U.S. Forest Service cuts raise concerns on protecting public lands and fighting wildfires

Amna Nawaz:

Sweeping changes are coming for the agency that manages roughly a third of America's public land, the U.S. Forest Service. The agency announced a dramatic overhaul of cuts, closures, and consolidation. That's on top of the Trump administration's latest budget request, which seeks to slash billions of dollars.

As William Brangham reports, the administration calls these commonsense moves, but some worry it could undermine the agency's mission.

Tom Schultz, Chief, U.S. Forest Service:

We have to manage within our budgets. We can't hire staff and have staff in excess of the money we have.

William Brangham:

On Capitol Hill, U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz made the case for the sweeping reorganization of his 121-year-old agency.

Tom Schultz:

So what we're trying to do is push decision-making down to the ground, so that men and women on the ground, give them more responsibility and authority to make decisions and to remove some of middle management and to move people more resources to the forest.

William Brangham:

The Forest Service manages grazing, logging, mining, and firefighting on 200 million acres of U.S. land, as well as thousands of trails and forests that millions of Americans visit every year.

Its science facilities also run the largest forest research project in the country. The new plan calls for shuttering three-quarters of those facilities, moving the entire agency's headquarters from Washington, D.C., to Salt Lake City, and closing every regional office in the country.

It's a radical departure that will impact thousands of jobs, but an essential one, according to Associate Chief Chris French, he's the number two in the service.

Chris French, Associate Chief, U.S. Forest Service:

We have to make choices. The challenge is and the right way to do this is to make those choices where you're putting people first.

William Brangham:

French says the agency is now over budget and understaffed where it matters most.

Chris French:

This is a continuous thing that I hear from our employees. They don't have enough people on the ground to do their work and they think we're top-heavy.

William Brangham:

But critics argue this restructuring is really more a dismantling.

Mike Dombeck, Former Chief, U.S. Forest Service:

Give me some reasons that you would trust an organization or an administration that treats their employees like this.

William Brangham:

Mike Dombeck served as Forest Service chief under Bill Clinton. He says the agency could use some reforms, but says it's hard to ignore a bigger picture, which is that these changes are coming from an administration hostile to both federal workers and scientific research and that wants to slash the service's budget by billions of dollars.

Mike Dombeck:

It's this entire context that we're in that I think creates an environment that is not -- is very chaotic. And then you put a reorganization on top of this sort of chaotic environment. It makes me wonder, what is the real endgame? What is the administration's long-term goal?

William Brangham:

The Forest Service says only about 500 employees will be forced to relocate. But the union representing those people says the number of impacted jobs could be much higher, around 6,500.

During the first Trump administration, when the Bureau of Land Management's headquarters were going to be moved from D.C. to Colorado, almost 90 percent of staff quit, rather than move. That relocation was later canceled.

Steve Gutierrez, a former wildland firefighter who now works for the union representing Forest Service employees, says he expects a similar dynamic here.

Steve Gutierrez, National Federation of Federal Employees: Not everybody can go and pick up their entire lives. They can't move their kids from schools, sell their homes, get their spouses to go and move to other places. So, if you can't relocate, what other options do you have? You're going to have to resign. And this is going to leave a lot of holes in the Forest Service system.

William Brangham:

What's more, according to the new plan, at least 57 of the agency's 77 research stations will be closed across 31 states, potentially disrupting everything from decades-long wildlife monitoring to studying how climate change is impacting the nation's forests.

Former Chief Dombeck says, in a warming world, this is not the time to step back from research.

Mike Dombeck:

And what we understand about fire behavior and fire risk is front and center. To even start to lose ground on what we're learning on that would be a significant, immediate loss. This is long-term stuff. This is stuff that relates to quality of life for not only this generation, but other generation and needs that we have just for basic sustenance of humans.

William Brangham:

Deputy Chief French argues they are trying to preserve that research by balancing the agency's shrinking budget. But he acknowledged the president's 2027 budget request proposes eliminating research and development funding entirely.

Chris French:

If Congress decides not to fund any one portion of the things we're asked to do in our mission, I have no choice but to follow that direction in the budgets.

William Brangham:

Some with deep history at the agency, like retired 31-year veteran Sharon Friedman, who now runs a Web site that covers the Forest Service, think now is a good time for change.

Sharon Friedman, Managing Editor, The Smokey Wire:

The Forest Service is kind of seizing the opportunity of this crisis to actually make some changes that have been talked about for a long time.

William Brangham:

She says fears that any administration can gut the agency completely are overblown.

Sharon Friedman:

The idea that they're getting rid of the Forest Service, the president proposes and Congress disposes, that the president's budget has tried to get rid of state and private and research last time, and Congress said, no way. So I just don't think that's a reasonable fear to have.

William Brangham:

Critics also worry that the reorganization will impair the Forest Service's firefighting capacity right as the country starts what could be a very challenging fire season.

Over 60 percent of the mainland U.S. is in drought and it's especially hot and dry in the West.

Mike Dombeck:

Chief Schultz, and, to his credit, I say, says that we're totally prepared. I would say they're as prepared as they can be given the context of the situation. They're working with a lot of uncertainty and lower morale, and that's not the way you go into an intense fire situation.

Chris French:

I think how we're going to be measured at the end of the day on this is the way that we do this in a way that ensures working and thinking of our employees first, that we're ensuring that the outcomes of this are actually beneficial to the American people that depend on our work and, at the end of the day, puts forward a better footprint for conservation of our national forests across the country.

William Brangham:

The first major change, relocating the Forest Service's headquarters, is expected to begin later this year.

For the "PBS News Hour," I'm William Brangham.