My question was asked, but they got my name wrong. Oh well… There was a Media Situation That Shouts Watch Out.. the presence of a Union of Concerned Scientists staff person, Julian Reyes, on the panel. UCS isn’t usually into our stuff, but Reyes has experience with USDA climate R&D and at BLM.
Not to pick on him, in this post he quotes another source:
“You cannot move a thirty-year watershed study. You cannot relocate a decades-long old-growth monitoring program. You cannot box up a forest and ship it to Colorado. When these facilities close, the experiments die. The datasets end. The partnerships with universities that took generations to build collapse. And the institutional knowledge of the scientists who ran those programs walks out the door, because the administration damn well knows most of them won’t follow a forced relocation to a single consolidated office that has nothing to do with the ecosystems they’ve spent their careers studying.”
This seems to go back to the idea that all the scientists were going to move to Fort Collins. Which may have been a misunderstanding, but I don’t think that there’s a good reason to post that on April 7, 2026 as he did. Either he’s not paying attention or is overly attached to a talking point (a common DC malady).
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Maybe you who listened to the WAMU discussion can help. I’m not the greatest notetaker, but over time AI will be able to help with that.
Labs.. Were there 5 labs with no personnel, 40 of the facilities have 5 people or fewer? They haven’t finalized which ones to close. People are most likely to move to an FS (or other USDA office or lab or university) within commuting distance. It was kind of funny, when the reorg idea (USDA) was first discussed, many folks assumed that all the scientists would have to move to Fort Collins. I think there’s some confusion because Research Stations are not Experimental Forests or even labs, but are the administrative folks that provide useful support functions, do some oversight, and have a set of relationships. They are just like Regions in that respect, but the word Station sounds like a building out there somewhere where researchers work.
WO. As I had heard earlier, many people who “work for the WO” were never in DC to start with. If I copied correctly, 260 are currently physically located in DC, and of these 120 will remain. What will they be doing? Communications, legislative affairs, budget, folks in direct communication with the Hill. And the Associate Chief and the Chief of Staff. The Chief also said he doesn’t spend much time in DC anyway, he spends three out of four weeks traveling around the country talking to people.
So I think that this is important info, especially since there is a whole set of talking points around “you really need some people in DC or ….” but there will be people in DC, so if we were rationale we might ask “what people really need to be there?”. Which is a problem the Minerals staff seems to have solved, last I heard. The Director was there. We can disagree about who should be there, but it’s not exactly a straight line from “120 is not enough or it’s the wrong 120” to “they’re trying to get rid of the FS.” Avey went on about the potential problem, but maybe that was before the Chief answered my question.
Other numbers: Chief mentioned $750 mill budget shortfall in 2024, said 22% of NFs (and Grasslands) had been affected by wildland fire (beneficial or not? how would we know) and 92% of the Mendocino.
Union may litigate over Congress telling the FS that they can’t reorganize. Honestly when I hear this, within an agency, all kinds of separation of powers issues come to mind. Maybe someone knows the report language? I thought teh language was about about the “moving fire out” reorganization, not the other parts.
Many questioners wanted to know how much it would cost. Of course, it depends on what the Union agrees to and whether employees end up moving, or perhaps doing their support or forest work from an existing USDA office in the metro area.
It seems to me that there is a need for a rational discussion on reorganization that’s deeper than “this is the Trump Admin on the path to privatization.” Maybe we can have that discussion here. Plus many of us have concerns that are getting crowded out by the political drama. Sucking all the oxygen out of the room, so to speak.
I think that the below is important context for some aspects of the Reorganization proposal, and I’m reposting for new folks who haven’t necessarily been following all the ins and outs.
One of our problems was the challenge of going back in time. Different sources seemed to have different numbers. Here’s what someone pulled from Onboard in March of 2025.
1. Before the Biden Admin and IRA and IIJA, the Forest Service was down in terms of many districts and forests had serious holes. Budgets? Boomers retiring? Too many folks in the ROs and WO?
2. IRA and IIJA came along, and the Forest Service (probably the Admin) decided to use partners to spend the funding, so handed out large chunks (hundreds of millions) to favored NGOs (apparently without an analysis or cost comparison, or even competition). Then the FS went on a bit of a hiring spree of permanents. I heard complaints about RO staffs going up by 100%, new “chief of staff” positions and so on. Possibly to get more diversity, many folks were hired on less-common hiring authorities that had a two- year instead of a one-year probationary period.
