Diving Deeper: Reorganization at the Employee Level and Answers From the Press Office

1.  From the Reorg Website. Having been the subject of a full-court media campaign for two projects I worked on, in which others’ talking points were elevated over real information, I am sympathetic to the folks at the Forest Service involved in this.  The Forest Service provides clarifications, and they seem to be ignored and the talking points of others develop their own momentum.    You can check out the Setting the Record Straight piece on their Reorganization website.

Now if you listened to the WAMU radio show, you would have heard the fellow from the Union of Concerned Scientists saying things that the FS had already said were not true. Some Peoples’ Narrative about what is going on, when you have an issue like this, becomes omnipresent- even though it might be completely wrong and/or assuming the worst. I also thought it was vaguely offensive for him to call R&D “the brain of the Forest Service.” That would conceivably have meant that in 1993 when Interior removed research from the Bureaus (yes, I was there, and yes, USGS is the research equivalent of the USFWS now), that they had de-brained them. Or moved the brains to a separate agency with a more nebulous linkage to the body.

2.  Updated Information from the Press Office. Based on the write-up above, here were my questions, and the answers the Press Office gave:

1) You are evaluating all the other R&D facilities but have not yet made a decision? That is what I interpret from the site.

That’s correct. We are evaluating each closely to determine the economic feasibility of retaining the facility, and we expect that proposed closure number to come down as we move through this process.

As you know, research is the foundation of our decision making as land managers. The reality is, the Forest Service’s facilities footprint is extensive and significantly larger than can be supported under current congressional appropriations, which are declining for facilities — approximately $37 million less in FY 2026 compared to FY 2025. Additionally, our deferred maintenance has grown to $3 billion, and retaining a footprint we cannot adequately maintain would not be responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars. We have to make a change here so that our research work can continue.

Again, these are proposed closures, nothing is final. We are taking a hard look at the cost of each facility, its utilization, and its deferred maintenance needs – while supporting our people. These decisions are about facilities and upkeep – not jobs or research programs. In all cases, the research and the research staff will continue their important work.

2) Are you not closing any NFS or S&PF facilities?  It’s not really clear.

No, not as part of reorganization. That said, we are in the process of reviewing our broader facilities footprint (much like our fleet) to ensure we are consolidating where it makes sense.

3.  Guesses as to What That Means for Employees- At the Employee Scale

These are my guesses based on what I’ve heard and previous experience with moving offices and changing organizational structures.  But I did not hear this from anyone internal so would really appreciate clarifications.

a) For R&D, one national organization means employees would report through a different structure.  Perhaps if you were in budget in the SO station, you would now be part of a national R&D budget service center.  The new boss of the center would assign work.  If I were the new boss, (as with a national NEPA shop), I would take knowledge and relationships of my employees into account when assigning work, such that former SO units might be serviced by the former SO budget person.  But the employees  don’t have to physically move- it sounds like, unless they are in one of the closing facilities, they would just have a new boss and a new set of work to which they could be assigned.  Not to pick on other Stations but Rocky Mountain, for example, has an extraordinarily good outreach compared to some.  Hopefully this would improve all (and not drag down the over-achievers, always a risk).  How would this improve things? I think there are two pieces… national support can specialize better in niche areas, and having a national research program may enable the agency to better find overlaps and opportunities to partner better.  Dave Cleaves and I both did national research program reviews for wildfire and genetics, respectively, and found some of this, but at the time Station Directors were very territorial- with the WO and with each other.

The idea is probably that .. ultimately… having one administrative team will reduce overhead and get more bucks to the scientists, similar to Districts and Forests with NFS.   But there are many managerial pitfalls as no manager wants to lose budget or staff, consistent attention has to be applied.   We also don’t know how AI will transform administrative work. And some centralized operations have been very successful (Content Analysis Team IMHO) and others not so much (ASC), again, apparently based on how they are managed.

At least, that’s how I currently see it would play out.. folks would report to different people and have different tasks over a broader geographic area.  We’ve all had new bosses and been told to do and/or supervise different things (one day my boss told me I was to supervise Sustainable Operations for the Region). for the good of the Outfit, so would this be different?

b) Facilities closures and moving within the commuting area.  I don’t understand the concern entirely about this.  The history of the FS is that leases come and go, and employees move to different buildings.  The R2 Regional Office moved not that long ago.  The most difficult move I recall was one time when R&D moved from the Yates Building to Rosslyn. What made that difficult is that somehow I was in charge of deciding what to do with old paper files for VMPR (“vampire” for short, Vegetation Management and Protection Research).  We had things like the original plates for the Silvics book; records of the effort to assess how much wood could be used for fuel during the Carter Administration, and we had to decide what to do with it. Fortunately in the building was the Forest Service historian who was helpful.  I do know that if we’d had scanners then, I would have scanned a great deal of it.   Anyway, my point is that moving offices has not been unusual.  Moving computers and field equipment to a new location is not unusual.  Certainly moving hard drives is easier than moving boxes of paper files.  When it comes to currently functioning labs, that’s a different story.  My guess is that those are the kinds of things that the Forest Service is talking about now during the “further evaluation.”

As I said before, these are just my guesses of how things are supposed to work. Others out there have better information, so please add in the comments.