Forest Service: Culture, History, Morale, Organization, Future

(1) We still don’t have a of the USDA AARP; it would be interesting to get Interior’s as well, at least the parts that refer to the FS and BLM.   We could FOIA them, and will if we can’t get it. But we are still waiting on FOIAs from last year, so.. Here’s a link to what’s supposed to be in them. Below is an excerpt.

1. II. Principles to Inform ARRPs
   ARRPs should seek to achieve the following:
   1. Better service for the American people;2
   2. Increased productivity;
   3. A significant reduction in the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) positions by
   eliminating positions that are not required;
   4. A reduced real property footprint; and
   5. Reduced budget topline.
   Pursuant to the President’s direction, agencies should focus on the maximum elimination
   of functions that are not statutorily mandated while driving the highest-quality, most efficient
   delivery of their statutorily-required functions.
   Agencies should also seek to consolidate areas of the agency organization chart that are
   duplicative; consolidate management layers where unnecessary layers exist; seek reductions in
   components and positions that are non-critical; implement technological solutions that automate
   routine tasks while enabling staff to focus on higher-value activities; close and/or consolidate
   regional field offices to the extent consistent with efficient service delivery; and maximally reduce
   the use of outside consultants and contractors. When taking these actions, agencies should align
   closures and/or relocation of bureaus and offices with agency return-to-office actions to avoid
   multiple relocation benefit costs for individual employees.
   Agencies should review their statutory authority and ensure that their plans and actions are
   consistent with such authority.

(2) The Hotshot Wakeup had a podcast out yesterday on the Oklahoma fires, more resignations, and some discussions he had with people at the Forest Service  Now, we don’t know that that what those folks said is the the case, because he heard from some “sources not allowed to speak on record.” At the same time, many traditional outlets use the same kind of sources including our main other outlet, E&E News.  A brief summary: RF’s taking deferred resignation, there were plans floated to get rid of Regions before new Admin due to budget crisis, 9 Regions brought down to 3, budget saving, budget is in so much trouble- how dire it was.  When THW asked about where the bucks went, a source said that  BIL and IRA given billions give the bucks to NGOs, they were asked to get the money out ASAP, slush fund recycled into political campaigns, organizations friendly to those in power at the time.  Negligence or on purpose, the source’s  opinion was that it was on purpose, and the new Admin   ” inherited a budgetary nightmare”.

How could we know what the truth is?  Someone from relatively high in the food chain would have to tell us, and they are  unlikely to do so; either they’re still working or signing agreements about what not to talk about.  Certainly there was an unusual  cone of silence about the Keystone Agreements that Dave Mertz and I could not penetrate completely.  We did not receive answers from the folks administering the program, and many of my usual sources stopped talking to me entirely when I brought up the subject.  At the same time,  giving funding to your friends is part of being in an Admin.. but it’s the recycling to political campaigns that seems unlikely or unusual.  At the same time, people delving into the National Baptist/Coconino project wondered about some of the organizations skimming bucks in the name of equity (check out the comments and links to organizations). We only heard about the NBC  grant via a whistleblower who was concerned about the religious connection; how many more of these (non- Keystones) are out there?  How could we even find out where these apparently extra layers of overhead would ultimately go?

(3). Instead of an all-employees meeting for Forest Service employees, Chief Schultz had a “Chat with the Chief” video, in which he answered questions from specific employees. I think they missed the historical boat on this video by not mentioning Chief Silcox, but it didn’t affect the main point, that the Chief was new to the agency and that that is unusual.  I don’t think the format works, as the length makes it superficial for anything worth diving into.  Plus, I’m sure that the District Ranger is worth getting to know, but the time constraints mean that any hints of interestingness tend to get squeezed out.  On the other hand, everyone (non-employees) can watch it, so that part is good.   On the third hand, before current technologies we employees never had ‘all employees’ meetings” and we never missed them, so there’s that.  Rumor has it that the Chief wanted to do a deeper dive, but “everyone has a boss.”

(4)  We’ve all heard about grants being held up (but some are not, this seems confusing) but this E&E story was about a grant to the FS that the FS decided not to take. The title of the E&E News story was:

 Forest Service halts grant for cleaning up illegal Calif. cannabis operations

I don’t know, but it sounds like it might be dangerous. Carbofuran is really bad stuff… and maybe the growers would return while non-profit groups are attempting to remediate  trespass grows? Sounds scary.

