Why the U.S. Forest Service is moving to the West

National forests have seen such an increase in wildfire danger and health issues over the past 20 years that nearly two-thirds of the 193 million acres under U.S. Forest Service management are at risk, according to its chief.

Between insect or disease issues and the likelihood of wildfire, that’s roughly 120 million acres by Forest Service chief Tom Schultz’s estimation of land that needs attention. That risk coupled with specific direction from the Trump administration to spend within its means and reduce redundancy, among other instructions, led to a massive reorganization of the agency announced Tuesday.

“Ultimately it’s about smarter government,” Schultz told the Deseret News in an exclusive interview after the announcement. “What this looks like is: to be leaner, more efficient and closer to the public that we serve.”

The most striking element of the “sweeping restructuring” was one that some Westerners have been asking to happen for decades. The public land manager’s headquarters are to move from the seat of the federal government across the continent and to the region where the vast majority of its resources are found. About 87% of Forest Service land is in the West.

Forest Service headquarters moving to Utah

Salt Lake City — the agency’s newly named home — is the center of the West, Schultz said. “We just see that as a great fit for the Forest Service, for the USDA and for the state of Utah,” he said.

A date for the move has not been disclosed.

But it’s just one part of the plan. The Forest Service will also change its organizational structure, closing nine regional hubs and opening up 15 state-specific offices, mostly in the West.

Research and development will be consolidated under one director to focus its efforts and to make sure they’re aligned with the priorities of the Trump administration. As a result, some 50 or so R&D outposts will close. And, the agency is also making significant operational changes that it hopes will limit bureaucratic roadblocks.

“We know that we cannot do things the way we’ve always done them and be effective,” Schultz said. “There is so much to be done and the health of the forest is really at stake here. We think this reorganization achieves all of that.”

As the news broke this week, not all responses were positive. Conservationist groups expressed concern that moving the headquarters and restructuring the Forest Service was a means to prioritize specific state interests above national ones, to remove science from decision making and would lead to a further decimation of the federal workforce.

Schultz disagreed with the premise of those concerns. He argued “that having a closer relationship with states, tribes and counties will improve management.”

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox agreed.

“This is a big win for Utah and the West. Nearly 90% of Forest Service lands are west of the Mississippi, so putting leadership closer to the lands they manage just makes sense,” he said. “This isn’t symbolic. It means better, faster decisions on the ground. Everyone who depends on our public lands, from hikers and campers to ranchers and timber producers, will benefit from this change.”

How did the Forest Service reorganization come about?

Last fall, the Department of Agriculture opened a period of public comment about potential changes to the agency’s organizational structure. The majority — some 82% — expressed a negative sentiment about the idea, but Schultz said those comments were invaluable to the decision it landed on.

“The very state structure that we’re talking about implementing, that was not what our initial thoughts were,” he said. “That was something that was definitely informed by feedback that we received.”

Schultz said that it was a result of the communication the Forest Service had with state foresters that the new model came to be, which is why it moves away from its current region-based structure.

The 15 new offices will be supported by “shared operational service centers” and a “unified research enterprise.”

Some of those offices will be responsible for single states, such as Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington, while the rest will cover multi-state regions. Utah’s office, for example, will also be responsible for Nevada. Wyoming’s will include the Dakotas. The Eastern and Southern states — based in Pennsylvania and Georgia — will have far broader jurisdiction.

While closing nine offices and opening others might appear inefficient, Schultz explained their functions will be much different.

“We’re talking about a state director (who) is going to have six to eight employees, whereas a regional office has had upwards of a couple hundred employees,” Schultz said.

The state directors will primarily act as a liaison with a handful of support staff focused on things like communications, legal affairs and intergovernmental affairs.

“That’s the type of work that will be done at those offices,” Schultz said. “So a much more streamlined, smaller approach, but a much, much greater touch point with those key decision makers in the field from the states and the tribes, county government and so forth.”

But it is not just a physical reorganization. The Forest Service will be addressing the multiple layers of management and regulation that “bog” things down, he said.

“We have numerous — not just statutes and regulations — but policies and directives that we’ve promulgated. We have more than 3,000 directives that have been created at various levels between regions and the Washington office,“ Schultz said.

The agency will be making an effort to deregulate itself from the “administrative state” that it’s become over the years.

“I would say it has created a fair amount of mistrust; it has created cumbersome processes and has increased the cost of doing business,” Schultz said.

Schultz did not elaborate on exactly which policies or regulations were going to be removed, but as a result of simultaneously changing the management structure and limiting the administrative process, he said that “we’re going to be able to get work done in a way that’s quicker, faster, even though we’re going to have a more streamlined organization.”

What’s going to happen to research and development?

The research and development arm of the Forest Service will be consolidated under a single entity based in Fort Collins, Colorado, where it currently has a large research center.

While there are 20 or so research facilities that will stay open, more than 50 — with the potential for more — will be closed.

Schultz said R&D is an important function, but the Forest Service has identified a lot of redundancies since research outposts have often been autonomous. By putting all of it under one umbrella, the agency can be more specific about how it conducts its various research and, subsequently, applies the findings in day-to-day management.

There will also be a change in areas of research that will “better align with the priorities” of the Trump administration.

They’ll focus on active forest management, minerals, recreation and fire management, Schultz said. That research will be applied to supporting not just the National Forest system, he said, but also private landowners.

Is wildfire season the best time to roll this out?

Between large staff reductions, buyouts, a slow-moving national wildfire response consolidation effort and the makings of a severe wildfire season due to the winter’s extreme warmth, there is speculation that the Department of the Interior and the Agriculture Department are not ready for the wildfire season.

That was before the Forest Service announced its changes. Schultz, however, was clear that it is very attuned to the realities of wildfire and factored them into the timing of the reorganization rollout.

