Yesterday I was out and managed to post the interview with Chris French and Sarah from my phone.. I listened to it, and so it set a bit of context for reading the documents and trying to understand all the complexities, which will become more clear as time goes on. I feel the same way about the Reorganization as I did about the new Admin. Some things will turn out badly and some things will turn out well, perhaps the things we least expect, for unpredictable reasons. Think energy policy and the shale revolution and data centers. The best we can hope for is an organization that goes for continuous monitoring and adapting what is working. and fixing what is not. Across Administrations. Continuous improvement, instead of random attention to random specifics.
There is some apocalyptic thinking out there. My views are based on my experience working on forests, a region, the WO, and in shared services (employed directly by four forests as an Area Geneticist, and as a national resource in the NFGEL Lab), in R&D, NFS and the reorganized-away Programs and Legislation Deputy Area.
If I were to summarize the key points of the interview…
1. Several teams of Forest Service employees were involved in developing the alternatives, and the teams spoke with at least some key externals.
2. It is important to have an organization that doesn’t go over budget (is sustainable).
3. The FS started thinking about this in the previous Admin when it became clear that they were $750 mill (or Chief Moore said only $350 mill -over budget).
4. The changes should not affect employment at the Forest, some RO and WO people might end up working on a forest (adding folks) and ultimately there should be more budgets reaching the field.
5. Chris and key staff (in terms of relations with Congress) would stay in DC.
Did anyone else pick up anything important from the interview I didn’t mention?
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Here’s a link to the Reorg website. Here’s the press release. Folks are going to paint this as “Bad Trump Admin Hates FS, Wants to Give Land Away to Private Owners” and so on. I don’t think that it’s that simple. Also, I’d have trouble arguing against State Offices since I’ve supported in the past, because States have intertwined responsibilities (think wildlife) plus the FS budget has lotsa bucks going to States, plus it is likely to make it easier to coordinate with BLM.
Remember when the thinking by some was “sure they have to downsize, but they should do it thoughtfully and involve stakeholders.” This seems to be that.
I also think there is a broad-brushiness to media and to the concept of “headquarters” in the announcement. Some of you may remember that at one time hardly anyone was in the Yates Building (or some RO’s) because everyone was working at home. No doubt it’s important that some employees are in DC. At the same time, I spent 14 years in DC as an underling, and it was very difficult to hire the best people because who would want to uproot their families and move there for GS-13 and 14 salaries? I think that with dual career couples being so predominant, it makes sense to move the staffs out of DC. In fact, the Minerals folks did that as part of Transformation and it seemed to work well.. as I recall, the Director had offices in both places. Also, as an underling RPA, R&D, and NEPA sub-SES level, I mostly briefed other people who would attend important meetings. Could easily have briefed my superiors via Zoom.
My point has always been that the term “Headquarters” is thrown around by both the Admin and by anti-Admin types, but what are the actual details?
I do think that working on the Hill is valuable experience and makes important connections, but that could be a year-long assignment and not a permanent move.
I just have a feeling that those teams that Chris speaks of in the interview probably have discussed all this. I’d really like to see the documentation supporting each alternative. I suppose I have to FOIA it.
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People
Conceivably there will be those who will be better off.. with more excellent formerly WO and RO folks working in key positions now vacant. Forests and districts should have more direct access to expertise, even that they don’t currently, because different RO’s have chosen to hire different arrays of experts.
Some employees will be worse off. They may have to change jobs, get downgrades, move, or all of the above. The oldsters among us will remember this happening previously during RIFs, and generally, as certain programs get less funded or popular. It can be fun (for some of us) to learn new things and do work that people appreciate instead of more nebulous jobs.
As I recall, when a downgrade happens, employees get to keep their salary for three years? This may not be true, so please correct me.
The hardest and most disruptive part would be having to move.. if it were up to me I would give folks five years and have them work from home until then, with some required presence and travel to the unit’s location. I’m thinking some of the RO and WO types are that good that I would want to keep them- whatever it takes.
Chief Thomas had the idea that excellence in professional skills should be rewarded by increasing grade on site without having to move. I think that this restructuring effort, including, as it does, refocusing on the field level, should bring back discussion of that idea. We did post about it at one time here at TSW but I can’t seem to find it.
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Next post: What About R&D?
Thanks for this perspective–it was somewhat reassuring. However, my experience with FS reorganizations in the past has been that they often weakened the ability of FS to fulfill important management and R&D functions, especially during the first chaotic couple of years. Of course they also disrupt lives and morale of employees, and impact small communities where FS may be a large part of economic base. As a R&D national program leader for my last 13 years in FS (1996-2008) there were a lot of important interactions among WO staffs, Interagency, with Department, and with Congress that would not have been as successful (or would not have happened) remotely. These were particularly important in building and maintaining strong program budgets and interagency collaborations. I’ll be interested in your take on impacts.on R&D!
