People are trying to scare you about FS Reorganization. I don’t know why.. clearly there are partisan shadings (it’s worse from partisan outlets and quotes from D operatives) but it seems like it might be broader than that. I’m going to try to cover it as honestly as I can, complete with historical perspective and hoping for engagement by others who know more.
I’ve read several times about State Directors being bad because..er.. timber industry. It certainly meets the “sounds vaguely plausible and fits the narrative” criterion that many people use nowadays for their writing. But let’s ask the question, how would that actually work?
Western Governors have a bipartisan group that frequently tells us what they ARE interested in. In this case, they supported State Directors. I would bet that wildfire mitigation and suppression are also high on their list, at least it is in Colorado. And I think they are quite aware of water issues as well. As my colleague DeAnn Zwight used to say, “they didn’t just fall off the turnip truck.”
For example, Bill McKibben wrote this in a piece in the New Yorker (thanks to a TSW reader who sent this in!). Now someone internationally important like McKibben weighing in on our stuff is always a News Situation That Shouts Watch Out. Still it appears to be a broader talking point and others have used it.
The Service will now have, instead of a regional headquarters, a “state coordinator” in the capitals of states where it has large holdings, and I think it’s safe to predict that these people will service connections to the interests that value timber more highly than those that value, say, water filtration, much less backpacking.
Are you kidding me, Bill? Polis and Newsom and Kotek and Grisham and.. but let’s look at acreage by State. According to Google AI.
The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) manages over 193 million acres of National Forest System land, with the vast majority located in the Western US and Alaska. Alaska leads with 21.9 million acres, followed by California (20.8 million acres) and Idaho (20.4 million acres). These lands are managed for conservation and recreation.Top Forest Service Acreage by State (Approximate)
- Alaska: 21.9 million acres
- California: 20.8 million acres
- Idaho: 20.4 million acres
- Montana: ~16-17 million acres (Region 1/4 data)
- Colorado: 14.5 million acres
- Oregon: ~13 million acres
- Arizona: 11.2 million acres
Other Key State Acreages
- Arkansas: 2.58 million acres
- Washington: ~9 million acres
- Utah: ~8 million acres
If we were to calculate NF acres (and leave out Alaska, which is unique) we can see that only Idaho is overtly red-dish. Montana has seen more D’s than R’s as governors. Arizona is hard to call. So where are these scary timber-centric Govs to be found?
Also, for folks who don’t follow this.. BLM currently has state directors. So there’s an argument to be made for consistency, from the viewpoint of everyone who doesn’t want to keep track of different agencies different regional structures, plus the state government themselves. From my experience in Region 2, forests in other states sometimes felt like they were always treated less well because our RO was in Colorado and Colorado tended to suck up most attention and resources. Plus we had “state coordinator” positions that wouldn’t be needed if there was a state director.
Finally, as we have seen, Biden Admin appointees could bypass the State Directors and select RMP preferred alternatives.. so then why would the FS be any different if an Admin felt strongly enough about something? Fed Admins can call the shots, but if they more or less ignore the governors, the states are likely to sue and/or get the decision overturned in the next Admin. This happened with a Roadless decision in California, and with various RMPs and Monuments in other States.
So if states are scary because.. politics.. it clearly works both ways. Personally, I’m biased toward the “laboratories of democracy” aspect of federalism and “making organizations easier to understand and access”. From my experience in Region 2, forests in other states felt like they were always treated less well because our RO was in Colorado and Colorado
According to the map, there are some red states in the West, and we can look at how important the timber industry is in those states, thanks to Montana’s BBER, which I think is funded by FIA. Idaho indeed has an important timber industry, but the others reddish states?
You can get a comprehensive report on forest industry in Utah
From 2020
Or Wyoming (2018)..
As we see here in individual cases at TSW, timber industry is struggling. Mills are still closing. And yet we use wood products and need to get material out of forests for fuel mitigation, hopefully without burning it in situ and releasing carbon and particulates. On the ground, in various places, they are partners producing useful things and making projects cost the taxpayer less, and putting less carbon and particulates in the atmosphere from fuels projects. I just don’t get the fear-mongering, unless it’s a holdover from the Timber Wars and makes a handy boogey-industry for those who aren’t watching carefully.
My experience on Gifford Pinchot NF in the late ’70’s – mid-’80’s was that COUNTY COMMISSIONERS put pressure on District Rangers to keep the cut high! They wanted the receipts for schools and roads to stay high. The district I was on was cutting ~ 90 MMBF/year at that time.
BTW – Washington state had DEM governors in those years as I recall.
I used to ride along when the Ranger took County Commissioners out to see the areas included in the 5 Year Action Plan for proposed timber sales. NEVER heard from the Governor’s office.
Pressure can come from a variety of levels and people at different levels of government may or may not be on the same page.
Having a DEM governor doesn’t mean the sale volume will be low.
More broadly … chaos favors the timber industry.
1) Industry is ready to pounce on any opportunity to make a disordeed siutation conform to their favored form of order.
2) It’s easy to convince the agency to retreat into its core historical competencies (e.g., timber and fire), especially those with dollar sign$ attached, and when some of those dollar$ will cycle back to the agency.
3) Abundant evidense shows the agency is bending over backwards to exclude the public and make it harder for competing interests (e.g., conservation) to participate and influence decisions.
Wyoming and South Dakota’s Republican governors would clearcut the Black Hills National Forest if they could. Extended drought in the region is causing a bump in the number of pine beetles like Dendroctonus ponderosae and Ips pini so Neiman Enterprises has compelled the BHNF to allow commercial logging on 8,000 acres of National Forest System land four miles south of Beulah, WY and on 6,372 acres and fuel treatments on a total of 15,170 acres of NFS land on the South Dakota side of the border.