Meanwhile the FS ended up $740 million in the hole (according to a reliable source not authorized to speak on the matter) and had to get rid of all temporaries for field season 2024. I wonder if that included R&D temporaries?
3. If you’re thinking “uh-oh, didn’t the Trump Admin decide to fire all probationary employees, and wouldn’t that mean the FS was uniquely hanging out having just hired 5K new people in 2023 and 2024?” As Chief Moore said at the Retirees’ Reunion in Missoula:
We developed a plan because and we couldn’t in good conscience ask the workforce to do $10 billion more worth of work when we were clearly being underfunded. And so we hired 5,000 additional employees in the agency.
in another spot in the same talk, Moore said 5300. Suppose you were a seasonal. There was an effort to convert some long-term regulars to permanents during the Biden Admin. This seems like a good idea for those who want it. It still looked good when the other temps were laid off. But then you were still on your probationary period, so..
Meanwhile, I think a judge said to the Admin, “no, you can’t do that with probationaries.” So the probationaries could come back, (how many did?) but the FS still needed to have fewer perms to meet budget requirements. Based on the court case, the FS could only use voluntary authorities or develop a RIF plan. Many of us retirees have gone through RIFs and it’s not pretty in so many ways. So the only tool left was voluntary, leaving bunches of people who hadn’t necessarily been hired to do District or Forest level work, and were not as experienced as the people who left.
Meanwhile, people hired by the NGOs mentioned earlier are doing some of the on-the-ground work that employees used to do. Positions that my co-workers used to hold as permanent positions are now advertised by NGOS and the newly hired can be seen driving FS trucks, working on FS ground, and wearing NGO-labelled gear.
If you’re confused, it’s OK. I think we’re all confused. That’s why one consistent ask from me for the past 17 years has been the People’s Database, where the Agency brings together stakeholders and partners and regular people to determine what information to collect consistently.
This page gives you options for connecting, including smart speaker (e.g., ALEXIS), phones, and computers.
If you listen online with this link, the program will run from 10:00 to 12:00 Eastern time. WAMU is the public radio station for American University, located in Washington, DC.
If you listen on your local NPR radio station, the program will probably run from 10:00 to 12:00 local time. Check to make sure. In Colorado, all NPR stations run the program starting at 10:00 a.m. Mountain Time.
NAFSR Chair Bill Avey will be one of the panelists on the show. FS Chief Schultz is also on the panel.
They also asked for callers to provide comments and information in advance of the show.
Their contact information is below.
This is an opportunity to get heard. Feel free to send this to your contacts.
You can also put your question in the comments here, and we’ll see which ones get answered. Mine is “how many people will be left in DC and what will they be doing?”
Welcome to many new The Smokey Wire readers! The goal of The Smokey Wire is to share observations and learn from each other. Important values that we share here are hospitality and (some degree of humility). This is not like other parts of the internet, all comments are approved by me, and nothing is monetized in any way shape or form, in fact, quite the opposite.
Here are some helpful hints for commenters:
State that you disagree or agree and WHY- what is it in your experience, or what you have read or. If we wanted to hear “ranchers are bad” or “environmentalists are bad” or “people from Red or Blue states are bad” or even “Mormons are bad” we could go plenty of places on the internet. Even AI, bless its nonexistent little heart, sometimes tells us where it gets its information and provides a link. As a human, you can do better.
Use “I” and “some”, it’s really helpful. For example, just the word “some” changes the dynamic and opens a door for the curious. I’ll take two examples “Republicans want to sell off federal lands.” If we ask, instead “which Republicans?” we say Mike Lee would be a yes, and say Ryan Zinke, a strong no. So it might be more correct to say current R elected officials in the Congress of the US disagree about selling off federal lands.
Another example, “environmentalists want to cover the land with wind turbines”, if we said “some” we could distinguish the folks who are against most “extractive” uses of federal lands (and motorized) from say, Audubon or the other more “if we don’t solve the climate crisis everything will die, and the only way is wind and solar.” And folks and groups can change their minds, NRDC for example,
Driving the news: The NRDC filed comments earlier this month in support of an early step toward restarting a nuclear power plant in Iowa that Google is planning to use for one of its data centers in the region.
“This is unprecedented for us because it marks the first time in our history that we have taken action in support of an individual nuclear power plant,” Manish Bapna, president and CEO of NRDC, told Axios in an exclusive interview.
WordPress comments are not limited by characters, so you can use these words “I think” “I disagree with X” .
But if you don’t have any content other than “this is the way it is” or “intentions are bad” I will probably not approve your comment, because your comment is not adding to the purpose of this site, which is learning from each other and engaging with human beings with different views.