The move comes in the wake of the Trump administration’s layoffs at federal agencies — including USDA (which oversees the USFS) and the Department of the Interior (which oversees BLM) — and frozen federal grant projects. It also comes as Congress considers legislation that would increase federal funding to do cleanup of illicit cannabis grows on federal lands around the country. The bill had a hearing in the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Federal Lands last week.

Sadly, both those links go to Politico Pro instead of the hearing or legislation, so I had to try to find it..

It might be this bill (from 2023)..

This bill will:

• Authorize $250 million over five years for the Forest Service to use Superfund toxic waste remediation authorities to address environmental damages caused by the release of banned pesticides on federal lands for cannabis cultivation; and
• Raise the criminal penalties for using banned pesticides in illegal cannabis cultivation to a maximum of 20 years in prison and $250,000 in criminal fines to establish parity with the criminal penalties for smuggling banned pesticides into the U.S. The U.S. Sentencing Commission would then be required to review and update its sentencing guidelines for these crimes.

The idea for the bill came from a series of investigative stories by San Diego journalist J.W. August published in the Times of San Diego.

In 2019, the San Diego-based Border Pesticide Initiative was formed with members of the Department of Justice, Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Homeland Security, California Department of Toxic Substances Control, and the City Attorney’s Office. In 2021, the group announced it had prosecuted over 50 defendants and seized over 1,000 containers of illegal pesticides.

Reps. Peters and LaMalfa first introduced this bill in October 2022.

It made me wonder how much of a problem this is outside of California. I remember there were issues in Colorado as well.

We have covered many things over the past 15 years of The Smokey Wire.  We’ve had number questions about timber, and folks like Mac  and Gil and Andy could always make sense of them.  Never before have I run into so much difficulty as with Forest Service employment figures.

Most recently, I ran across this letter sent on Feb. 14 by various members of the Colorado delegation to the US Congress, Bennet, Hickenlooper, Neguse, Pettersen, and Crow.

Our offices have heard for years about chronic understaffing at the USFS. Today, the agency’s workforce is nearly 30% less than it was three decades ago.  This significant reduction in staff has occurred even as the country’s population grew by over 100 million people, visitation to national forests exploded, and wildfire risk increased drastically. Agency employees have entered public service despite low pay, the frequently seasonal nature of the job, and limited housing in the remote areas they serve. With the rising cost of living across the state, Colorado communities are already challenged with limited USFS staff to confront land management challenges. Combined with the existing hiring freeze, yesterday’s staff reductions will stretch the agency to its breaking point and place an enormous burden on Colorado communities.

If I count back from 2025 for 30 years, I get 1995. If I go to this handy  John Kusano powerpoint about workforce trends from 1992 to 2001. It looks here remarkably consistent in terms of permanents .. a little over 30K in 1995 and 35,560 in 2024.  If I eyeball the Kusano powerpoint graph at 31K, then there’s actually a 15% increase in permanents over the last 30 years.

Since these numbers are so different, I have a phone call in to Bennet’s office to find out where those numbers came from.

People were working on diversity way back then (2001)

I thought that this slide was particularly interesting..given the recent problems (24 years since this ppt was presented)  with over-hiring.

Looking for historic trends, I found this story in the Mesabi Tribune from August 23, 2002:

“We are down nationally about 10,000 employees overall from where we were eight to 10 years ago,” Sanders said.

Many new people have recently signed up for TSW, and I would guess that they are interested in the FS employee questions, so I thought for new folks I would lay out the recent history, at least what I see and what I’ve heard. Others are welcome to their own observations. I’m intentionally spending more time on these topics due to the nature of this time period and folks’ concerns. So people who miss the regular programming, know that that will be back at some point.

I think it’s important to track budget as well as number of employees.  Like our Wildfire colleagues, I think there’s much good in being a learning organization/public  rather than a blaming organization/public. All the entities (Congress and Admins) had their own parts to play.

(1) As we saw in the last post on this, it appears that FS numbers were relatively consistent from 2018 to 2023. (budgets and employees were apparently at equilibrium, even if numbers were suboptimal.)

(2) Then came a giant influx of funding via BIL and IRA.  Congress thought it was a good idea to spend lotsa bucks, supposedly for climate, but everything can be related to climate.or climate equity, or climate justice.. so everything was included. Perhaps they did not consider the difficulties of agencies spending so much suddenly, and to be able to scale up with adequate oversight? And here we are.. perhaps they could have been more careful and possible achieved better outcomes ultimately with less funding.

