A New Chapter for the U.S. Forest Service?

Less Productive, Less Prepared, and Flying Blind

To Our Readers: This edition of This Land is a second in a series of longer pieces exploring changes for the U.S. Forest Service, co-written with my colleague Paul Strong. In a 34 year career with the Forest Service Paul served as a Forest Planner, Regional Planner, and National Forest Supervisor.

Thank you as always for your subscriptions, for sharing this with others, and for likes, comments, and suggestions for other topics! - Fred

The mission of the United States Forest Service is “to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the nation’s forests and grasslands to meet the needs of present and future generations”. Managing more than 193 million acres of National Forests and Grasslands in a way that sustains those values and meets those needs for today and for the future - AKA “Caring for the Land and Serving People” - was never an easy job even in the best of times.

We don’t know all the details of what the agency may look like by 2026 yet as the re-organization plans for agencies in the U. S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) have not been revealed and their implementation has been blocked by courts.

What we do know is that the President’s proposed 2026 budget for the Forest Service and his recent Executive Orders lay out a vision for a Forest Service that will be severely reduced in scope, capacity, and funding, and with a myopically narrowed emphasis on timber production, while other parts of the mission are de-emphasized or eliminated altogether. Taken as a whole, the proposed changes will make caring for the land and serving people more difficult by an order of magnitude.

Of all the changes ordered by the White House and that are now being planned for by the USDA and the Forest Service, we can point to three which will create profound and long-lasting impacts.

• Increasing timber production on National Forest System Lands by 25% over 2020-2024 levels.

• Stripping fire management responsibilities from the Forest Service to a new Federal Wildland Fire Service agency housed in the Department of Interior.

• Closing down fundamentally important program areas including the Forest and Rangeland Research, and State, Private & Tribal Forestry functions.*

*A small number of these program functions, such as the Forest Inventory and Analysis program, will continue using carryover funds from 2025 and other previously appropriated funds.

Upping Harvest Levels

Increasing timber harvest levels by 25% is not an impossible goal - in fact that level of increase would likely be within reach and could be accomplished consistent with the existing Forest Plans guiding many of our 154 National Forests.

The National Active Forest Management Strategy document released by the Forest Service in May lays out the rationale and the methodology for achieving the goal, citing the economic benefits of timber production, and the need for forest fuels management and wildfire risk reduction. We addressed some of the potential consequences, risks, and shortcomings of a timber-focused strategy in our April piece on Increasing National Forest Harvest.

But now that the budget numbers, and the proposed 65% overall reduction in Forest Service funding (from $6.178 Billion to $2.136 Billion) have been laid out we can see a clearer picture of the constraints on getting this extra work done. The line items in the President’s Budget warranting attention include a 34% reduction in Forest Service Operations, a 21% reduction in direct funding for the National Forest System (the home to those 194 million acres), and a complete loss of Wildland Fire Management Funding (more on that later).

Overall, budget reductions of these sizes will likely mean the loss through Reductions in Force (RIFS) of thousands of additional Forest Service staff on top of the roughly 4000 employees already departed via recent retirements, departures for other jobs, and firings, along with the loss of resources for equipment and operations needed to accomplish that broad-based mission. The loss of senior leadership and fire staff with Incident Command expertise will be especially felt as we enter the heart of the 2025 fire season.

So, how to overcome that huge drain of both managers and boots on the ground employees and still get even more work done?

The National Strategy document calls on the agency to pull what are just about the only levers within reach: streamlining the rules and regs, and outsourcing more of the work. As tools, both strategies have merits, however both also present significant risks and vulnerabilities if used at the scale needed to achieve the timber volume outcome.

Streamlining

The USFS traditionally maintains high standards of training and certification for skilled duties such as silviculture, timber sale administration, timber cruising, and engineering work. However, with the loss of trained personnel and reassignment of many more into new roles, a lot of people are going to need training and certification for their new assignments. Getting thousands of employees certified in those roles will be a bottleneck. The National Strategy calls for broad based use of certification exemptions. While exemptions can create opportunities when used judiciously, broad-based weakening of current standards in the absence of capacity for training risks increasing errors and lower quality of the actual timber management work.

Before implementing forest management projects through commercial timber sales the Forest Service conducts environmental analyses required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and in concert with other laws including the National Forest Management Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Clean Water Act.

Meeting these requirements typically can take months or even years of effort by hydrologists, biologists, wildlife and fish staff, archeologists, foresters, and engineers. In some parts of the country, that planning often ends up in court as the laws create litigation opportunities further slowing the planning process, sometimes grinding it to a halt for years. Reasonable people can disagree whether this level of planning complexity is a mostly necessary cost of doing business as a public agency, or whether it’s an overly burdensome set of bureaucratic actions in need of reform. Reasonable people can even believe both things are true.