That’s the intention that I care about and the intention I enforce in approving comments.
“Yes,” you might say, “but you approved Person X’s comment and she said a mean thing!” It’s true, I do have a sliding scale. For some people, at first I approve the comment and push back, hoping they reform.
Other people have social capital built up from a history of previous comments such that I overlook and approve some of their more rant-y comments. I do not edit out the mean parts myself, that’s on you. In some cases I have to balance the need to hear from certain people, particularly those who disagree with me, with their default writing style (polemic).
The way I see it, we are like the story of the blind men and the elephant. We all have different experiences and readings; at different spatial and temporal scales, in different organizations, trying to do different things.. what unites us is our love and concern for our shared federal lands (and private forest lands). From Wikipedia:
The parable of the blind men and an elephant is a story of a group of blind men who have never come across an elephant before and who learn and imagine what the elephant is like by touching it. Each blind man feels a different part of the animal’s body, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk. They then describe the animal based on their limited experience and their descriptions of the elephant are different from each other. In some versions, they come to suspect that the other person is dishonest and they come to blows. The moral of the parable is that humans have a tendency to claim absolute truth based on their limited, subjective experience as they ignore other people’s limited, subjective experiences which may be equally true.[1][2] The parable originated in the ancient Indian subcontinent, from where it has been widely diffused.
What’s funny, from my perspective, is that often we can’t even characterize the elephant, but some are extremely certain what will happen in the future. As a long-lived person, I grow more and more humble about thinking I know about the future. Think of the shale revolution, or the rise of AI- not predicted, or even the return of nuclear. I have seen concerns rise and fall. Not enough people going to the woods.. crisis! Too many people going to the woods, crisis! Too many people in the world, crisis! Not enough people in the world, crisis!
And so on. I feel that we will do better at dealing with real crises of all sorts if we work together, and we will work together better if we understand each other, and we will understand each other better if we don’t assume the others’ bad intentions and are in an environment where people feel free to share their knowledge and experience.
It’s possible, in my view, to “listen with the ear of the heart” as the Benedictines say, even on the internet. If you are interested in this kind of work, you might read Daniel Taub’s “Beyond Dispute: Rediscovering the Jewish Art of Constructive Disagreement.” The author is a practicing expert in peace negotiations (the diplomatic kind), and plus he’s a great storyteller. You don’t have to be Jewish to learn, but it does make you wonder how Christianity lost this tradition of Holy Disagreement, and began Killing Off People Who Disagree With You Theologically. There’s probably a book out there somewhere..
This approach sees argument not as a combat zone but as a joint enterprise, and its disputants not as jealous custodians of competing truths, but collaborative explorers. It seeks to create safe spaces not by outlawing controversial opinions but by welcoming them, and it offers a set of practical tools to rethink our own preconceptions. In fractious times it charts a way to build communities and societies that are resilient enough to face new and challenging ideas without fear.
Anyway, that’s what we are embarked upon here at TSW. I’m hoping it will explain what our purpose is (at least mine) and help you edit your comments. Again, welcome! Also guest posts are welcome .. if you have views and experiences you would like to share with the TSW community, please email me. Especially experiences in the past, which may be lost as history is rewritten by AI.
Many thanks to John Gordon, who remembered a Doug Leisz report from the 1980’s. Some of the themes are the same as today.. after 50 years. I think the existence of some tension between Regions and Forests has been a common theme. Of course that is probably the case in any hierarchical organization, easily exacerbated by personalities and personal chemistry. Anyway, here’s what Chat GPT said about the Leisz Report. I may have asked the wrong question, and anyone with memories, please add. Otherwise Chat GPT will be free to rewrite history based on unknown algorithms.. kind of scary.
Below is just the first page, I asked more questions, if you want to review the whole thing, go to the link above. I was a humble Area Geneticist during the 80’s so was not aware of this, but had great fun working on the Ochoco Pilot (an organizational improvement effort). Doug talks about “analysis paralysis” I did work on Process Predicament as the NEPA contact. Here’s that report for those of you who don’t remember. It was published in 2002. And so it goes…
Back to Chat GPT:
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The “Leisz Report” you’re referring to is not a single widely published, formally titled report like a congressional study—it’s more of an informal name used in forestry circles for a set of internal analyses, memos, and management critiques associated with Douglas R. Leisz in the late 1970s–early 1980s.
Because of that, it can be confusing: different people use “Leisz Report” to mean slightly different documents or ideas. But they generally point to the same thing.