(3) The FS (Biden Admin) decided to take a bunch of the funds (FOIAs have been unsuccessful at finding out how much exactly, but 400 mill or so?) and obligate it to NGOs (non-competitively, and not requiring a match).  This was intended at least in part to “build capacity” which required the NGOs to contract or hire to get work done. I don’t know the status of these agreement, but I do know NGOs hired people to do work formerly done by employees, and we have covered some of that previously here.

(4) The FS (Biden Admin) also hired a bunch of people via a major hiring effort.  At the time, I recall employees were telling me a) they were told to hire as many as they could, and b) some folks (even those in ROs) complained that many of those people were bulking up SOs, ROs and the WO.  Some folks also questioned new positions that did not previously exist and didn’t seem directed at the most critical needs. Of course, that’s in the eye of the beholder. From the previous post.

In 2023, 3080 were added of which 740 were fire.
in 2024, 2780 were added of which 690 were fire.
So in two years, 23 and 24, the FS added 5860 permanent positions, of which 1430 were in fire? If we take, say, 28,500 (the average of 2018-2022), that would be about a 20% increase in perms in two years?

If, as said in that post, 1400 non-fire positions were conversions from temps to PSEs; we don’t know how many fire positions were conversions, but probably not all.

So if we add 1400 non-fire conversions to all 1430 of the fire positions (acknowledging that some of them were also conversions) we get 2830. If we subtract that from 5860, we get 3,030 additional employees who are neither fire nor conversions from temps.

So the FS is still up from previous years in terms of what we might call “non-converted from temps and not fire” recent hires. Of course, this does not help any individual units, who may be down or never have been fully staffed.

Now, since the FS knew that some of this was short-term funding, they could have put a cap on the hiring (if the databases were up to it). But as anyone can imagine, it’s easier to let the dogs out than to get them back in. And in a quasi- decentralized organization,  it’s up to whomever is doing the hiring and what they think is important.

My own experience is that given a chance to hire perms, we would always do that.  Because the next time you’re in a budget discussion, you have the ultimate card to play “I have to cover salaries for perms.” Plus it’s only rational, if you see others (staffs, forests, districts) hiring for what you think are relatively less important positions, why not get in on it, and not  leave your own staff out in the cold?  For a federal agency, the budget winter is always coming, and it makes sense to bulk up.  Everyone was acting perfectly rationally.  It may be that the new budget process affects this kind of behavior, though, I don’t know.

There was also the effort to convert temps to permanent seasonals, which we’ve discussed before.  This approach makes a lot of sense, and is better for the employees, but, as a result, it costs more. One observation  in the previous comments by Anonymous was that

But generally, in my experience, programs that used to hire four 1039 seasonals were able to advertise around three PSEs.

(5) And so it went, until the Biden Admin (Sec of Ag?) decided to use the House marks (reduced compared to 2024 final) for the 2025 budget.   A budget reckoning occurred, and the FS found itself $750 million short.

(6) Realizing this, the FS (Biden Admin) said it would not hire any temporaries for 2025 to make up the budget deficit. If, in fact, most (fire and non-fire) temps had been converted to permanent seasonals, this might not have had an unduly bad impact.  But it probably varies quite a bit by unit.

(7) Trump Admin comes along and fires all probationary employees including the newly permanent seasonals, but got them back due to judge’s order, at least for now.  Original idea being to save federal bucks, perhaps intentionally, before the agency heads were confirmed and began to fight back.

(8) Trump Admin asks for Agency Reorganization Plans (ARRP), which includes employee numbers as well as other stuff (I hope someone will share, so we can discuss here):

Phase 1 (Due by March 13, 2025)

This phase focuses on initial agency cuts and reductions. These plans should identify service delivery subcomponents, statutory requirements, and potential eliminations or consolidations. They should also outline efficiency tools agencies intend to use to achieve efficiencies, including hiring freezes, attrition, and RIFs, with specific targets and timetables

(9) Now that we have a Chief and Sec of Ag in place, we will see what the FS (Trump Admin) comes up with in their ARRP.

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Now, back to Congress, which is often its own cluster regardless of Admin. Maybe in addition to the the Dogpile of Powers, we can also have a Joint Cluster among branches…

(9) Congress passes CR (or doesn’t?)

(10) Congress might increase firefighter pay (good idea, but costs more) and hopefully would include that in budget, but who knows?

(11) Congress might also start a move of firefighters into a fire agency within Interior (for very logical reasons, as there are many interagency clusters involved with wildfire, at least according to fire folks, e.g., Kelly Martin, which we can only imagine..)  with unknown impacts to remaining work for FS.

