Reorganization

List of Forest Service Research Facilities to be Kept and Those to Be Closed

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Within hours of the previous post in which I quoted Chris French using Stoneville as an example and Alex Friend agreeing..and my pointing out that it had been on the block intermittently for probably 30 years..

“as much as I think everybody loves the Stoneville research site in Mississippi, there’s 14 buildings there and we staff it with four people. I have to manage our facilities somehow. And unfortunately, R&D has more examples like that than others. I’ve got a district ranger office that is leased in that Stoneville site right up the road. We’re looking at it right now. Is it better to move that district ranger office to Stoneville and use the facilities there or invest in a better office for essentially the district ranger’s office and move the four people in Stoneville there? That’s what we mean by evaluating. “

someone sent me the list, and Stoneville is retained. Here’s what the Chief said:

Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz emphasized the closures and consolidations will not result in any forced staff reductions and that work will continue without interruption.

“This announcement reflects our commitment to retain the staff our mission requires while responsibly reducing our facilities costs. Local facility consolidation will help us put more of our funding toward mission delivery and cutting-edge research, rather than brick and mortar we no longer need. This puts us on a sustainable path, retains our employees, and ensures we have the right geographic distribution of labs and duty stations across the agency. And importantly, this produces more than $8.8 million in annual lease savings and more than $8 million in deferred maintenance savings – ensuring American taxpayers receive the maximum value for every dollar entrusted to us,” added Chief Schultz.

Here’s a link to the lists.

My question is, for example, Placerville has an SO, a nursery, and the Institute of Forest Genetics.  The plan (I think) is for a State Office to be there as well. Do we know what groups will be in what buildings yet? Does this table mean that researchers will continue to be located at research facilities and no matter how few employees are there the facilities won’t close, or maybe other people will move in? Maybe there’s another layer to all of this that locals would be interested in.

I’m assuming that we could probably infer from these closures and where other FS facilities are located within the commuting area, where these folks are likely to go. But again, it might be nice for the FS to publish where people are going.

23 Research Buildings Closed Instead of 64- Possible End to “End of Science” Narrative

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I loved the headline..

US Forest Service closing 23 research facilities as part of reorganization under Trump

Dear AP, I think everything the Executive Branch does is “under the current President” so I don’t think you need to say it every time.

What I think is interesting about this is that if you track what Chris French has told us,  that they were looking at the issue, and would probably come down with fewer than the original , it seems like Chris has been telling us the straight scoop.

The U.S. Forest Service is closing 23 research and development stations in more than a dozen states as part of an organizational overhaul under President Donald Trump that is intended to trim costs and concentrate the agency’s resources in Western states, officials said Thursday.

This is always confusing as “stations” were the Research Stations which were an administrative layer.  But these could be more accurately be called “buildings”.

The work being done at the research stations will continue at other sites, Forest Service Associate Chief Chris French said in an interview. An additional 41 research facilities that faced possible closure will remain open after local officials and members of Congress raised concerns about the reorganization, which was announced in March.

“Our primary goal was to get our facilities costs under control,” French told The Associated Press. “We’re not closing any ongoing science activities. We’re not closing any of the experimental forests that are important to our researchers.”

Chris has been consistent on what he says about this, from the transcript of the Q&A session Chris French had with NAFSR.

We do not intend to move researchers out of the locality of where they’re at. We do not intend to close experimental forests. What we do intend to do is consolidate our facilities into something more sustainable. And this is hard.
I think the messaging got really messed up on this. We’re doing our best to try to align that, and that’s on us. But we’re going through and evaluating those facilities. Some of those we’ve looked at and said, no, this makes no sense. You don’t close this. Th example I would give is like up on the Okanagan Wenatchee.
There are other sites we need to be looking at hard. As much as I think everybody loves the Stoneville research site in Mississippi, there’s 14 buildings there and we staff it with four people.
I have to manage our facilities somehow. And unfortunately, R&D has more examples like that than others.
I’ve got a district ranger office that is leased in that Stoneville site right up the road. We’re looking at it right now. Is it better to move that district ranger office to Stoneville and use the facilities there or invest in a better office for essentially the district ranger’s office and move the four people in Stoneville there? That’s what we mean by evaluating.  We have multiple sites where we have multiple facilities, NFS, state and private, and R&D, all within the same locality area, and most of them are underutilized.
And we’re trying to have frank conversations with our partners. We have experimental forests where we have facilities that we don’t staff anybody at, and they are primarily used by universities and others. And we’re saying, you want to take these on?
Because right now they represent tens of millions of dollars of deferred maintenance and other maintenance and utility costs that I can’t afford to pay. That’s the conversation we’re trying to have.
We’re not trying to move scientists. We don’t want to lose the data that they have, but we also have to make sound facilities decisions

Alex Friend, member of the Board at NAFSR and former Deputy Chief for R&D:

I, you know, certainly agree with Stoneville and similar cases, so that’s long overdue, and that’s a great anecdote. I hope the other cases are similar.

Even when I worked in R&D we had facilities maintenance and empty space issues, and some of the same sites cropped up-  and Alex agrees that there are issues.