What the “Leisz Report” actually was
In essence, the “Leisz Report” refers to internal Forest Service evaluations and guidance during Leisz’s tenure (especially as Associate Chief, ~1979–1982) that:
Critiqued how the United States Forest Service was being managed
Emphasized accountability of line officers (forest supervisors, district rangers)
Pushed for more active, on-the-ground forest management rather than excessive planning
Addressed concerns about declining productivity, timber programs, and fire risks
These ideas show up in internal directives and management reforms he promoted rather than a single standalone report.
Key themes commonly attributed to it
1. Accountability & decentralized responsibility
Leisz pushed the idea that:
Local forest managers should be clearly responsible for decisions and outcomes
Higher offices should provide guidance—but not micromanage
In his own words (from later interviews), he worked to create a system where managers would be “held accountable for decisions and the results thereof.” (Ppolinks)
2. Critique of “analysis paralysis”
A major concern was that the Forest Service was becoming:
Too focused on planning, paperwork, and process
Too slow to implement actual forest treatments (logging, thinning, fuels work)
This tension grew out of new environmental laws in the 1970s (like NEPA and NFMA), which increased procedural requirements.
3. Active forest management (especially fuels & timber)
Leisz and like-minded foresters argued:
Forests were becoming overstocked with fuel (dead wood, dense stands)
Reduced timber harvest and delays in treatment could increase wildfire risk
The agency needed to get back to active management (harvest, thinning, reforestation)
This perspective later influenced debates about wildfire policy and forest health.
4. Organizational culture problems
The “report” is also associated with critiques that:
The Forest Service workforce was becoming risk-averse
Decision-making was shifting away from field professionals
Morale and effectiveness were being affected by bureaucratic constraints
Why it mattered
Even though it wasn’t a formal public report, the “Leisz Report” ideas:
Became part of internal Forest Service reform efforts in the early 1980s
Modern debates over fuel reduction and wildfire policy
Are still cited today in arguments about:
Active vs. passive management
Federal vs. local control of forests
Bottom line
When people mention the “Leisz Report,” they’re usually talking about:
A set of influential internal Forest Service critiques and management reforms (late 1970s–early 1980s) associated with Douglas Leisz, emphasizing accountability, active management, and concern over bureaucratic inefficiency.
If you want, I can dig up the closest actual document or memo people are referring to (there are a few candidates depending on who’s citing it).
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You can read the rest of my further questions and Chat’s answers in the link above.
I wanted to highlight a couple of Endangered Species Act cases that don’t involve land management agency decisions, but may have important implications for federal lands management.
Gulf of Mexico ESA exemption
TRO denied in Center for Biological Diversity v. Burgum (D. D.C.)
As discussed here, the Trump Administration convened the Endangered Species Committee to consider waiving ESA prohibitions for all oil and gas exploration, development, and production activities in the Gulf of Mexico. On March 27, the district court denied Plaintiff’s motion for a temporary restraining order to postpone the meeting scheduled for March 31.
Government attorneys argued in court that the environmental group was challenging an exemption decision that hadn’t been made, and the judge questioned whether he had jurisdiction to grant the request. The meeting occurred as scheduled and the Committee took the unprecedented action of exempting oil and gas drilling activities from the requirements of ESA based on national security interests. This is the third time an exemption has been granted, the first time the exception has been based on national security interests, and the first time it has not involved a specific project.
Following the meeting, on March 31, the Center for Biological Diversity amended its complaint regarding the committee’s convening (in Center for Biological Diversity v. Burgum (D. D.C.)), adding a claim that Secretary Hegseth’s national security determination lacked a rational basis, fails to consider important factors, and runs counter to the evidence before him, and thus violates the APA
On April 1, Natural Resource Defense Council filed a second challenge, claiming that the national security determination and the committee decision implementing an exemption on that basis are both arbitrary and capricious.
On April 2, Healthy Gulf, Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth and Turtle Island Restoration Network filed a third case (Healthy Gulf v. Burgum(D. D.C.), alleging that the committee violated and exceeded its authority under the ESA by not following required procedures for granting an exemption, that the exemption was required to include mitigation measures, and that the exemption is overly broad rather than applicable to a particular existing agency action.
There are many species in the Gulf of Mexico that are listed as threatened or endangered, Rice’s whales being considered at greatest risk of extinction. The Secretary’s national security determination focuses on lawsuits brought by non-governmental organizations about the biological opinions that analyze oil and gas activities in the Gulf, and that require certain actions to protect listed species. He added, “It is necessary for national security to eliminate the threat of vacatur, rather than waiting to see if it materializes.” (It could be hard to distinguish federal lands energy production from offshore energy production in this regard.)