(12) This is a bit off the employee topic, but also relevant:
The general problems with managing agencies by Continuing Resolution (remember how the decision not to hire temporaries for FY25 was initiated by the Secretary telling the FS to abide by the House marks (#5)) . The general problems were described in 2018 in an article by Jeff Neal for Federal News Network.

The bottom line on this is that the federal budget process is broken. Agencies are not getting appropriations until too late in the fiscal year. They operate under continuing resolutions that limit their ability to plan and to start new work or to hire new staff. Contractors are left not knowing if work will continue or terminate, and everyone in the contracting process (government and industry) crams most of the contracting process into six months of the year or less. The impact is significant. In a 2017 letter to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Defense Secretary Mattis said: “Long term CRs impact the readiness of our forces and their equipment at a time when security threats are extraordinarily high. The longer the CR, there greater the consequences for our force.”

That’s my take of the history. What did I get wrong? What have I missed?

From the Lake County News.  Please feel free to link to other tributes to Randy in the comments below.

This tribute is published in response to the recent announcement that Forest Service Chief Randy Moore is retiring from the agency.

I had the privilege to meet Randy Moore shortly after his appointment in 2007 to serve as the Pacific Southwestern Regional forester. After shaking his hand and looking him in the eye, I knew he possessed the character, commitment and leadership skills needed to guide the agency through the difficult challenges it faced.

That first meeting at the Region 5 HQ in Vallejo, CA was with a core team of OHV leadership and our partners at the CA State Park Off-Highway Motor Vehicle Division. The discussions were centered on our shared commitment to ecologically-balanced motorized recreation on Forest Service System lands.

After the initial welcomes, Randy opened the meeting by sharing his background and his willingness to meet with OHV and other key stakeholders but that attendees should be aware of what I called Randy’s Rule” and that was, “If you come to my office with a problem, you also need to come with a solution.”

During the course of his tenure as the Regional Forester (2007-2021), the “Trail Community” deeply valued their relationship with Randy and his management team. And, that his door was always open to the recreation community providing your meeting focused on solution-based discussions.

I also appreciated his shared passion for field trips on an ATV or Dirt-Bike where Randy could review some of the important recreation and trail management challenges facing the agency along with solutions being implemented to address those concerns.

Randy should be commended for the collaborative manner that his office and staff conducted themselves during the 2018-2020 intense wildfire seasons to build agency and partnership capacity to address post wildfire recovery efforts of both motorized and non-motorized recreation facilities and areas damaged by wildfires.

I believe that Randy had the right stuff or blend of field level experience, character, administrative and political acumen, and people skills to succeed both as the R5 Regional Forester and Chief of the Forest Service.

I want to thank him for his 45 year career with the Forest Service and for “Caring for the Land and People” along with his strong commitment to working with agency partners in support of managed recreation and resource management of public lands.

I wish him all the best in the next chapter of his life.

Don Amador has been in the trail advocacy and recreation management profession for 35 years. He is president of Quiet Warrior Racing LLC, past president/CEO and current board member of the Post Wildfire OHV Recovery Alliance, and a co-founder and core-team member on FireScape Mendocino, a forest health collaborative that is part of the National Fire Learning Network. Amador served as an AD Driver for the Forest Service North Zone Fire Cache during the 2022, 2023 and 2024 fire seasons. A northwest California native, Amador writes from his home in Cottonwood, California.

I’m looking for reputable numbers of Forest Service employee numbers over the last 50 years. Are we bloated, are we on the decline?

HR Notes:  Let me qualify this first by saying I am not an expert on this issue, but here is my understanding of it.  Any new hire to the Federal Service is subject to a 1-year probationary period. However, certain excepted hiring authorities, such as Direct Hire Authority (DHA), Veterans authorities, Schedule A, and others are subject to a 2-year period (called something else) but essentially a 2-year probationary period.  A lot of the recent hiring (last couple of years) was using DHA, Sch. A, and Veteran authorities.  Any SES selectee is subject to a 1_year probationary period (I think the FS had about a dozen). Finally, anyone hired into a supervisory position for the first time is subject to a probationary period.  There are other nuances to all this, but this is the general, basic guidance.

Off the top of my head, there were over 5,000 employees (both fire and non-fire) who were identified as probationary. Fire was mostly exempted from being DOGEed, so about 3,500 non-fire were ultimately identified to be terminated, but this number dropped significantly as further review of cases were made.  Last I heard, there were maybe closer to 2,200 or thereabouts who were actually terminated.  Now, there are efforts to try and hire some back, plus court rulings may ultimately bring some back, at least for a short time.  This may all change again depending on who might apply for and be accepted for Voluntary Early Retirement (VERA).   It will likely change yet again if/when a potential RIF plan is submitted (first iteration of Plan due to the Department very soon…March 13) and then implemented.