Chris: Alex, in our working with the department, the initial messaging that went out on this was confusing and bad and it’s created this. Now, the silver lining is I think the outrage mixed with the president’s budget; we suddenly have leaders like the Secretary talking about the importance of science.

It could be that OMB was pushing on one of its bizarre green eyeshades crusades.. and the FS came out with this to create external pushback from legislators to the bad idea of getting rid of R&D. It should be noted that USDA also has NIFA and ARS, and they are apparently not the targets of equivalent OMB hatchet jobs.

As I pointed out at the time, the many times R&D has tried to close buildings, legislators and local officials predictably came out in force.  In this case, the FS made their announcement before they talked to these folks so.. the number was sure to shrink. This strategy is better as the research isn’t being closed out, and the scientists aren’t moving from the local area.  Win-win.  Meanwhile the legislators are now on their toes about FS R&D and (even more) likely to blow off any efforts to defund FS R&D, win win win! It’s actually pretty brilliant if that was the plan.

Bill Avey of the National Associated of Forest Service Retirees, an advocacy group, said the forest service has long struggled to pay for all its facilities and some opportunities for consolidation exist. But Avey, who worked at the service for four decades, said its current leaders including Chief Tom Schultz need to defend the importance of forest research more vocally.

“He should be doing a much better job of pushing back and justifying and explaining some of the research work,” Avey said. He added that the 41 facilities being retained likely would have closed as well if not for pushback from his group and others.

Honestly, as another retiree, and former NAFSR Board Member, I don’t think Bill knows what the Chief and Chris have actually done and said to those who matter in the Admin.  They might have run a complex operation as I described above.  So how does Bill know that the Chief “should have done” more? And what is this with retiree organizations criticizing current Chief’s  imputed actions or lack thereof, rather than policies? Whatever happened to “you catch more flies with honey than vinegar” and “affirm in public, counsel in private?”

The 95 employees at the research stations slated for closure will be shifted to other sites within their commuting areas, Forest Service Communications Director Chad Douglas said. The closures — along with previously announced plans to shut regional offices in Atlanta, Milwaukee and Portland — will save about $16 million, officials said.

 

 

Forest Service Selects More Senior Leadership: Mostly Old Hands

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Here’s the link. By the way, I meant “old” in the headline in the sense of “experienced” and “wise.”

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Many of today’s appointments will be familiar names. Nearly all have been selected from the Forest Service’s existing senior executive cadre, with one exception joining us from USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. With these decisions, we have now placed the remaining members of our senior executive team. Any career SES positions that remain vacant on the new organizational chart will be actively recruited, internally and externally.

These assignments are another important step in putting our new organizational model to work. We have strong leaders across the Forest Service, and these assignments put their experience and expertise where they can make the greatest difference for our forests, our employees and the communities we serve.

These leaders show true commitment to not only the new organizational structure but also to the legacy and importance of the history of the Forest Service, as well to every employee and discipline contributing to the success of our mission.

They know this agency, they understand the challenges facing our forests and communities, and they recognize the importance of working closely with states, partners and tribes. There is a lot of important work ahead, and I am excited about what we can accomplish together.

The following leaders have been reassigned (names in italics represent current position and any title changes):

  • Jaelith Hall-Rivera, chief of staff
  • Beattra Wilson, deputy chief of staff
  • Katie O’Connor, deputy chief of Strategy Management
  • Mark Lichtenstein, deputy chief of Strategic Planning, Budget, and Accountability
  • Andria Weeks, deputy chief of Finance and Administration
  • Jennifer McGuire, associate chief of Finance and Audit
  • Erica Nieto, director of Human Resources
  • Lisa Northrop, director of Business Services Center
  • John Rothlisberger, director of Field Operations Support Center
  • Valerie Hipkins, acting director of Research and Development
  • Richard Barhydt, deputy director of Research and Development
  • Linda Heath, deputy director of Research and Development
  • Lisa Ramirez, director of Job Corps
  • Karen Woodrich, director of Cooperative Forestry
  • Ellen Shultzabarger, deputy chief of Field Operations East
  • Jacqueline “Jacque” Buchanan, state director of Oregon
  • Troy Heithecker, state director of Colorado
  • Kristin Bail, state director of New Mexico
  • Gordon Blum, state director of Lake States
  • Michelle Samuel-Foo, state director of Ozark/Gulf Coast

A full list of biographies is now available.

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Zooming In: Sheehy’s Draft Letter on Emergency Administrative Relief

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Well, between discussion posts 1 and 2 on the Fennessy interview, someone sent this draft letter from Senator Sheehy trying to get support for an emergency implementation of administrative streamlining due to this year’s wildfire season. Their office is apparently trying to get other Congressfolk to sign on.  The idea is apparently to get enough Congressfolk to sign on to ask the Prez to do a 90-day emergency EO to give some administrative relief to some bureaucratic hurdles.

Here’s what it says exactly:

“we request a 90-day emergency executive authorization to remove all contracting barriers, funding restrictions, and agency bureaucratic hurdles in the furtherance of fire suppression activities.”