(The graphic included with this article summarizes the number of species listed under the ESA for each president. It seems like there should be an asterisk for waiving protection of any of those species, and maybe subtractions.)
Court decision in Center for Biological Diversity v. U. S. Department of the Interior (N.D. California)
On March 30, the district court vacated four modifications of the regulations governing consultation under the Endangered Species Act, which is required any time a federal action may affect a listed species or its critical habitat. For three of the modification, the court found, “The agency’s errors are serious. Its regulations contradict the text of the Endangered Species Act and undercut the efficacy of Section 7 consultation in protecting threatened or endangered wildlife and marine life.” The fourth was arbitrary and capricious.
One provision invalidated by the court was the definition of “effects of the action” that must be considered. It would allow federal agencies to address only effects of actions that are “reasonably certain to occur,” to which the court responded, “… to the extent that the “reasonable certainty” requirement excludes evidence that is the best available, it violates the statute.” The standard improperly allowed the Services to exclude scientifically supported but uncertain impacts from the jeopardy analyses.
Another provision would have explicitly stated that mitigation measures “do not require any additional demonstration of binding plans.” Focusing on the word “insure,” the court held that, “an agency does not satisfy its obligation under Section 7 to insure against harm to species or habitat by resting its conclusions on ‘plans’ that are merely proposed and non-binding.”
The court overturned a definition of “destruction or adverse modification” (of critical habitat) that would require federal actions to affect species’ critical habitat “as a whole” before habitat protections are needed, which would allow smaller projects to avoid this analysis and mitigation. The court found that use of the modifier ‘as a whole’ contradicts the statute because it “improperly permits piecemeal habitat degradation, contrary to the ESA’s categorical prohibition on adverse modification of designated critical habitat.”
The fourth provision pertained did away with a requirement for the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service to request a “reinitiation of consultation” with other agencies under certain circumstances. While there is no statutory requirement for the consulting agencies to reinitiate consultation, the agencies failed provide an adequate explanation for the change, in violation of the APA.
The court upheld two other amendments affecting key terms in Section 4 regulations on listing (“foreseeable future”) and determining critical habitat (“not prudent”). The court also found that the agencies complied with NEPA in issuing the 2024 Section 4 regulations using a categorical exclusion.
This court’s order “simply allows the relevant pre-2019 provisions to control” until currently pending proposed regulatory changes are completed. However, it’s not clear how much any of these changes would change actual practice, or how these interpretations of the law may also affect the currently pending regulatory changes. The article includes a link to the opinion.
People are trying to scare you about FS Reorganization. I don’t know why.. clearly there are partisan shadings (it’s worse from partisan outlets and quotes from D operatives) but it seems like it might be broader than that. I’m going to try to cover it as honestly as I can, complete with historical perspective and hoping for engagement by others who know more.
I’ve read several times about State Directors being bad because..er.. timber industry. It certainly meets the “sounds vaguely plausible and fits the narrative” criterion that many people use nowadays for their writing. But let’s ask the question, how would that actually work?
Western Governors have a bipartisan group that frequently tells us what they ARE interested in. In this case, they supported State Directors. I would bet that wildfire mitigation and suppression are also high on their list, at least it is in Colorado. And I think they are quite aware of water issues as well. As my colleague DeAnn Zwight used to say, “they didn’t just fall off the turnip truck.”
For example, Bill McKibben wrote this in a piece in the New Yorker (thanks to a TSW reader who sent this in!). Now someone internationally important like McKibben weighing in on our stuff is always a News Situation That Shouts Watch Out. Still it appears to be a broader talking point and others have used it.
The Service will now have, instead of a regional headquarters, a “state coordinator” in the capitals of states where it has large holdings, and I think it’s safe to predict that these people will service connections to the interests that value timber more highly than those that value, say, water filtration, much less backpacking.
Are you kidding me, Bill? Polis and Newsom and Kotek and Grisham and.. but let’s look at acreage by State. According to Google AI.
The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) manages over 193 million acres of National Forest System land, with the vast majority located in the Western US and Alaska. Alaska leads with 21.9 million acres, followed by California (20.8 million acres) and Idaho (20.4 million acres). These lands are managed for conservation and recreation.