“Here are the actual Onboard numbers for the last 7 years, 2018 – 2024, plus 2025 year to date:

                  All (perm + Temp)            Perm (incl. Fire)             Perm Fire                Temp (all fire+non-fire)

2018              35,210                                  27,730                             7,280                            7,300

2019              35,740                                  27,420                             7,680                            8,190

2020              36,920                                 28,930                            8,670                            7,830

2021              35,985                                  28,720                             8,550                            7,070

2022              35,990                                  29,700                             8,970                           6,070

2023              38,180                                  32,780                             9,710                            5,200

2024              38,820                                  35,650                          10,400                            3,050

2025 ytd       35,220                                  34,630                           10,090                               460″

HR Notes: the low temp number for 2025 reflects the time of year when count is made plus the effects of the hiring freezes put into effect by Chief Moore (mid 2024) and USDA (2025).  Temp numbers have been trending down as the agency began moving toward more Permanent Seasonal Emplotyee (PSE) 13/13 positions in lieu of temp 1039 appointments. This started within the fire organization back in 2018 or earlier but accelerated in the last couple of years. Over 1,400 non-fire positions that were formerly temporary 1039 appointments were advertised and filled in 2024 as PSE positions. The percent of permanent fire positions relative to the total workforce was 26.25% in 2018, and was 29.2% in 2024. 

The temp number is low for a few reasons. This ytd number is where we stand from Oct. 1 thru early February.  Typically, not many temps are hired for this timeframe. Some beat the freeze, so to speak, by having an offer letter, accepting the offer, and having a report date by February 8.  All others in the pipeline were caught in the freeze. Some of these, if they were for fire positions, are now unfrozen based on an approved exception, and are back on track (within a week or two) of their originally planned onboard dates. A second exception recently approved released for advertisement a number of fire positions.  I believe most of the fire jobs in the temp world are usually onboarded between PP 8 and 11, and thus are potentially still on track, assuming we get viable candidates.

HR Notes: Yes, the agency did some major non-fire hiring over the last couple of years. Foresters, Forestry Tech (timber), Partnership Coordinators, Recreation 401s, archaeologists, lands and special use administrators, Engineers, and probably a few other categories, all had national collective hiring processes/events that brought in new employees.  The agency did so well at this that they overshot what the budget could cover, hence the partial freeze that Chief Moore put into effect back in April 2024.

Just a gentle reminder.. TSW is not the place for generic statements about politics, nor to attack other people on this site nor elsewhere.  I have been tightening up, so if you don’t see your comment posted, that’s the reason.  There are plenty of other places full of generic comments you can visit,

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I’m still looking for any documents related to the Transformation effort.  The Museum and the Forest History Society don’t have any. I sent an email to the Forest Service historian and haven’t heard back.  It just seems like something that cost so much time and effort should have some documentation available.  Otherwise, we’re going to have to depend on my memory… and that would be bad.  Guest posts about your own experiences with Transformation would be welcome.  Why? Because folks are talking about reducing non-Forest and District personnel and that’s exactly much of what went on with Transformation.

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Anonymous asked this question:

I’m looking for reputable numbers of Forest Service employee numbers over the last 50 years. Are we bloated, are we on the decline?

There are a few moving parts to this question. I’ll review the 2019 NAFSR study in the next post, and look at the overall numbers in the third of these three posts.

1. Has the work itself grown, decreased or otherwise changed over time?

If you were in Region 6 during the big timber days of the 80’s, there was a great deal more timber work going on, with associated work and expertise (for example, the Ochoco had a full time transportation planner in the Engineering shop).

Like reforestation, this decreased over time.  At the same time, recreation work increased, as did fire work, and probably lands and special uses. Different kinds of work goes with different series of employees and different ways of getting it done (contracts, grants, agreements, concessionaires and so on.)

2. What is the role of federal employees?  Even in the 80’s, the FS used contractors for timber sales.  We also used contractors for tree climbing and reforestation.  You need fewer employees to contract work than to do it force account, but you still need employees for the paperwork and quality control (CORs and inspectors). During some contracting effort in the past, we used to talk about work that was “inherently governmental.”  I wonder if that has changed over time,as I don’t hear much about that anymore.

In the last few years, work has been done via grants and Good Neighbor Agreements and so on. You need G&A people to get the grants out, and it’s unclear in some situations if the grantee monitors themselves or not (based on my read of the agreements). There are also many concessionaires doing recreation work including campgrounds and trailheads.