This reminds me a bit of last Friday’s post about kludgy bureaucratic accretions getting work-arounds for favored entities when an emergency arises.  Here’s another recent example.

I have some questions . hopefully someone out there can answer.  Others can add their own questions. If no one knows, I’ll send them to Sheehy’s office.

Here’s the key part:

In accordance with Executive Order (EO) No. 14308 signed in June 2025 in the wake of the historically destructive Palisades Fire, we request we request a 90-day emergency executive authorization to remove all contracting barriers, funding restrictions, and agency bureaucratic hurdles in the furtherance of fire suppression activities. These should include, but not be limited to:
1) Immediate and temporary consolidation of all asset control, coordination, carding, and contracting under the Department of the Interior, with singular command and unified standards under the U.S. Wildland Fire Service (USWFS).
2) Implement a national resource database of all federal, state, county, city, and volunteer assets that can be activated, regardless of domicile, to mobilize in response to fire incidents nationwide, including any fire department that receives federal funding. The remuneration, activation, and control of these assets should be administered solely by the USWFS, for which the U.S. Fire Administration (USFA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) must serve as conduits.
3) Direct the Office of Management and Budget to temporarily consolidate fire funding accounts into a single line item available to the USWFS for a 90-day period for immediate fire suppression contracts and functions.
4) Instruct all agencies to immediately conform to and comply with EO No. 14308, as directed last year, when they were originally given 90 days to comply.
5) Direct the immediate standardization of all asset ordering and contracting across all federal agencies, unified under USWFS command, to provide a single national benchmark for alignment with state and county assets critical to the fire effort.

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This is seen by some FS folks as “using this fire season as an excuse to take over the Forest Service fire folks.”  We know that Senator Sheehy, and it sounds like Chief Fennessy in his interview, want to move  FS wildfire and consolidate in Interior, as maybe does the USDA Undersec.  So there is certainly reason to be suspicious.  On the other hand, it does say “temporary” and it could provide information about what the interagency bureaucratic problems really are (which, of course, is another reason the Congressionally-directed North Carolina Study seems to have bad timing.)

As I try to understand the main points:

It seems like they want to standardize asset ordering and contracting in #5, and temporarily consolidate those, plus a variety of other things in #1.

2.  It seems to me like there already should be a national database of mobilizable trained people currently working for states and counties.. I’d  extend that to red-carded people and support people.  What I didn’t realize until I read the Sheehy interview is that they IAF has volunteered people, but they can’t get them there due to what some people might call “red tape” which could conceivably be reduced.

From the interview transcript:

Here’s a great thing we can do, right? Right now, you know, you got the International Association of Firefighters, the, you know, the Firefighters Union Nationwide that has reached out repeatedly saying, listen, we got firefighters in Miami and Chicago and New York who are ready to load up on their engines and head out west. They’re ready to help. They are ready to be a part of the solution.
They’re just like we saw on the wake of 9-11, just like we see in the wake of hurricanes. And basically the answer is no, no. First of all, you know, you’re not trained for this. You’re not qualified. And Number one, number two, we don’t really have even a mechanism to get you here.
We don’t have a way to do it. And as you know, it’s not just that these firefighters and volunteer fire department in Iowa hop in their truck and drive west. You got to have a POC. You got to have somewhere for those guys to sleep. They got to be able to eat.
You got to be able to fill the gas tank. I mean, some of these towns, they’re willing to contribute their time. But they can’t afford to pay per diem and travel costs for a whole fire crew to head out. So they’re kind of like, well, we want to help them. We’re ready.
Our bags are packed, but we don’t know who to call. We have no way to get expenses reimbursed. Once we get to where we’re going, like, what do we do? Just drive up. As you know, you get to the barrier. They say, hey, you can’t drive past you or turn around and go back.
And they say, yeah, but we’re ready to help. They say, well, I’m sorry. I was told my jobs to block this road, not anybody passed. I’m really glad you’re here to help, but call this guy. And What we need is an immediate, and I think the IEEEF can help with that,
an immediate resource sharing program that people will say, well, we have that. We have that in IROC and NIFC and all that stuff. And I’m like, no, we don’t. No, we don’t. We do not have that. We don’t have a program that we’re allowed to immediately register every fire department in the nation, every volunteer fire department, every search and rescue team to say, hey, if you have a team that’s received Department of Homeland Security grants to your department, which I can almost guarantee that they all have over the past 25 years since 9-11, You guys have all been receiving federal grants to help get new fire engines, new equipment, new respirators, whatever it is.
If you’ve received those grants, you are obligated to register in this National Wildfire Emergency Response Registry. It doesn’t mean you’re obligated to go, but you are obligated to register. So we need to know how to contact you. We need financial information so we can… We’re going to transfer X amount of funds.
We want you to activate your crew to get out here. And people say, well, if they’re an urban fire crew, what are they going to do in a wildfire? Well, gee whiz, when LA was burning, 15,000 structures were I’m pretty sure some structured firefighters would have been pretty helpful then. I’m pretty sure trained first responders, EMTs, search and rescue teams would be pretty helpful right now in Spokane. I’m pretty sure having more emergency response personnel rather than less will help. And that’s a great thing we can do very quickly. That basically costs nothing but simply unlocks more resources available to this. As you know, we’ve talked at ad nauseum for two years, you and I have three years, about all the other things we have to do to fix wildfire. Most of them cost money or require legislation. This is a very simple one that would cost us nothing, and we’re working with the executive branch right now to make that happen.