Top Forest Service Acreage by State (Approximate)
Alaska: 21.9 million acres
California: 20.8 million acres
Idaho: 20.4 million acres
Montana: ~16-17 million acres (Region 1/4 data)
Colorado: 14.5 million acres
Oregon: ~13 million acres
Arizona: 11.2 million acres
Other Key State Acreages
Arkansas: 2.58 million acres
Washington: ~9 million acres
Utah: ~8 million acres
If we were to calculate NF acres (and leave out Alaska, which is unique) we can see that only Idaho is overtly red-dish. Montana has seen more D’s than R’s as governors. Arizona is hard to call. So where are these scary timber-centric Govs to be found?
Also, for folks who don’t follow this.. BLM currently has state directors. So there’s an argument to be made for consistency, from the viewpoint of everyone who doesn’t want to keep track of different agencies different regional structures, plus the state government themselves. From my experience in Region 2, forests in other states sometimes felt like they were always treated less well because our RO was in Colorado and Colorado tended to suck up most attention and resources. Plus we had “state coordinator” positions that wouldn’t be needed if there was a state director.
Finally, as we have seen, Biden Admin appointees could bypass the State Directors and select RMP preferred alternatives.. so then why would the FS be any different if an Admin felt strongly enough about something? Fed Admins can call the shots, but if they more or less ignore the governors, the states are likely to sue and/or get the decision overturned in the next Admin. This happened with a Roadless decision in California, and with various RMPs and Monuments in other States.
So if states are scary because.. politics.. it clearly works both ways. Personally, I’m biased toward the “laboratories of democracy” aspect of federalism and “making organizations easier to understand and access”. From my experience in Region 2, forests in other states felt like they were always treated less well because our RO was in Colorado and Colorado
According to the map, there are some red states in the West, and we can look at how important the timber industry is in those states, thanks to Montana’s BBER, which I think is funded by FIA. Idaho indeed has an important timber industry, but the others reddish states?
You can get a comprehensive report on forest industry in Utah
From 2020
Or Wyoming (2018)..
As we see here in individual cases at TSW, timber industry is struggling. Mills are still closing. And yet we use wood products and need to get material out of forests for fuel mitigation, hopefully without burning it in situ and releasing carbon and particulates. On the ground, in various places, they are partners producing useful things and making projects cost the taxpayer less, and putting less carbon and particulates in the atmosphere from fuels projects. I just don’t get the fear-mongering, unless it’s a holdover from the Timber Wars and makes a handy boogey-industry for those who aren’t watching carefully.
It was pointed out that many TSW folks read on their phones and my screenshot yesterday was too tiny to read. I think it’s important as it gives some historical context for some of the changes the current Admin is trying to make.
Also, there are many new people signing up to TSW, so I thought I’d mention that there was a massive effort in 2007 (almost 20 years ago now) with various hard-working and thoughtful internal teams that dealt with some of the same (long-standing) issues. Some units took it seriously.. and changed their structure. Others waited and hoped it would pass and sure enough it did. Reducing RO’s was a thing; I think one alternative was to get down to three. Certainly it’s a larger step to go from three to zero, but the trajectory is not out of line with past internally-generated ideas of how to improve.
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I was trying to find documentation of Transformation and did find some (in the attic of one Kathy Kurtz, many thanks to her!). Other folks contacted me and said that they had saved some, but wouldn’t let it go without FS approval. I tried to contact the FS historian, but they either didn’t exist or wouldn’t return my messages. So if you know who that person is, or if that’s the right person to talk to, please let me know as I asked the National Museum and the Forest History Society and they both were very light on organizational improvement documents.
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Anyway, here’s that page of my 2007 comments. I fixed some spelling and spelling but not the tone. Like I said yesterday, this was probably a first draft and got toned down before it went anywhere. Background “TOS” is Transfer of Station, “Rosslyn leases” are for an office building (at least one) in Virginia across the river from DC. I italicized the pieces that the FS is still apparently dealing with.
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Are there any key areas deserving extra focus and evaluation as a part of this transformation effort?
Human Capital Management should be on the table in the Transformation process.
Specialists of all kinds in terms of project and broader scale planning – we need them but how many do we need and can we share better and actually have higher quality available at a lower cost?
When can people work from wherever and when it is important that they be together? Our organization seems to be unclear on this and makes different decisions at different points in time before we spend beaucoup bucks on TOS shouldn’t we have a corporate principle about this?
There is so much change going on right now. How does it all fit together and when will it stop? The agency as a whole may be at a breaking point in so far as continual change is concerned. There is a perception at the upper levels of the Agency that the field is resistant to change, while in fact change has been continuous. The agency has gone from a predominately timber focused organization to one focusing on fire ecology and management, a very significant change.