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Susan, I think you’re right about the importance of DC relationships for some of that interaction to occur. We were 15s in R&D, though, and did that outweigh the need for the lengthy commutes for some lower graded employees who did mostly “helping Regions with their expertise”? Would my meetings with OGC folks have been different if virtual? Sure, but then what about working from home.. which was all the rage for awhile. It’s all very complicated. I do think reorg will be a very different kettle of fish for R&D than for NFS.
One item not addressed yet at least nothing I have seen in any of the recaps is that for a service employees all employees were given an email from the chief at approximately 12:10 then moments later approximately 4 minutes later another email comes in with the press release about what we had just received from the chief then minutes later a invite to the Chiefs call that would begin at 12:45 comes in I’m frantically everybody is scattering trying to call people tell people about it that are in the field who have no idea because this was not a planned piece of information that was going to be given to us nor was it a planned meeting instead we’re treated so carelessly as to be given very very important information that affects everything we do and this is done in such a careless way yeah when I begin working for the forest service over 10 years ago we were told that we treat you like family well my family does not treat me like this my family will give me an advance notice especially for a family meeting with extremely important information affecting all the family it was very disturbing and disheartening to receive it that way and it’s still burns my heart
Garcia, I’m sure part of that way of rolling things out was to decrease, not increase, the tension with also managing potential leakage of information.
How would you have done the roll-out? I’m not sure that I would want to be kept back from field work to hear it… I guess people are all different.
If you are downgraded, pay is protected for 2 years.
I worked on several forests that spanned 2 states, so it’s not clear to me how that is going to work for those forests if there are state directors.
5,000 affected employees- that’s a lot…..
Thanks for the info, A. That’s a great question about two state forests. This helps the States with currently two Regions, but not so much Forests in two States. They probably have something figured out, maybe we can find out.
Sharon, I agree with the tone and direction of your POV on the reorg. As one who has advocated for more focus of resources to the field for accomplishing core mission of the FS, here is my opinion on the reorg.
Forest Service Reform – Recognize Recreation as Essential Program
The recent move by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to reorganize the U.S. Forest Service—including shifting key leadership functions out of Washington, D.C.—has sparked cautious optimism across both the powersports community and agency ranks.
For years, stakeholders—from tribes and counties to recreation groups and industry—have voiced the same concern: too much bureaucracy and not enough capacity in the field. The impact is tangible. Projects move slowly, fuels reduction lags, and recreation infrastructure—especially trails—falls behind maintenance needs.
Agency leads and field personnel are often tasked with delivering results while navigating increasingly complex processes with limited resources. The gap between policy and implementation has grown, and with it, frustration on all sides.
If done right, it could mark a long-overdue shift—moving resources, authority, and accountability closer to the landscapes and communities where they are needed most. The USDA’s emphasis on “common-sense forest management” suggests a renewed focus on active management, wildfire resilience, and getting projects across the finish line.
For the powersports community, this is not an abstract policy debate. Access depends on capacity. When field offices are understaffed or under-resourced, trails degrade, maintenance backlogs grow, and opportunities for collaboration are lost. When resources are aligned with field delivery, the opposite happens—projects move forward, partnerships strengthen, and access improves.
There is also a unique opportunity right now. The direction of this reorganization aligns with long-standing recommendations from stakeholders: streamline bureaucracy, empower field staff, and focus on outcomes. Across the West, collaborative models—tribal co-stewardship, stewardship contracting, and recreation partnerships—are already proving what works.
To succeed, it must go beyond structural change. It needs to continue shifting real resources to the field, empower local decision-making, and recognize recreation as essential infrastructure—not an afterthought.
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I don’t have a very strong opinion on whether the target structure will be good or bad. Probably a mix. What I’m most concerned about is 1) the ongoing chaos and uncertainty that has plagued us for the last year and, with this new plan, will certainly continue to plague us for at least a couple years to come, 2) the people who will be directly affected – how they will cope, how many we’ll lose, and 3) the expense – by my rough estimate, if all 260 WO employees choose to stay with the agency and relocate, that’s about $13M in relocation costs, not to mention the RO employees who will be relocated as well. We’ve lost so much productivity, staff, and morale over the last year and this plan guarantees more losses and possible even greater losses to productivity. I don’t understand where the money will come from and feel it certainly would be put to better use on the ground. We’ve spent the last nine months in a confusing swirl of ‘interim operations’, which in no way has aligned us to move to this new structure. So much time and energy was wasted on reshuffling for interim ops, and that’s going to persist. And it’ll be worse because we’ll be shifting to a wholly new structure that the agency apparently plans to figure out as it goes. Even if five or ten years from now we’re stable in the new structure and it’s working okay, how much will we lose in the process of getting there and was it worth it? There has yet to be a case made for why this change is needed. Sure there have been budget problems, but even the RF, who has been involved in these plans, couldn’t really name a reason on a call yesterday other than some people have a different idea of how government should be structured. So I’m really mad. We just want to get the work done. The administration has given us their priorities, and they’re not even all bad priorities, and yet we keep getting the rug pulled out from under us as we try and accomplish them. I’m so sad for the people whose lives will be unnecessarily upended (thankfully, even though I’m an RO employee, I think I’ll be mostly unscathed). And like someone mentioned above, the callousness with which this has been planned and rolled out, it just doesn’t feel like the agency I’ve come to know and love. It’s being done to us. We’ve been informed. And we’re welcome to use the employee assistance program.