Depending on that, conceivably programs like American Forests’ work in reforestation or NWTF’s and other efforts on fuel reduction projects would require fewer FS permanent employees.  Or any of the Keystone Agreements. But maybe just different kinds.. more G&A employees and fewer natural resource folks.

3. Has the composition of the workforce (in terms of series) changed based on different needs?

NAFSR (Forest Service retirees) did a terrific Workforce Capacity study that looked at this.  We’ll dive into that in the next post.

4. How have the numbers of field vs. non-field changed over time (for the purposes of this discussion, field =District and SO)?

It’s not clear that this information is available, in the Budget Explanatory Notes, I think in the Notes the FS counts everything not WO as the field.

4.  What is the role of permanents vs. temporary employees?  We saw last year that some temps were converted to perms. The temps were told not to come back for 2025, but then the converted ones were probationary and let go.

This reminds me of the “toilets not being cleaned” news stories associated with recent cuts in permanent employees. This certainly varies by Forest, but where I am, most of the campgrounds are run by concessionaires.  Last fall, I overheard temps working on cleaning toilets at a visitor center talk about not knowing if they had a job next year.  On another Forest I ran across what might have been permanents in uniform cleaning a campground’s toilets.  According to this story from last fall and the freeze on hiring temporaries:

The Forest Service recently converted 1,300 seasonal positions into permanent jobs, including 105 in the Rocky Mountain Region and 15 in the White River National Forest.

That Colorado Sun story is also interesting as it focuses on interviewing volunteer organizations on how they will be picking up the slack.

The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation recently joined with partners to distribute $3.7 million for 33 projects in Colorado, including elk research, fencing projects and habitat improvements in the Arapaho, Gunnison, San Isabel, San Juan and White River national forests.

Blake Henning, the chief conservation officer for the foundation, does not expect the Forest Service hiring freeze to impact these projects.

“Most of the work we provide funding to the Forest Service for, a lot of it is done by their fire crews,” Henning said. “Those people are going to help continue the projects we have granted money to. Talking with our partners in the Forest Service, my sense is that a lot of these temporary folks are related to recreational programs like trail maintenance and campgrounds.”

It sounds from the quote as if RMEF received funding from the FS to hire FS fire crews. That’s somewhat confusing.  Also were temporary fire folks caught in the previous temporary freeze?

5. What about the big chunks of money? As I’ve said before, it’s hard for an organization to spend so much funding suddenly.  If they give out lots of grants, they need more G&A folk, contracts, contracting folks.  If they hire more people to do the work, or even the contracting or G&A, what happens when the funding goes back to normal (or less).  The only solution, it seems to me, is for Congress to not give agencies huge boluses of funding.  Look at what happened with the EPA. Certainly the Forest Service did better with the groups it selected, but it’s not really clear whether the Forest Service had any choices that would have been possible to implement without hiring some people, either in G&A or to do the work, or to coordinate with the grantees plus G&A folks.

Next post: The NAFSR Workforce Capacity Report

One thing I wonder about is whether other agencies have the same proportional cuts as the Forest Service. I’m not hearing about them, but I’m not following them closely, either. Anyway, here’s the story.  It’s interesting that the story is based on two agency employees and “others familiar with the Trump administration’s thinking.”

The Forest Service plans to shed as many as 7,000 additional employees in the coming months through force reductions and early retirements, with a heavy toll on research that supports healthier forests, according to two agency employees and others familiar with the Trump administration’s thinking.
The mass departures — more than double the number terminated in the recent firings of probationary employees, if realized — would affect a wide range of missions as the administration looks to shift the agency’s decision-making away from Washington and toward local offices. The Forest Service had around 30,000 total employees prior to this year’s reductions.

With a large organizational chart of managers compared with other departments, one Forest Service employee told POLITICO’s E&E News on Wednesday, “We are sheep headed to slaughter when it comes to our innocence compared to other agencies.”

I’m not exactly sure what that means. “With a large organizational chart”  sounds like the FS might be chosen because they appear to be full of fat and tasty for cost-cutting exercises. Not sure what innocence has to do with it.

And wouldn’t the correct comparison be “compared to other agencies that manage large chunks of federal land”. And I could think of only one.

A reader pointed out: USFS has 35,000 employees for 193 million surface acres. BLM has 10,000 employees for 245 million surface acres and 700 million mineral acres. It was 10,000 employees 20 years ago.     Perhaps the FS has more rangers and employees per square mile than the BLM? But having fewer and consolidating would run against being more present in local communities; those same communities the FS needs to build trust with for successful wildfire prevention, management and community resilience.