The National Active Forest Management Strategy calls for use of exemptions, categorical exclusions, and emergency declarations to simplify planning and avoid the use of Environmental Assessments or Environmental Impact Statements that larger and more complex projects typically require. There are many circumstances where such exemptions make sense, however mandating the use of exemptions, CE’s and emergency declarations takes away the judgment and discretion of local line officers to develop efficient approaches to required environmental planning. It also risks more, and perhaps more successful, legal challenges.

Further complicating things for an agency that is about to be dramatically downsized, is that the White House Council on Environmental Quality in February announced that CEQ was rescinding its NEPA implementing regulations that guide all federal agencies, forcing agencies to go back and write new rules to comply with the NEPA law - which is perhaps the most consequential law affecting forest planning. Under this Administration those new rules are almost certain to favor production over protection, fewer opportunities for the public to engage in the planning process, and shortcuts that push the boundaries on appropriately implementing the laws protecting other resources.

In the meantime, count on more uncertainty, more delays, and, as if that seemed possible, and more lawsuits that will put even more questions about agency compliance with federal laws into the hands of judges.

Outsourcing

The other big lever that USDA and Forest Service leadership are pulling is to more completely privatize forest management operations through outsourcing.

Additional outsourcing of even more functions is an almost inevitable result of drastic downsizing, and it creates all the risks that would occur in any other large organization.

The Forest Service has long relied on logging and construction contractors to harvest timber, build roads and bridges, and other specialized work, and relied on contract timber marking to supplement FS in-house marking crews. Since 2015 a newer tool, Good Neighbor Authority, has been used to more broadly outsource timber sale setup, marking, and administration to State Forestry agencies. The National Strategy calls for increased use of Good Neighbor Authority through states, counties, and Native American tribes, as well as use of more longer term Stewardship Contracts that turnover a wider swath of project implementation and oversight to private and NGO contractors.

The career Forest Service people charged with producing more timber with fewer people and resources will do their best to achieve those goals while adhering to the law, and adhering to the FS motto of “Caring for the Land and Serving People.” What is almost certain in this environment however, is that a whole lot of important work that is not directly related to timber production or fuels management won’t be happening.

One of the directives identified in the National Strategy is to “Eliminate Scope Expansion”. Another way of saying that in this context might be, “Only do Timber”.

With limited resources and time, this approach will likely eliminate what would otherwise be efficient and cost-effective opportunities to accomplish wildlife and fish habitat improvement, restoration of non-forest habitats, recreational site activities, or much needed soil and water improvement projects in order to avoid the additional planning effort that work would require. We can expect to see much less work on the resources and values that the vast majority of American citizens want from their national forests.

Moving Fire out of the Forest Service

The President’s proposal to strip all fire management functions and funding out of the Forest Service and into a new Federal Wildland Fire Service may create some efficiencies on paper, but threatens to result in higher fire risks and reduced health on those 193 million acres of National Forest lands, and a greater burden on states and local governments and private landowners.

Currently, federal responsibility for wildland fire is spread among at least five agencies: the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, US Fish and Wildlife Service, and Bureau of Indian Affairs, each of which has a distinct land base to both manage for, and protect from fire. Training, logistics and response to large fires throughout the country are coordinated among the agencies and state and local partners by the National Interagency Fire Center.

As the largest federal wildfire agency, the Forest Service has thousands of employees with primary fire management assignments, and thousands more who have other primary assignments but who have fire training and can be called on to serve on fires when needed. This extra flex force actually uses people and resources pretty efficiently. It also helps assure that our National Forests have the capacity in house to conduct prescribed fires and other work needed to reduce fire risk - all outcomes called out as priorities in the recent National Strategy.

Moving all fire management and the 9000 or so wildland firefighters and their resources into a new Federal Wildland Fire Service in the Department of Interior will alone strip 40% ($2.4 Billion) out of the Forest Service Budget, most of which will come from reassignments of National Forest System staff. The efficiencies from those flex employees will likely be lost, and the ability of National Forests to manage their own lands for fire prevention effectively will likely be compromised as the capacity to accomplish that work will now reside in an entirely different department.

In addition to the impact on National Forests, the budget also takes a swipe at important programs supporting community fire preparedness on local government and private lands. The budget cuts $50 million in funding to the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program that supports appropriate forest management on priority landscapes across the country, many of which are in high fire risk areas. This bold and forward thinking program engages communities and gives them a greater stake in economic and environmental outcomes on nearby federal lands, and on local government, tribal, and private lands.