The Agency as an organization is not functioning well.
The Charter says we will leverage new technology but we have not been able to do so. For example, we cannot pay our bills on time.
Many Forest Service organizations have undergone efficiency changes. Don’t penalize those organizations that have already made efficiency changes.
The Case for Change in the Charter is written defensively and needs to be written with a positive focus such as:
We want to be able to do our mission better, here are some reform ideas.
Need to explain the origin of the Case for Change
Rosslyn leases were up and an opportunity to operate more efficiently became apparent.
The Regional Foresters agreed to being able to deliver an extra million dollars in funding to each National Forest. This later became a 25% reduction in WO/RO funding.
In the Charter Key points it says, “Leverage the capacity of the Agency’s centralized business operations services in Albuquerque.”
Albuquerque has not been a success. There is not any capacity in Albuquerque to be leveraged and they have not been able to deliver what has been asked of them.
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To be fair, I would think ASC has improved since those earlier days. Point being, I don’t think it’s fair to characterize all the Reorg ideas as by the current Admin. A Trump Admin was not a gleam in anyone’s eye in 2007. Also it downplays the hard work and deep thinking of the career folks who worked earnestly in 2007, and those who have worked on the current effort. It’s not easy or popular work- to make government work better- you could even say “thankless” .. but some of us appreciate those folks.
I’ve often said that what the FS is talking about in reorganization sounds like the same questions we looked at during Transformation (but I wasn’t in R&D then). I’ve even heard from my sources that some of the folks involved in Reorg reviewed the Transformation documents. I was looking through my files and ran across my responses to a Transformation questionnaire. You may get a hoot out of it, I did.
“don’t penalize those organizations that have already made efficiency changes” sigh. I’m hearing about this with regard to the current fleet reduction issue..
Also “there is so much change going on right now”. This was 2007. Note: even I don’t always agree with 2007-me.
Yeah, I know this is a more critical tone than I would use as a TSW writer, but I was trying to get a point across in-house. Even then it was about leases and getting more money to the field…and the spelling is pretty awful, I guess it was a draft. More than likely this was mixed with others’ views and edited before it was sent out.
Forest Service Will Close Research Stations That Study Wildfire Risk
The U.S. Forest Service is closing 57 of its 77 research facilities in 31 states under a reorganization plan announced this week, threatening science that looked at how wildfires, drought, pests and global warming are putting pressure on forests.
The agency plans to consolidate its research division into a centralized office in Fort Collins, Colo., and move field researchers to locations in nearby states. But employees said they feared the move would lead many scientists to leave instead. The reorganization will also move the agency’s headquarters to Salt Lake City from Washington, affecting 260 employees.
When I read it in the Times, I have to wonder a bit if my sources are wrong, or are the reporters. Actually, from the beginning of Reorg talk, I got the point that the Admin had chosen to get rid of a layer of administration, not research projects themselves.
In fact, for those who harken back to the hubbub over indirect cost caps at other research agencies, it is simple subtraction to think “if Congress gives you a budget, and you spend less on overhead, then you will have more bucks to fund research directly.” That’s the idea, anyway. Stations, like Regions, did many useful things supporting researchers. It is likely the gaps will be noticed and filled over time, but the end result is likely to be less overhead.
So why does the story keep going around that all the scientists , as opposed to administrators, will be moved to Fort Collins? In fact, if my numbers were correct (and I can only say that they come from a usually reliable source, so there is uncertainty associated with this for sure) a max of 500 employees received or will receive relocation letters. According to my sources, more information will be forthcoming about what employees are moving where, but it would have to be to another USDA site within commuting distance if they don’t receive a letter.
What does it even mean to “move researchers to locations in nearby states”? Nearby to Fort Collins or nearby to where they are currently located? But most commuting distances do not cross state lines.
What does OPM say?
According to AI for federal employees in a Reduction in Force (RIF), the local commuting area is generally defined by OPM as the geographic area surrounding a work site where people live and can reasonably be expected to travel daily, often defined in practice as within 50 miles of the duty station, though this can vary based on local conditions.
But this is not necessarily a RIF, so I don’t know if the same definition applies. I do know that there are likely TSW readers who know for sure and hopefully you will add that information in a comment or contact me directly (sharon at forestpolicypub dot com).
According to the Times:
Many of the research facilities are at universities where Forest Service scientists have access to laboratories and computers or at experimental forests where scientists can monitor the effects of environmental changes over long periods of time. They also investigate logging techniques, endangered plant and animal species, and how forests grow back after devastating fires.