Employees who shared details about the plans aren’t authorized to speak publicly and requested that their names be withheld.
The projections are part of the Forest Service’s personnel-cutting plans due for submission to the White House by March 13, a deadline other agencies face as well.
They reflect twin objectives of making the forest agency smaller and realigning policies to be more in tune with the new administration.
Even in the current atmosphere of workforce reductions, the envisioned cuts were jarring to outside groups and individuals who work in forest policy.
“I don’t know how they do anything with cuts like this,” said Susan Jane Brown, principal at Silvix Resources, a nonprofit environmental law firm in Oregon.

Hopefully we can get a copy of the document at some point.

They also come as the Department of Agriculture faces a court order to temporarily reinstate probationary employees terminated February.
Details emerged as the new Forest Service chief, Tom Schultz, prepared for his first employee wide call Thursday, after stepping into the job at the beginning of the week.
Schultz is a former timber executive in Idaho with a background in public land management there and in Montana.

The call was rescheduled.

Other priorities shared with E&E News include cutting forest restoration tied to climate change

But all restoration and fuels treatments were “tied to” climate change, if only through a few sentences here and there.

and reducing or eliminating urban and community forestry that supports tree-planting in public spaces throughout the country.

I think the UCF program has several complexities associated with it. 1. It gives urban people an opportunity to support the FS budget (quite significant, given proportions of urban vs. rural people), 2. It can be used to reward communities that an Admin wants to reward (as one Clinton-era Undersec was heard to say “the UCF  authorities are so broad you could drive a truck through them.”), and 3) it raises the question “what is the federal government’s role in communities? Certainly cities could pay for their own trees, or native plant programs or sidewalks, or rural communities could pay for wildfire mitigation and fire department support.  Then we might talk about “why not block grants to the States?” and tell them it’s generally to support a laundry list of programs, which would save much administration at the federal level.

In addition to research — which touches on everything from pests and diseases to climate change — initiatives such as international programs to keep out invasive species could see sharp reductions. But fire science and forest inventory and analysis would be spared the heaviest hits, according to the people familiar with the plans.
Fire-related positions would not be exempt, although the definition of fire-related jobs is broad, an employee who’s seen the plans told E&E News.
The Forest Service and the USDA, which oversees the agency, didn’t immediately return a message seeking to verify the information.

The agency would also seek to increase timber harvesting, an existing goal being ramped up by the Trump administration.

Reductions of the level officials envision would put the total cuts at the Forest Service this year in the range of 10,000, although estimates have fluctuated as the agency
reverses some terminations.
The staff reductions set the stage for spending cuts across several Forest Service mission areas in the next fiscal year that begins in October.
Internal communications viewed by E&E News outline as much as a $316 million cut from forest and rangeland research — which is most of its annual budget — and $40
million from urban and community forestry, which is virtually its entire budget.

My understanding is that Congress decides these line items in the budget. The Administration gets to decide what to spend it on, within the broad outlines of Congress.  Also, this would be a really bad idea.  In my experience with both the FS and USDA R&D, in-house research tends to be more relevant and pragmatic to users, which is exactly what we should want.  That’s not to diss university research, (after all that was my gig at the agency that is now NIFA) but entire disciplines like forest economics or genetics can be lost at universities, so they don’t apply for grants, so the work doesn’t get done.

Research has been a “sacred cow” at the agency, Brown said, suggesting the idea of cutting it won’t have much support. “We’ll see how all that happens.”

Plus anytime the idea is raised to close up local Research (or other) facilities, elected officials become involved.

And while the administration is promising bigger timber harvests to meet an executive order President Donald Trump signed last weekend, “you’re sure not going to do that
without people and infrastructure,” Brown said.
Significant losses in personnel could jeopardize Forest Service work on clean water, wildfire mitigation and other missions, said Ellen Montgomery, public lands campaign
director for Environment America.
“Our forests filter drinking water for millions of Americans, shelter hundreds of species of wildlife and provide spaces for Americans to ski, climb, hunt, fish, hike and camp,”
Montgomery said. “The Forest Service research and development arm provides invaluable research and resources, while other staff do significant fire mitigation to protect communities from future wildfires.”

Side note: while Environment America seems to think that fire mitigation is protective, according to our friends at the Center for Western Priorities, “scientists say” thinning doesn’t work.