The War on Forest Science

If you were asked to name the world’s largest natural resources research agency, most people might guess it was some Land Grant university in the Big Ten Conference. In fact, that title, until now anyway, has long belonged to the Forest Service Research and Development Program.

Trump’s budget calls for cutting funding for the Forest Service Research Program in its entirety - ultimately causing a loss of 800 or so scientists and staff researchers who conduct important research work on forest management, wildfire prevention and management, climate change, fish, wildlife and biodiversity, recreational forest uses and and a myriad of other forest-related issues. Only the Forest Inventory and Analysis part of R&D will remain.

In their words: “The FY 2026 Budget terminates the Forest and Rangeland Research program to ensure fiscal responsibility with taxpayer dollars and appropriate alignment of resources with the Forest Service’s responsibility to appropriately steward National Forest System lands. While the Budget does not request new funding for this account, it will strategically utilize existing carryover balances to responsibly and effectively close this program.”

We can only pity the career Forest Service employee who had to write this.

Especially in an era when a rapidly changing climate and more intense and frequent fires and other natural disasters are becoming the norm, Forest Service Research represents a practical investment in applied research that supports smart forest management for the future.

Losing Forest Service research capacity would be like a submarine losing its periscope - bad for navigation, really bad for operational effectiveness, and a downright bummer for crew morale.

Leaving States, Tribes, and Private Forest Landowners Hanging

The Forest Service has long played a role outside of National Forests supporting states, tribes, and private forest owners with technical and financial assistance. The 2026 budget eliminates all new appropriations for the State, Private & Tribal Forestry programs ($283 Million in 2025).* *A small number of program functions will continue using carryover funds from 2025.

“The FY 2026 request eliminates funding for the State, Private, and Tribal Forestry account to ensure fiscal responsibility with American taxpayer dollars and to better balance the appropriate roles of federal and state governments. The Budget request anchors a return to federalism and encourages increasing state authority to fund the management of state and privately-owned forests. While the Budget does not request new funding for this account, it will strategically utilize existing carryover balances to responsibly and effectively close this program.”

Pity also for the same poor person who had to write this. Despite this grandiloquent language about the new federalism, nowhere does the current budget offer even minimally adequate resources for states, local governments, or tribes to assume the greater role envisioned for them.

Taken together, this budget looks like a chainsaw used by a blind surgeon. The scale of cuts suggests that forest health protection, technical assistance to private landowners, wood use innovation, and support of urban and community forests would all be significantly diminished or eliminated.

Not only is this Administration abandoning many of the values of federal forest land, but leaving tribes, states, and private landowners hanging by drying up much of the federal assistance of money, technical expertise, and staff time. If Gifford Pinchot and Teddy Roosevelt could roll over in their graves, they’d be dizzy.

What’s Next

Taken together, the 2026 Forest Service under this budget will be an agency that in many places will be unrecognizable - less capable of effectively managing its own land base, less prepared to serve the public during emergencies, less supportive of tribes, states, and private landowners, and unable to be visionary or influential in a time of increasing disturbance and uncertainty for forests.

Although the current proposals in Congress to tee up large scale federal land sales appear dead for now, the President’s budget opens the door with a “land transfer initiative” to states and tribes. Getting rid of federal lands has long been a rallying cry for many Western conservatives and there are now enough people in the President’s orbit who have been thinking about that golden possibility for years that it remains a strong threat and possibility without sustained opposition.

It’s clear that the Trump Administration has no forward vision for our forests. Among all the directives being given to the Forest Service, it seems that the few that can actually be measured are to “Cut the Budget,” “Cut the Workforce,” “Cut the Paperwork,” and “Cut More Timber”. Doing what it takes to achieve those goals will result in forests that are less healthy, less diverse, and less resilient, and will offer many fewer opportunities for meaningful public engagement.

The Forest Service has roots that go back more than 150 years deep in our federal government. But this agency, with its long, proud history and dedicated, competent, and ethical employees, will not be able to adequately serve the present and future needs of all Americans if this budget and the vision it represents is adopted. There are many ways to improve the outcomes the Forest Service is responsible for, including enacting reforms where they are needed, but doing so will require a more strategic vision and more voices at the table.

Now is a good time to tell your elected representatives in Congress that you oppose the changes that prioritize timber production over other resource values, weaken environmental standards, cripple the capacity to manage forest lands, eliminate critical programs in research, and eliminate support to tribes and states.

The Nature Conservancy, The Wilderness Alliance, and the Trust for Public Lands all have advocacy pages where you can learn more and take action.

Fred Clark and Paul Strong

June 24th, 2025