3. How many fire funding accounts are there? Are those accounts just about operational fire-fighting or more broad (fuel treatments, emergency stabilization, community relief (FEMA))?

4. For those of you who don’t remember what was in EO 14308, I’m thinking this is probably the section of interest..

Sec. 2 . Streamlining Federal Wildland Fire Governance. Within 90 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Agriculture shall, to the maximum degree practicable and consistent with applicable law, consolidate their wildland fire programs to achieve the most efficient and effective use of wildland fire offices, coordinating bodies, programs, budgets, procurement processes, and research and, as necessary, recommend additional measures to advance this objective.

Well, the EO was published June 12, 2025, and I don’t know what the Secs and their folks have done to coordinate or consolidate.  We know that they have been working together. we also know that some folks in Congress stiff-armed the combo effort by requiring the study.  Maybe that wasn’t their intention, but I don’t think the study is going to help, just prolong until political forces finalize or give up.

Still, it might be interesting for the agencies to report, at the end of this fire season, what they have accomplished in terms of coordination, and what issues remain.

Sheehy Interview With The Hotshot Wakeup: His Vision and Obsession (Weeds Later)

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This photo of Senator Sheehy is from his Instagram account

I’m still going to raise more questions from Fennessy’s interview, but first I wanted to post some about Tim’s interview with Senator Sheehy.  Again, I think it’s important to listen to public figures in their own voice, not as interpreted by others, including me. In the next few posts, we’ll get more into the (fire?)weeds, but here I wanted to set the stage by laying out why his vision appears to be so different from our common understanding of the past (although perhaps not all that different from the Wildfire Commission).  Sure, the devil is in the details and we will get to those, but first let’s listen.

What struck me most about the way that Sheehy laid out the wildfire problem was that he frames it as “another destructive problem with people risking their lives to resolve, and as the feds, we need to do better” and so his background in the military (and SEAL teams) shows through. Now to be sure, wildland fire has always had some kind of resonance with the military.  Think acronyms, “the militia” and so on.  Even when I went to Guard School on the Fremont in 1980, our Forest Supe John Chambers told us that we were striving to be like the Marines (clearly this stuck with me).  And of course military folks often help with fire ops.

Taken on its own, this vision could easily be held by Ds, Rs or by Is. It is transformative though, maybe even (dare I say) progressive.  Let’s listen to his words- wildfires are a form of natural disaster, and we can do better:

You hit the nail on the head, Tim, when you said we’ve come to accept this as normal. And that’s just, to me, unacceptable. I refuse to accept that we are supposed to accept this as normal. And that makes me unpopular in a lot of circles, certainly with some of our traditionalists who are telling us this is just the way it’s going to be. And I refuse to accept that. And when you look at every other disaster that I’ll just talk about the United States for the time being, but the U.S. is subject to, We don’t accept natural disasters to wipe out cities and towns and ways of life in any other scenario.
I mean, think about hurricanes. You know, hurricanes, an act of God, Mother Nature, whatever. I mean, there’s nothing you can do to stop a hurricane or to slow it down or to contain it or to suppress it. That hurricane’s coming, whether you like it or not. And because of its inevitability, I feel…
It’s why we respond so incredibly aggressively beforehand. I mean, if there’s even a whisper that a tropical storm is going to turn into a hurricane in the Gulf of America as it careens towards our Gulf Coast, there’s no expense spared, no authority spared. There is no question that all brands of government, state, local, county, federal, regardless of party, red or blue, everybody mobilizes for their neighbor, for the community. We evacuate, plywood goes up, 18 wheels full of water, airplanes flying. Nobody asks about the bill. Nobody questions whether we’re spending too much. Nobody questions… The authority of bureaucracies or whether or not, you know, we’re stepping on the toes of this agency or that agency. It is a singular whole of government approach to save lives and protect our community. And of course, with the exception of a handful of absolutely terrible ones like Katrina, for the most part, we are very successful in making sure that our communities are as hardened as possible. And it’s amazing how fast they recover. I mean, you go to these communities in Florida, the Gulf Coast that have been devastated by these hurricanes over the years. And for the most part, You can’t tell a year or two later. You go through and like, wow, this is amazing how fast this place bounced back.
And that’s because there’s no questions asked. It’s not hidebound tradition. They mobilize and they get it done. Tornadoes hit the Midwest, same thing. Volcano erupts, same. Yet wildfires, everything. And these disasters, these big hurricanes, I mean, it’s not – A thousand times a year they happen, Tim, as you know. This is generally – there’s one really bad one every couple of years or every few years. With fires, we’re talking thousands of them a year. We’re talking every single year we have at least a handful of these conflagrations that result in dozens or hundreds of people dead, thousands of structures burned,
entire cities shut down, economies collapsed, and – Literally mass, mass damage. And we just accept that like, well, you know, one school of thoughts as well as climate change. And therefore, you know, because of climate change, it is what it is. Just get used to this.
I mean, how many headlines you see in August of every year of, you know, the classic stock photo in The New York Times, The Atlantic or wherever, where it’s a city skyline, it’s red and orange. And they say, is this our new normal or something to that effect? And basically the assumption is it is.
We’ve got to accept this. And I refuse to accept that because this is the one of all those natural disasters, volcanoes and earthquakes and tornadoes and hurricanes that we actually can stop. You can put a fire out. If you put water on a fire, Tim, it goes out. If you prepare for it, you harden your community.
And also his focus on wildland firefighters compared to the military:
Brave men and women out there putting their lives on the line to protect these communities. They are underpaid. They are under-resourced. They don’t even get the decency of the benefits provided should something catastrophic happen to them, serious injury or death. We have some amazing nonprofits, one of which I founded and used to run myself, that step into the gap. But we shouldn’t have to beg charities for money to take care of these families when they’ve lost a loved one. We lost another air crew this past week, as you know. And the fact that we don’t even have basic government benefits like SGLI like you have as a veteran, if you’re killed and the military is severely injured, the immediate medical and family support network is activated, and they take all those other worries off the table. You don’t have to worry about transporting the remains.
You don’t have to worry about paying for fuel. You don’t have to worry about paying for flights to go out and receive those remains. You don’t have to worry about life insurance and benefits. And unfortunately, we have mistreated our first responders for far too long in this regard. And quite frankly,  I’m obsessed with fixing that problem because we’re asking these young men and women to go out there. Most of them are making bottom dollar. They don’t get the same support of technology and equipment our military does, but we’re asking them to do a job just as dangerous.
So it’s about time we fix that problem and support them the way they should be supported.
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Let’s Discuss: Interview With Chief Brian Fennessy- 1 of 2