Scientists say that increased timber production is not a solution to wildfires. Climate change and drought are what make wildfires bigger and more destructive, and forest thinning can actually increase wildfire intensity by reducing shade from the forest canopy and changing the forest’s microclimate.

“They’re not hiding the ball,” said Blaine Miller-McFeeley, a senior legislative representative at Earthjustice. “It’s just about trying to cut as much [of] our forests as possible to line the pockets of timber industry executives.”

Anyway…

Force reductions would fall more heavily in the Washington headquarters and the Forest Service’s nine regional offices around the country, employees said. That pursuit could have broader support, as organizations that work with the Forest Service complain that it’s too top-heavy.

I wonder who these organizations were?

Past proposals to eliminate regional offices haven’t gone far, but Brown said there may be some merit to reorganizing them. She said she wouldn’t be surprised if the administration seeks to consolidate regional offices. Among officials’ goals, they said, is to put more decision-making authority in the hands of local offices that have a better handle on community priorities.  Putting more decision-making authority in the hands of forest supervisors and other local officials would build on efforts already underway. Those include “good neighbor” agreements that the Forest Service uses to work with non-federal partners to thin forests and do other restoration work in places where national forests abut state and

Timber industry groups have long applauded the collaborative approach, although they’ve also watched nervously as sweeping staff reductions threaten to undermine the administration’s goal of stepping up forest management.
Cuts to community and urban forestry would not be new ideas to the Trump administration, as it sought a similar move during Trump’s first term. Doing so would allow the Forest Service to concentrate more fully on wildfire in the West, the first administration said.
The National Association of State Foresters and other groups have urged continued funding for urban and community forests, saying they cover at least 138 million acres nationwide. The Inflation Reduction Act steered $250 million to state forestry agencies for the program, although some of that funding appears uncertain in the new administration.

The Admin can try to zero this stuff out,  but traditionally the States lobby for it and get it.  To me, if the Admin wants to minimize the amount spent on the “programs that Congress wants funded and will anyway” while maintaining transparency and accountability around those federal funds, that’s a very different question and requires a different approach.

Here’s the E&E News story.. maybe time for the Trump Admin with its newly confirmed Secretaries to take a step back and approach the need to downsize using the same pathways used by the Clinton Administration, which didn’t arouse the same degree of controversy.

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Thousands of fired workers at the Department of Agriculture must get their jobs back for at least the next month and a half, the chair of a federal civil service board ruled Wednesday.

The ruling said the recent dismissals of more than 5,600 probationary employees may have violated federal laws and procedures for carrying out layoffs.

The decision is a blow to the Trump administration’s effort to drastically and quickly shrink the federal bureaucracy. Though it applies only to the USDA, it could lay the groundwork for further rulings reinstating tens of thousands of other probationary workers whom the Trump administration has fired en masse across the government.

But it’s far from a final resolution of the legality of the mass terminations. The administration may have further options to place the reinstated workers on administrative leave or fire them again as part of a formal “reduction in force.”

The ruling blocks the USDA from implementing the firings for 45 days while the merit systems board continues to review the issue. During that time, fired workers must “be placed in the positions that they held prior to the probationary terminations,” Harris wrote.

The merit systems board is a three-member independent agency in the executive branch that adjudicates federal employees’ complaints over terminations or suspensions.Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is separately trying to fire Harris herself. She is fighting in court to keep her job because a federal law limits the president’s ability to remove her from her position.

Trump’s effort to reduce the workforce across the federal government has targeted probationary workers — typically workers who have been in their positions only for a year or two and lack full civil-service protections.

Harris took particular aim at the USDA’s decision to use form letters, apparently crafted by the Office of Personnel Management, that told the employees that “based on your performance … you have not demonstrated that your further employment at the agency would be in the public interest.”

Harris’ ruling came in response to a petition filed by Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger, who serves as a watchdog for the federal workforce. He argued to the board that USDA’s claims of performance issues appeared dubious.Trump has also tried to fire Dellinger. Like Harris, he is protected by federal law from being arbitrarily fired and is fighting in court to hold onto his job.

Dellinger welcomed the stay Wednesday and telegraphed that he is exploring the possibility of seeking similar short-term protection for thousands of other probationary workers beyond USDA.

“I am calling on all federal agencies to voluntarily and immediately rescind any unlawful terminations of probationary employees,” Dellinger said in a statement.

“My agency will continue to investigate and take appropriate action on prohibited personnel practices including improper terminations of probationary employees. Voluntarily rescinding these hasty and apparently unlawful personnel actions is the right thing to do and avoids the unnecessary wasting of taxpayer dollars,” he added.