So, the Forests and Grasslands of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Wyoming will have their State Director in Cheyenne. I have personally watched over the last 15 years how the Governors and Congressional Delegations of Wyoming and South Dakota have influenced the timber cut on the Black Hills National Forest. Now, when they chose a location to locate the State Director, they chose Cheyenne. Sharon, I don’t know how familiar you are with Wyoming politics, my guess is that you have a pretty good idea with what it is like there. To say they are outside the mainstream would be an understatement. The State Forester and Governor have been right in the middle of pushing to overcut the BHNF. Barrasso is in the thick of it as well.
With the current system of Regional Forester and the Regional Office, there was a way for cooler heads to prevail. I’m not saying they have done a great job, but they did provide some support to the Forest and prevented some real crazy stuff from happening. Now, when you have the State Director located in the same city as the Governor and State Forester, is it going to be more difficult to not give into their demands? I’m thinking so.
You make some good points and for some of the States, you may be spot on. But I’m sorry, I just don’t buy that some States won’t have undue influence on the State Directors. I have seen too many shenanigans to believe that. Why would they decide to put the State Director in Cheyenne? One of the top reddest States? My guess is that Barrasso had his hand in it. It’s also the location of the headquarters of Neiman Enterprises. To think that Neiman isn’t a big player in Wyoming politics is foolish. It’s a small population State and he’s a big fish in a small pond.
As usual, this thing is about politics and it’s about money. It always is. Doesn’t matter if it’s Democrats or Republicans in charge. It’s just my opinion, but to think that these State Directors won’t be unduly influenced by the State they are located in, is somewhat naive.
State directors are clearly a good idea: closer alignment with state forest practices and fire laws, BLM success is a valid trial, more direct visibility to the public and state officials. Leisz Commission circa 1980.
Please add links to any documents you know about, (or they are not online and you have them, I can scan them). I’m going to post a ChatGPT summary about it, and I hope you give a human review of what Chat says.
To be fair, i can understamd why many Americans are cautious in buying the sales pitch that this reorg will have no impacts to how the agency will manage our public lands. I know many dont want to admit it, but there are multple examples over the past year+ of our federal agencies going thru wholesale transitions in the name of efficiency, where the the end result has been worse than it was before. I’m hopefully optimistic that the FS reorg will not mimic what we saw with EPA, NOAA/NMFS, DOJ or USAID, but its way to early to tell. Furthermore, although the Chief’s announcment and subsequent interview and employee calls with French did provide a significant amout of high level details on Phase 1, we currently know only a fraction of what the agency will look or how it will operate in 12 months from now. So at this point, every reporter, blogger, keyboard warrior in the comments, and 99% of the entire FS organization is operating on assumptions as to how things will turn out.
I’m sure it will become more “efficient” in removing roadblocks to preferred “management”. That efficiency might be the result of having more people in charge who can be removed without employee ‘process’. This is a main goal of Project 2025. Reward loyalty… until the MAGA bus runs you over. See Bondi/Noem.
It feels like there is an assumption that if timber isn’t a big player in a state’s economy, then a state won’t have interest or influence in national forest management. I doubt if that’s valid (and I think the examples in these comments are evidence). (Maybe if you looked at campaign donations by industry instead?)
I could support state offices based on better coordination with BLM (a step closer to combining the agencies?). However, it’s important to preserve or establish mechanisms the represent the national interest in national forest management. Yes, political appointees have been able to do that with the BLM, maybe less so with the Forest Service. I’d like to see the national interest institutionalized in some way as a trade-off for housing key federal decision-makers closer to state interests and power.
(Montana is looking more and more like Idaho and Wyoming.)
“People are trying to scare you about the FS reorganization.” Don’t gaslight. All who care about public lands should rightly be concerned. Project 2025’s stated goal is to deconstruct the administrative state. Despite Trump disavowing Project 2025 in the lead-up to the 2024 election, his administration has been using it as a roadmap in all sorts of ways, including for public lands. After seeing the callousness and recklessness of DOGE efforts and associated RIFs, proposed agency budgets, and rollbacks on public involvement and environmental safeguards in public lands management, why would anyone believe this administration’s “reorganization” will be benign and has no ulterior motives aimed at suppressing science and enriching private interests? And the notion that states with D governors are necessarily conservation-focused and invulnerable to timber industry pressure is laughable.
I’ll take a wait and see approach to the end state of the Forest Service. As a retired fire and aviation staff member I don’t think “fire” will be too impacted. Also, the folks worried about logging and timber harvest again I think that economics will override any negative impacts. If it’s not profitable then there won’t be any bidders/sales. IMO
A. it comes up in Roadless a lot, a) there is no timber anyway in roadless areas, plus it was already uneconomic to build roads so getting rid of the roadless rule for timber is stupid and b) intact forests will be devastated by logging. We used to say working in Colorado Roadless “they need to pick a lane” but in media/politics they really don’t have to.
Having lived through the development of a State Rule in both R and D state and federal admins, it was never about timber.. it was about ski areas and coal and fuel mitigation.
Fundamentally, even if the re-org is a good idea, it’s almost certainly illegal, and being done in direct contravention of Congress’s direction, based on a speculative legal doctrine that says the agency can ignore any restrictions from Congress on how money can be spent that the Executive decides aren’t constitutional.
Generally we should be opposed to the Executive branch engaging in law breaking and undermining the checks and balances laid out in the constitution.
https://morethanjustparks.substack.com/p/the-forest-service-reorganization