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Chief Fennessy at the Incident Command Post on the Akawa Butte Fire, Oregon.

 

Tim of the Hotshot Wakeup interviewed USWFS Chief Brian Fennessy last week.  I recommend listening to the podcast yourself.  One thing I have discovered is that hearing from someone in their own words can be very different from what is reported.. we all have our own interests. experiences and views. I am so-not a fire person, and I have selected the pieces I found most interesting, especially compared to what we hear filtered through others. The quotes are all from the transcript posted on The Hotshot Wakeup Substack.

After listening, I had two questions 1. why wouldn’t we want experts running things in their bailiwick- when do we listen to the experts and when not? and 2. if NEPA and litigation can be (at least in some cases) obstacles to fuels work, how will the new agency deal with that? Will they “farm it back” to the agencies or stand up a focused NEPA and a litigation team at the Solicitor’s Office?

On working together in the new organization and with the FS:

I wonder how that’s going, OWF, right? And remarkably, remarkably. Man, everybody’s grinding right along. They’ve been working on the president’s executive order since it came out that June. And same with the Forest Service. They’ve got all these committees and work groups. And my observation was they’ve been working together so long.

All these groups that they’ve established these friendships and relationships. I’m telling you, Tim, I did not see any frictions. And people are working as hard as I am. You know, I’m getting answers. My email’s 11 at night, you know, on weekends. And not because they feel they have to because they’re passionate about making this work.

And this seems to be a major factor.. wildland firefighting people wanted to make their own decisions (with land manager input).

This administration has been the smoothest thing. They said, look, it’s been great to be able to look across the table at an agency administrator that’s a firefighter. That understands what we need. Yeah. And again, that’s not to marginalize the need for having a line officer or land manager at the table, too. They need to be there because, quite frankly, we many times are not, you know, we can’t speak to the resource values at risk. That’s what they’re there to do. But what we are, are fire subject matter experts. And, you know, the agency, the authorities are largely, you know, through me and on down, To address that, let’s face it, let’s be honest. I certainly know it. I experienced it and I hear it all the time. You know, there are times that strategy is, you know, put into that are being driven by a land manager. And, you know, against many times recommendations of the fire subject matter experts. And I think, you know, there’s a lot of cases, but I think Dragon Bravo, quite frankly, was the end of it.

From what I’ve heard, there are two things going on… a) wildfire folks disagree with land managers on strategies, tactics, and risk; and b) many line officers don’t understand fire and have not worked in fire.