There are many experimental forests and ranges, and looking around, they are very different. Most do not have scientists in residence. It’s true, part of my old job in DC was to try to keep Experimental Forests and Range research going. For awhile, EF and R’s was considered passe among science cool science funding fads. More on that in a later post. Fortunately, you can find all the EF&Rs by going to the Station website you are interested in:
Even Google AI agrees with me on the “scientists with duty stations onsite” question..
Now, one more piece of information that is obvious to retirees. Experimental forests are generally within an existing FS National Forest or Grassland. Maybe someone knows of exceptions? That means that there are already facilities associated with that National Forest or Grassland which are being paid for, so if it’s important to stay in the area, and there is no lab work (or partners can do that), it could make sense. It works both ways, though, the Rapid City Forest and Grassland Research Laboratory is co-housed with the Mystic Ranger District of the Black Hills. Does being in the same building with NFS folks lead to different views and interests than being in the same building with university folks? Probably, at least to some extent. Today scientific (or other) discussions can often occur via electronic means. How related research goals and approaches should be to managers’ needs is a much longer discussion.
Are FS lab facilities fully occupied? Have they tried to find people to rent the extra space? Do USG rules facilitate that or make it difficult? If the FS has only a few researchers, is it cheaper to pay rent to a university? These are all questions I would have.. but as I said, those who know won’t say, and those who say often don’t know. I’d add some who do know talk to reporters who work for outlets with unscalable paywalls, so most of us don’t get the benefit.
But back to the Times story.
Let’s see whom the reporter interviewed.
“This move will lead to an increasing divergence between sound science and land management,” said Kevin Hood, executive director of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, a nonprofit forest protection group.
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Sidenote: The lovely and talented TSW contributor Andy Stahl has retired from FSEEE; I was hoping we’d hear from him still, but maybe not. The new Executive Director of FSEEE is Kevin Hood. He has an extensive experience in the FS, but not in R&D.
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The consolidation of research stations does not mean a retreat from the agency’s research mission,” Mr. Schultz said in the email. “Forest Service R&D has produced world-class science for over a century, and that will continue. The consolidation is about organizing the research enterprise more efficiently, not diminishing it.”
A Forest Service spokesperson declined to answer questions, pointing to a news release issued by the Agriculture Department, its parent agency.
Among the closures is the Pacific Northwest Research Station in Portland, Ore., a facility founded in 1925 that has 246 employees, most of them scientists, according to its website, and oversees projects from Oregon to Alaska.
I don’t know what the reporter means by “scientist” here.. perhaps it’s confusing that some folks who do administrative work are scientists by background?
And here’s the “other states” part again.
Several current Forest Service research employees said they were confused by this week’s reorganization announcement and that they expected many of their colleagues would leave the agency rather than move to other states.
Again, facilities are not programs are not people. Administration is not research, even if administration is done by people who were formerly research scientists.
Back to the misleading headline and tagline.. (reporters don’t usually write these, probably click promoters do..)
Forest Service Will Close Research Stations That Study Wildfire Risk
Scientists say their work on fires and climate change could be lost as the agency moves its headquarters to Utah from Washington and shuts 57 research stations.
It would have been helpful if these scientists had been asked for more detail on how they expected their research funding to change and their work could be “lost.” I suspect that more wildfire research funding could be lost to other more predatory science agencies, rather than closing facilities. After all, the Macon Lab was closed and yet.. we have wildfire research continuing, rather splendidly, in the Forest Service.
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From Google AI- hopefully someone can check this for truth.
I’m not down on the reporter for this piece. If you look at his stories in the Times they tend to be about different facets of climate, all from a certain perspective. So perhaps it’s natural to elide facilities with programs with climate. Previously, he was at the WSJ and that range of stories is even more interesting. It’s pretty amazing that anyone could write stories about so many different and interesting things, from life on Mars to “rogue planet’s explosive growth” to “panic-inducing rumors went viral ahead of the French Revolution.”
These things are complicated and how could anyone know the complexities who hadn’t been through previous iterations? And who is a good source of info?
That’s one of the reasons I started TSW.. planning and roadless rules were and are complicated, and I thought that they needed a deeper dive than the traditional media business model would allow.
My advice to reporters is.. you can always call me for background on these topics, but if you’re going for organizational heft, try NAFSR. I don’t always agree with them, but at least they have a range of experience and perspectives. Plus you can get away from most partisan subtexts.