To make sure that there is no loss to wildfire preparedness, he clarified that the outlined changes that might affect wildfire response efforts won’t begin during this year’s wildfire season.

“We’ve put a lot of thought into the timing so as not to impact the fire program at all for this fire season,” Schultz said. “There is no change at all to the fire program pursuant to this restructuring.“

That means that the service’s Fire and Aviation Management program is not changing its region-based Geographic Area Coordination Center, which will continue to report to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho. No field-based firefighters will have their roles changed, moved or generally experience interruption either.

“That’s something that we’re very well attuned to,” he said,“ to make sure that we do not impact in any way, shape or form our readiness and our ability to suppress fires and protect communities this coming season.”

Conservation groups question the move

There are some who see this restructuring as part of a broader effort to undermine the integrity of the federal land institutions.

Josh Hicks, the director of conservation campaigns for The Wilderness Society, pointed out that the vast majority of Forest Service staff already works in or near the resources they manage and such a move is not necessary.

“They’re already organized in a way where they’re on the ground. It’s not like they have 30,000 employees in DC that are making these decisions,” Hicks said. “These are people at the Forest Service who live and work in the communities where they manage the land, but there does need to be a presence in DC to create that whole, national system of lands.”

From his perspective, this action is one in a progression that started with staff reductions in February 2025, later buyouts and retirements, and then a proposed budget cut of 60%. Those actions, he said, culminate with moving the agency’s leadership to the state whose congressional delegation has spearheaded public land sales. That concert of efforts, he said, makes him “really concerned.”

“Where is all this headed? I don’t think this is all coincidental,” Hicks said. “These lands belong to all Americans ... and the laws that govern their management happen in the nation’s capital; not in a governor’s office where people from another state’s views aren’t considered.”

Steve Bloch, the legal director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, agrees. He said that the move is going to further reduce an already struggling federal workforce. He said he thinks it has nothing to do with bringing land managers closer to the resources they manage.

“Ultimately, it’s trying to bring this federal agency that has a higher calling — to be responsible to the American public and manage national forests in the public and national interest — to heel by moving them out West so they can be more under the thumb and under pressure by state interests," he said.

But Schultz said he “fundamentally disagree(s) with the premise” of those ideas.

“This is about relocating the expertise that we have to a location that we think better serves the American public. That’s what this is about. It’s not about a devolution of the agency. It’s not about trying to reduce influence anywhere. It’s to locate our employees, where the work is, where the customer base is, where the people that recreate use these lands,” he said.

“That’s where we want to have our headquarters at, and we think it aligns with the priorities of the administration. We think it drives work in a way that is less influenced by factors in the DC area (that) should be more focused on delivering service to the American public.”

Still, Bloch and Hicks both reiterated their concern about states having outsized influence on a federal agency. Those bureaucracies have a broad responsibility and, “it is not necessarily in accordance with what a governor or a public lands director for a state wants to see,” Bloch said.

But by putting Forest Service in the West and adjacent to state governments, Bloch said the line between who is in charge will shift and that “higher calling” will get lost.

“Making the federal agencies beholden to states so the BLM and the Forest Service can accomplish their goals, it only makes sense that then state goals are going to be elevated,” Bloch said.

How folks who rely on Forest Service land feel about it

Trevor Barnson’s family has been permitted to graze cattle on Forest Service land on Beaver Mountain in Piute County for the past 15 years. In the last several years, however, he has watched the Thompson Ridge Fire, the Little Twist Fire, the Silver King Fire and the Monroe Fire all burn forests and mountains near his ranch.

Barnson said that he thought all were the result of some kind of Forest Service mismanagement. If the people making decisions about forest management were familiar with the region and the state of the forests, he said, such fires might have been prevented.

If those bosses are directly familiar with the forests and know their employees, Barnson said, then they’ll be more apt to listen to their concerns or to take action from a suggestion.

“Because right now, when they hear something, they’ve got to just take everybody’s word for it,” Barnson said. “Whether it be an environmental group, whether it be their staff, whether it be an agricultural group, they don’t have a lot of experience where they’re making the decisions.”

With this restructure, he’s thrilled that Westerners will “have the people that make the decisions, where their decisions have an effect.”

Being good stewards, preserving the land

Barnson’s sentiment is shared by Valjay Rigby, a fifth generation farmer and rancher and the president of the Utah Farm Bureau Federation. He’s been lobbying for the large public land agencies to move west for a long time and he “feels really good about the decision.”

Not just for the reasons that Barnson mentioned, but also because Utah is already a great steward of its public lands.

“We feel like we’ve really been doing a good job of managing our forests — we have sound science, we care about what we’re doing and we’ve entered into some unprecedented partnerships with the state and the Forest Service just in the past year to do a better job,“ Rigby said. ”This is not about extracting resources or anything that the environmentalists would get mad about. This is about being good stewards and preserving for generations to come."

In addition to that, he mentioned that the Agriculture Department already has a presence in the state, there’s a great land grant university in Utah State and a number of other tangibles. Those are things like a highly educated population, available housing and “really good land managers.”

“It makes sense to have the headquarters here where the very best people are at,” he said.

Schultz brought up similar points about Salt Lake City. He mentioned the city’s proximity to one of the most heavily recreated areas in the forest service’s portfolio, the Wasatch Mountains, the international airport and a culture he said made it “a really good fit.”

“The prevalence of National Forest System lands, the pro-business and pro-family culture there, just the amenities, the relationship we have with the governor and delegation there,” Schultz said. “And we’ve seen positive feedback from other states in the West acknowledging (that) having the Forest Service in the West — in a state like Utah — being a very positive effect on the broader region, not just Utah."