Who’s going to do the work on the landscape? The elephant in the room. “we are not going to suppress our way out of this problem.” Some folks have been quoted as saying that reorganizing fire will naturally lead to a suppression-only mindset, but that’s not what Fennessy says.
Who’s going to, you know, do the work on the landscape? And we heard that on the interior side. Well, who do you think is going to do the work? We’re going to do the work on the landscape. We are tied directly to the landscape. When you hear things like, you know, well, we’re going to pull away the firefighters from the forest, so they’re moving. These are all verbs, right? The reality is, right? Nobody’s going anywhere. These are organizational changes. We’re not physically moving, you know, people necessarily away. And what I offer, Tim, is this, is I think, you know, to address it, let’s just, you know, the elephant in the room, um, On the DOI side, what I’ve shared with our people is, hey, our people are going to be focused on fire-related work. And that largely means work on the landscape, whatever that is, prescribed fire, whatever it is, that is our focus. Will it be fire suppression? Absolutely. And taking time off. I mean, those are the three Primary things we need to do. The way I look at it, and from everything I’ve learned from our people and talking with them, because I am out there talking with them, is, listen, they’re not probably going to be doing the trails work anymore. They’re not going to be cleaning campgrounds. They’re not going to be doing, they’re going to be doing hazardous fuel mitigation and focusing all of their efforts when we’re not doing fire suppression or training on the landscape.
We are going to accomplish more because we have more people focused on that than we ever have before. So when I hear, well, you know, we’re not, I know we’ll talk about it, about managing fires for resource benefit. No, we’re not, and certainly not this year for obvious reasons.
But no, we’re going to make up whatever we haven’t. And listen, this shouldn’t, you know, the work on the landscape should be a 7-24 hour deal. We should be treating the landscape during the day, during the night, on the weekends. We’re seeing technology now that’s going to allow us to do some of that.
I try to be on record to say that, listen, just because we are primarily a fire agency, we are not going to suppress our way out of this problem. We all know that. The priority is focusing on treating the landscape, and we’ve got to do it all the time for years and years if we’re going to see an event. Are we short firefighters? Are we short airplanes? Are we short helicopters? Absolutely we are. And I’ll talk about that a little bit later. But again, suppression is not the, suppression is not going to, we’re not going to get out of this. We cannot suppress our way out of this, too. I’m sorry, I got a little bit on a rant there, but I keep hearing that, you know, we’re going to, no, we’re going to accomplish more if the Forest Service does unify, you know, with the Wildland Fire Service. And I get it. I understand why land managers are concerned.
All that non-fire work is going to have to be done by somebody else because I need those firefighters, you know, training, preparing for, you know, the fire year and putting those efforts on the landscape. And we are going to accomplish more fuels work than we ever have by doing that.
And so that’s, I just want to make that clear. There’s no pulling away or who’s going to do it. We’re going to do it. We and the land managers are tied together. The landscape, we’re tied together. There’s no disconnecting that. We’re connected to it no matter what.
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Need for Fundamental Systems Upgrade:
We do the best we can with what we got. But man, this has gone on for decades and it needs to be addressed whether or not there’s some sort of funding or built in Congress. I don’t know. My sense is we’re going to hear a lot more about this through a variety of different investigations that are going to be concluded soon. But I’ve certainly let my boss and others know that this is a big, big problem and likely hundreds of millions of dollars is fixed. But at some point, you’ve got to pay the piper.
We’ve pushed this off for decades now, and we’re at a point where our system is failing. And it needs to be a big focus.

Is USDA Hugging the Bear?

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1. Last week I was told that contracting folks were moving to a team based at USDA to work for all agencies. This does not apply to emergency (wildfire) procurement folks. I sent an inquiry to FS communications, which was promptly answered and forwarded to USDA comms.. I haven’t heard from them yet. Kudos to FS comms for quickness of response! Here are my questions.

It has come to my attention that Forest Service non-emergency contracting folks are being moved to USDA, where they will be part of a service center for all USDA agencies.
Is this true, do you have anything to add?
Are there other business services that will be moved to that kind of USDA-wide structure? Grants and agreement, HR, IT ??? (later I added FOIA)

What is the rationale, and is there an overall organizational plan that can be shared with the public?

If readers know more about this, please add in the comments.
It could be that the Secretary is imbedding the FS in USDA, to make it more difficult for forces to try to strip the FS (whole or in parts) from USDA and put it in Interior.

2. Don Amador has a piece on his blog about combining USDA agencies into one office in Redding, California. Here are some excerpts, and that is his photo above:

When I recently visited the new USDA Service Center in Redding, California, I found myself reflecting on just how much the U.S. Forest Service has evolved over the past century.

Located in what many longtime Northern California residents still think of as the Shasta-Trinity National Forest Supervisor’s Office, the building today serves a much broader purpose. Along with the headquarters for the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, it houses the Pacific Southwest Research Station, the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), Farm Service Agency (FSA), Rural Development, and other USDA programs under one roof.

Rather than serving as the headquarters of a single National Forest, these facilities function as integrated USDA campuses where multiple agencies work side by side. The emphasis is less on organizational boundaries and more on delivering a range of services to rural communities, landowners, agricultural producers, conservation partners, researchers, and public land users.

It is a noticeable evolution from an agency structure rooted in the 1930s toward a model that better reflects twenty-first century technology, community engagement, and collaboration.

Don’s piece got me to thinking about how it may well make more sense to combine offices with other USDA agencies, compared to with BLM. Although the FS and BLM share similar missions, Interior does not have the kind of facilities nor outreach to citizens that USDA does across the country.