It’s not the FS, it’s a corporate timber shill Chief and Project 2025.
Chris gets to stay in DC where his partner’s career is centered, while most everyone else has to move? The optics of that are not the best for a leader. It doesn’t show that the pain is going to be felt by all.
Why move part of Portland to Salem and Oly, and not move Vallejo to Sacramento? Why move only part of Missoula to Helena? Yes, some of this will be good and some of it bad, that’s a true statement for almost any administration. The degree to which the results will be good vs bad is the issue.
I see this resulting a significant loss of institutional knowledge, for which the agency is already in short supply.
Staff are already being ordered to do more with less. I really don’t get how this will help. Breaking stuff is easy. Building takes more time than breaking things. Sometimes things would be better if replaced with something new, but the reasons should be thoughtful. There is little evidence this administration is able to build much, let alone build things as quickly as they are breaking them.
Placerville is not that far from Sacto (43 mins to Capitol Park, according to gmaps), so perhaps that’s it. I would guess the FS already has facilities in Pville, but not downtown Sac. When I worked in Pville I avoided the RO because it was in downtown San Francisco; there were great people who worked there, but… It seems to me that getting to Placerville would be easier for most forest folks to get to than Vallejo.
At one time in the past, WO folks would complain because they came in to “punch their ticket” and they felt that instead of the older culture of “needed to move up”, they made the sacrifice of coming to DC and were not favored for desired field positions. I’ve been in both situations, anchored in DC by family concerns and itching to get back out. Perhaps there are currently both kinds of views by folks currently in the WO? Although another Anon thinks that there are many “WO employees” that are not located in DC at this point in time. There have always been WO employees “on the org charts” vs. “in the building” like at one time various specialized EMC units. Someone has a chart of all this somewhere, I’m sure.
Not sure that is accurate. I heard she has retired, is relocating, and Chris was staying behind to help the agency through this. Not good to assume anything here.
Why incur the huge financial and personal costs of moving an office full of people an hour or two down the road (Oregon, Montana)?
It’s part of the goals of Project 2025…. ‘make government employees not want to come to work’.
What about R&D? Chris commented several times that research will be supported and that homes for the scientists in closing locations will be found, including through partnering with universities. I do have a concern that research will be totally focused on immediate NFS needs, so perhaps loss of wildlife , hydrology, social science efforts. And what will become of the EF&R’s? Some mothballed?
https://wessiler.substack.com/p/the-sky-is-not-falling-on-the-forest
Wes Siler weighs in. Mostly correct imho.
If you look at the R&D closures, the labs with a significant wildlife component are eliminated. That everything in Mississippi is being shuddered is sobering. Yeah I get it, they hate the aquatics group at Oxford, but Stoneville and Starkville for years were always considered safe. Word on the street is that the EFs, especially Coweeta, Fernow and Hubbard Brook are still in the evaluation phase, but it is likely curtains for their programs continuing – again, I guess this bunch hates hydrology and water quality work. Also hearing that while some folks have been offered the opportunity to move, many have been told they are gone with their lab. Clearly this 90% driven by the Project 2025 crowd, but over the years the negativity and anti-science/intellectualism on the national forest side contributed and helped confirm to the Vandals that R&D was unneeded and simply created problems. My take was always the opposite seeing industry, DOD, state agencies, and NGOs using the research products and incorporating management recommendations widely.
These observations merit considerable thought. Yes we are a nation, but we are also thousands of individual people and places that are, as Tolstoy sort of observed, each unhappy in their own way. Any system that fails to understand this down to the ground is in danger.
That said, the current pinheaded anti-intellectualism that characterizes certain segments of our current political discourse has probably had somewhat less day-to-day impact on federal land management than generally supposed. Many federal employees charged with implementing federal land management laws live in the affected communities, and they try to interpret those directives, consistent with the law, in accordance with the relevant (and often tortured) local context. Yes, that entails personal and occupational risk, but so does *not* following that approach. To misappropriate JFK, we manage national forests not because it is easy, but because it is hard.
The lab closures are in my view profoundly self-defeating and ill-advised. But they are reversible. The first time I encountered a foolish, evidence-free federal government action, I was drinking Tang (google it kids). The country survived. We are more resilient than we think.
The Fort Bragg (CA) location is being shuttered, and that means PSW can’t keep the 60+ year Caspar Creek paired watershed study running. It’s in the midst of its third phase too.
People on the outside really have no idea what employees have endured and continue to endure.