobody.”
Compromising US wildfire research
According to its own records, the Forest Service R&D is the “world’s leading wildland fire research organization.” Their work includes studying how climate change alters fuel moisture and fire behavior through warmer and drier conditions. Scientific evidence shows that current wildfires differ significantly from those 30 years ago. They occur at higher elevations, span longer fire seasons, spread rapidly, and occur under more extreme fire weather conditions.
These prolonged and intense wildfire seasons are destroying homes, livelihoods, and lives. Furthermore, expensive wildfire seasons are increasing property insurance premiums and exacerbating housing affordability issues, according to UCS Senior Policy Director for Climate and Energy Rachel Cleetus. As my colleague noted, “Without robust science, staffing, expertise, and resources, as well as fair pay for wildland firefighters, the job of tackling worsening wildfire seasons will be much harder—and that could put people in greater danger.”
The extent of disruption across R&D sites will lead to a significant loss of expertise and set back scientific progress by decades, particularly on issues pertinent to the Forest Service, such as wildfires, pests, and post-fire restoration.
Threat to forests as a land carbon sink
The Trump Administration’s restructuring poses a threat to forests’ role as a carbon sink, with management decisions under different climate scenarios impacting long-term carbon outcomes. Historically, forests have absorbed about one-third of human-generated heat-trapping emissions, but climate change endangers this carbon sequestration capacity. In Canada, forests have become carbon emitters due to record-breaking wildfire seasons and severe insect outbreaks.
In the US, the future of our land carbon sink is uncertain, with climate change significantly influencing forest trajectories. Wildfires threaten to release vast amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, negating a forest’s ability to absorb carbon for years. Droughts can lead to tree mortality and facilitate insect outbreaks.
Forest Service researchers conduct critical studies on these dynamics, relying on the agency’s long-term monitoring programs to enhance our understanding of how forests respond to climate change. Losing this scientific and forest management capacity jeopardizes our immediate and long-term ability to respond to climate-driven wildfires and leverage forests to adapt to and mitigate climate change.
Cutting science agencies benefits no one
Previous relocations by the Trump administration, such as the USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Headquarters, resulted in negative outcomes and weakened those agencies. The relocation of federal agencies from Washington, DC, was a tactic to reduce the role of science, data, and evidence in decision-making. In 2019, the USDA’s ERS and National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) were moved to Kansas City for reasons such as “cost savings,” “better customer service,” and “better attract and retain staff.”
The BLM, a key federal land management agency and Forest Service partner, also moved its headquarters to Grand Junction, despite 97% of its staff already being based in the western US. According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), nearly half of the relocated staff refused reassignment, and the agency’s reorganization did not yield effective reforms.
Having worked at BLM headquarters in 2024, I observed that the agency remained constrained by the 2019 relocation, facing staff shortages, missing expertise, and loss of institutional knowledge.
This situation mirrors the Forest Service headquarters’ move to Salt Lake City, which will disrupt essential services and critical research, hastening the decline of its renowned research capabilities. Observing the outcomes at BLM, ERS, and NIFA, the Forest Service will struggle to coordinate issues across states and become less prominent in key policy discussions with other land management agencies.
The detrimental effects of President Trump’s recent industry deregulation push are most evident in the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) chaos. The now largely defunct department’s indiscriminate cuts, combined with budget proposals to drastically reduce funding and staffing for numerous federal agencies, reveal the true aim of these actions: dismantling competency, experience, and effectiveness at federal agencies. The administration is not pursuing efficiencies or savings but rather a more expansive, profitable path for special interests by exploiting public resources like our national forests. Industry profits from horizontal trees, not vertical ones.
If the Trump Administration proceeds with this restructuring as planned, Forest Service R&D would join the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as casualties of this administration’s deliberate, perilous subversion.
The dismantling of the Forest Service is another instance of the Trump Administration’s assault on science. The Administration has already started dismantling our world-class earth system science research and modeling center, NCAR, a public asset that, if broken up, would have serious economic, national security, and public safety repercussions, including wildfire research and preparedness. Similarly, the Trump administration has requested Congress to effectively defund NOAA’s research division.
As Smokey Bear has taught millions, only YOU can prevent forest fires. In this case, only YOU can prevent actual forest fires by opposing the Trump Administration’s plan to dismantle the Forest Service and ensuring that vital science on wildfires, climate, and carbon persists.
Even with media coverage of this disruptive and corrupt initiative, one must ask—not if a tree falls in the forest with no one to hear it, does it make a sound—but if the Trump Administration disassembles the Forest Service and no one intervenes, does it survive?