If you go back to some of the rhetoric around moving the FS to Interior (from the D side), it would be because Interior is full of “conservation” agencies.  Actually, it looks like the BLM goes back and forth from minerals folks to environmental NGOs.. neither being particularly close to rural (or even urban, as in urban and community forestry) people and communities across the country and their concerns.

It wasn’t until I worked on the Fund for Rural America that I began to appreciate the many programs within USDA.  Because I graduated from a land grant institution, I was aware of Extension, Master Gardeners, and of course NRCS (our associate chief when I was in RPA, Dave Unger, came from there, and many USDA reorgs had the FS and NRCS sharing an undersecretary) and so on, but not so much FSA and Rural Development. Even the wood waste problem (e.g. paywalled San Fran Chron op ed) seems more related to capacities of USDA and the Forest Service, rather than, say, USGS. Although when we had the bark beetle outbreak in Colorado, DOE came with some ideas for wood waste to energy.

Long story short.. I guess these are all arguments for the FS (whole) staying with USDA.  Still, I don’t know how common the Service Center idea is.. probably depends on lease terms and other factors. Probably someone out there knows..

Schultz Testifies Before House Ag Subcommittee on Forestry and Horticulture: E&E News Story

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Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz prepares to testify before a House Agriculture subcommittee Wednesday. J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Sadly we will be losing our current source of access to E&E News, and my favorite reporter, Marc Heller. Hopefully someone else can help out.  I’ve tried the “social justice” argument for Politico Pro, but no dice.  They even raised prices so FSEEE couldn’t afford it, and many thanks to them for their help in the past.

Personally there’s too much grandstanding at Congressional hearings for me (though written testimony can be interesting), but Marc has a story on it with helpful info.

Employees will learn more about their futures with the agency soon. In a memo to all Forest Service employees Wednesday, Schultz said lateral reassignments and management-directed reassignments for senior non-unionized employees at the GS-14 and GS-15 pay grades will begin this week. That’s in addition to procedures announced in June for other employees.

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Congress hasn’t specifically authorized the reorganization. Democrats pressed Schultz on that point, citing provisions in appropriations law that prohibit such moves without the approval of the Appropriations committees.
Schultz echoed the official position of the Agriculture Department — which oversees the forest agency — that the administration doesn’t need congressional permission and need only inform the committees. But moving wildfire management to Interior does require lawmakers’ approval, officials have said, and Congress has yet to give it.

Schultz told POLITICO’s E&E News he expects to contract out a congressionally mandated feasibility study on the proposal to relocate wildfire management in the
coming weeks.

I would almost bet that many key FS folks don’t want the move (likely the Undersec does), and while last I heard the turnaround for the study was very tight, I’m thinking Congress will have other things on its mind by the fall.

He pushed back against an assertion by Agriculture Committee ranking member Angie Craig (D-Minn.) that last week’s closure of the 1.1-million-acre Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in her home state was tied to staffing shortages and to wildfires burning in the region.
“Does the fact that Minnesota lost over 100 Forest Service staff since the start of this administration have anything to do with the wilderness area’s closure?” Craig said, adding that a similar closure in 2021 came as dry conditions and high fire risk were stretching firefighters and other employees.
“No, it does not,” Schultz said. “That’s strange,” Craig said, noting the history. “As far as I can tell the difference is that the Forest Service has lost 6,000 staff since 2024, including more than 100 employees in Minnesota.”

There is quite a bit of that going around, talking about “losing 6000” without mentioning the recent “gaining 6000”. If I were on Craig’s staff, I’d have the opposite prepared as well,  “you didn’t shut the Wilderness down when you should have because you lost all the people who make good judgments.”

While Schultz acknowledged that reshuffling offices and closing some research facilities is disruptive to affected communities — he likened it to military base realignments and closures — the chief said the moves will save the government money in the long run.
Shrinking the Forest Service’s footprint in its Sidney R. Yates headquarters building in Washington alone could save $60 million over a decade, Schultz said. The agency will occupy just one floor in the building after the Forest Service headquarters moves to Salt Lake City, he said.
Reorganizing the Forest Service also isn’t a new idea, Schultz told the panel, citing internal discussions in 2007. “Many of the things we’re looking at are not new.”

Thanks to Marc, we also hear from the other side:

As Schultz weathered the criticism, his agency continues to confront a worsening wildfire season. Fires have burned nearly 3.9 million acres this year through Wednesday, or nearly a million more than a year ago, according to the National Interagency Fire Service.
Two Forest Service firefighters died in fire operations in Colorado in June, along with one from the Interior Department’s Wildland Fire Service.
Schultz said the Forest Service hired 11,800 seasonal firefighters for this year — 500 more than its initial goal — and has around 28,000 total employees available for fire-related duty when “red-carded” staff qualified for such work are included.

