The U.S. Forest Service is moving its headquarters out of Washington, D.C. to Salt Lake City, Utah, the Trump Administration announced Tuesday as part of a “sweeping restructuring” of the agency.
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) officials, who oversee the Forest Service, said the move West was a “common-sense approach to improve mission delivery” by bringing leadership closer to much of the land they manage.
"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,” said Agriculture Secretary Brooke L. Rollins.
The announcement follows a restructuring blueprint the USDA released last year, which was met with concern over its plan to move leadership away from key decision makers in Washington and the removal of the longstanding regional office structure.
Indeed, the final plan will relocate the Chief of the Forest to Salt Lake City, along with about two-thirds of D.C. employees, with more to be scattered across other offices. All nine regional offices, which grouped nearby forests together, will close. Instead, the agency is adding several state leadership offices, more closely mirroring the structure of the Bureau of Land Management.
Idaho and Wyoming are set to gain state director’s offices in Boise and Cheyenne. Previously, those states were split between Forest Service regions which were headquartered in other states.
Some of the administrative and technical functions of the regional offices will shift to a handful of “operation service centers,” including in Albuquerque, N.M., Missoula, Mont. and Fort Collins, Colo. Fort Collins will also host the new headquarters of the Forest Service’s Research and Development arm, absorbing several other research stations. The agency said its fire program will continue to report to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise.
Public comments on the USDA’s broader reorganization proposal last year were overwhelmingly negative, according to the agency’s own analysis. 82% of the 14,000 submissions expressed negative sentiment.
The National Association of Forest Service Retirees, for example, whose members include former chiefs, wrote they were “extremely concerned” about the plan to eliminate the regional offices and consolidate research leadership in a single location.
“We do not see anything in the proposal that would improve services or efficiency,” Steve Ellis, the previous chair of the organization, wrote last summer. “Rather, it appears to simply cut staffing and funding without describing how the work will continue to get done. It provides the classic direction to do more with less.”
However, the Forest Service’s announcement this week garnered some bipartisan support.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, called it a “big win for Utah and the West,” and celebrated “hundreds of jobs” coming to his state. Jared Polis, Colorado’s Democratic governor, also offered his enthusiasm in the USDA press release.
"More than a third of Colorado is federal land including world class ski areas like Vail and Breckenridge, and having a closer relationship with our federal partners is important to maintaining those lands and the communities around them,” he said in a statement.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between KUNR, Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNC in Northern Colorado, KANW in New Mexico, Colorado Public Radio, KJZZ in Arizona and NPR, with additional support from affiliate newsrooms across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Eric and Wendy Schmidt.
