USFS Reorganization Boondoggle

Updated September 12, 2026. This page went up in April, when the reorganization was still just an announcement. It has since become the machinery behind two live rulemakings, which is why it is worth reading again rather than filing away.

The Forest Service has proposed rescinding the Roadless Rule, with comments open until October 6, and rewriting its travel management rule so that forest roads are presumed open to motor vehicles unless someone documents a reason to close them, with comments closing September 23. Both of those hand road and logging decisions down to local officials. This reorganization is what decides who those officials are. Fifteen state directors, and, as The Riparian Zone reports, district rangers and forest supervisors on track to become at-will employees who can be dismissed without cause. The people who sign off on a road closure would be the people who can be fired for signing off on a road closure. Read all three together, and see our Roadless Rule and travel management calls to action for the two with deadlines.

From the USDA's Factsheet: "the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Forest Service announced it will move its headquarters to Salt Lake City, Utah. Secretary Brooke L. Rollins commented: "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. In the past year we have returned the Forest Service to the leading forestry and fire management organization in the world. Proper forest management means a healthy and productive forest system that provides affordable, quality lumber to build homes right here in America and it means preserving and protecting the beautiful landscapes we are blessed with across this great country."

HOWEVER wonderful Rollins' announcement may sound to some in the forest products industry, the move comes with dire consequences for the environment, climate, ecotourism, and all the creatures that depend on our forests for survival. Additionally, it could not come at a worse time for the fire season and a drought year, when regional offices who process firefighter staffing are no more. USFS manages weather and climate observing networks, operates fire weather forecasting centers, and conducts climate and fire weather and behavior research. While the administration assures this is a simple consolidation to a single location in Fort Collins, CO, as part of the planned reorganization, all of the more than 50 USFS research and science stations will close. Undoubtedly the impacts of this will hurt forecasting and climate observing and reporting for 2026.

Essentially, the Trump administration is dismantling the U.S. Forest Service. 193 million acres of public land, bigger than Texas, is being handed over to political operatives and industry insiders. It is important to recognize that this massive restructuring of our national forestry agency is being done by executive action, with no action being taken by Congress. The Trump administration is replacing all of it, the offices, the scientists, the institutional knowledge, the professional independence, with fifteen political appointees called "state directors", embedded in state capitals alongside the very governors, legislators, and industry lobbyists who have spent their careers demanding that the Forest Service log more, protect less, and get out of the way.

But we are not powerless. We need pressure and we need it now.

Call your senators. Call your representative. Call your Governor. Not next week or later. Now.

Tell them this is not a reorganization, it is the restructuring of a federal agency by executive action, and Congress must intervene. Tell them to block all funding for this relocation and restructuring until the full implications have been studied, debated, and voted on by the people's elected representatives.

Tell them you know what happened to the BLM. Tell them an 87 percent staff loss is not efficiency. Tell them that three people showing up to Grand Junction is not "moving closer to the land". Tell them that if they allow this to proceed, the Forest Service will suffer the same at twenty times the scale.

Tell them you know the endgame. Tell them this is the on-ramp to land transfer. Tell them that handing the headquarters to Utah while Utah is actively suing to seize your public land is not a coincidence, it is a tell.

And tell every conservation organization, every outdoor recreation company, every hunting and fishing group, every single person who has ever set foot on a national forest and felt something, that the time for polite statements and concern is over.

Stay loud. Stay relentless. They want us tired and resigned. Don't give them that satisfaction.

These forests belong to you.