The NIFC recently increased the national wildfire preparedness level to its highest category on a scale of five. Schultz said the Forest Service is operating on a “full
suppression” strategy for all fires. While Democrats zeroed in on the reorganization’s potential disruptions, Republicans on the panel applauded Schultz for meeting firefighter hiring goals, refocusing the Forest Service and working to boost timber sales and “That’s all great news for this country,” said Agriculture Chair G.T. Thompson (R-Pa.), whose district includes the Allegheny National Forest.
Schultz said the agency is well on its way to its annual timber harvest goal of 3.2 billion board feet, which would exceed last year’s and make progress toward President Donald Trump’s directive to boost the nation’s production.
“Much like agriculture, forestry depends on having reliable domestic markets,” said Rep. Jim Baird (R-Ind.).
But national forests provide less than 6 percent of the country’s saw log production, Schultz said, meaning the great majority of lumber comes from privately owned land. Forest Service efforts like wood innovation grants, begun during the Obama administration, help foster expansion in private industry, he said, adding that this year the Forest Service has made as much as $100 million in related grants.

“The issue is not unique to any one part of the country,” said Schultz, who came to the Forest Service last year from the Idaho Forest Group, a timber company.
“When I talk about the biggest threat to forests and the profession of forestry, it’s lack of markets,” Schultz said. “If landowners don’t have markets for their products, they will convert their lands to some other use.”

 

Dem Affiliated Groups Litigate FS Reorg

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Many thanks to Nick Smith who posted this on his HFHC News Roundup!

I was originally against the idea of moving (xome)  WO folks to SLC.  It’s obviously an Admin, not FS, idea. It does have advantages, as I’ve said before. My own experience of trying to hire people in DC as 14s.. it could be very difficult.As I found it easier to hire in Denver, it would probably be true for SLC.  What I didn’t think of was the difference in quality of reporting comparing local news in SLC to that of the WaPo.

This story has an editor’s note: “A lawsuit only portrays one side of the story. ” Even the TV news in SLC has an editor.  How many litigation stories have we seen without that caveat?

SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — A group of unions, environmental and civic organizations, and local governments has filed a lawsuit challenging the planned restructuring of the U.S. Forest Service, which includes moving the agency’s headquarters to Salt Lake City and closing regional offices and research facilities across the country.

The plaintiffs are alleging that the reorganization would impair the Forest Service’s ability to manage national forests, and they are seeking a preliminary injunction to prevent the USDA administration from moving forward with its reorganization plan.

In March, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced that the Forest Service headquarters would move to Salt Lake City as the first step of a massive agency reorganization intended to shift the organization to a “state-based” model. The move aims to get leadership closer to the landscapes managed by the agency and strengthen partnerships on the local level.

This is a fair statement by reporters about the stated intentions.

The lawsuit was filed by Democracy Forward on behalf of more than 30 groups, including the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), which represent the USDA employees that will be impacted by the reorganization. Many employees will lose their jobs, and the lawsuit states that restructuring will make the jobs of those who remain significantly more difficult.

This is one of those “and how would that work, exactly?” questions.  It’s also interesting that the claim “many people will lose their jobs” sounds like they will leave, but the FS says there are jobs for everyone although perhaps different, and for less than 300, requiring relocation.  Of course, we don’t have to believe the folks at the FS, but we don’t have to believe these folks either. Now, who exactly, we might ask is “Democracy Forward?” Not surprisingly, we find that they are funded heavily by two DAFs, and run by D political operatives.

Here’s what Influence Watch says:

Democracy Forward (DF) is a left-of-center litigation and advocacy nonprofit created in early 2017 by high-level Democratic Party operatives. The organization has been aggressive in targeting the Trump administration.

So, the lawsuit is not particularly surprising.

The lawsuit alleges that restructuring the Forest Service in this way will reduce the agency’s capacity to sustainably manage national forests and engage in fire response and prevention efforts.

Specifically, the plaintiffs claim that the USDA is exceeding its authority in implementing this reorganization plan and that it is violating the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).

My question is “why so much focus on USDA reorg by this group, compared to Interior, which actually started a new agency? If folks are really worried about “fire response and prevention” wouldn’t that be a good place to focus? Maybe they’re litigating that also, although perhaps the fire truck is out of the parking lot on that one. I do think this sudden interest by these groups for “livestock sustainability” is notable.

The More Things Change… Transformation (2007) and Reorganization (2026)

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Many of the news stories you might read do not have the context of previous efforts to reorganize the Forest Service.  If I recall correctly, the Transformation effort of 2007 was the last major such effort.  Many, many thoughtful employees put much effort into this, as we’ve discussed before.  It was one of the efforts used in designing this Reorganization.  My FOIA for some of the other documents is in process.

I ran across this note in my Transformation file.. thoughtful, well-considered and well-written as we’d expect from Mr. Forsgren. The numbers and emails have changed (and all of them have since retired) , so I didn’t x them out. “Gail” was Chief Kimball FYI.

Once and current concerns:

– Communication

– Measures and baseline

– How do we know that service units won’t be troubled (as ASC) rather than successful (from my experience, the Fr. Collins timber folks, the CAT team, WO Minerals, but I’m sure there are many others).

Perhaps the budget deficit made the need for change clearer this time.

“Burden shift” is not as much of a concern now.  That was the idea that administrative processes were taking the time of field people unnecessarily.

Others?