Trump Is Moving Another Federal Agency Out of DC

President Trump's administration will move the US Forest Service headquarters out of the nation's capital to Salt Lake City as part of an organizational overhaul that involves shuttering research facilities in 31 states and concentrating resources in the West, the agency announced Tuesday. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said the move, which is expected to be completed by summer 2027, will bring leaders closer to the landscapes they manage and the people who depend on them, the AP reports. The Forest Service is an agency within the Department of Agriculture.

• "Effective stewardship and active management are achieved on the ground, where forests and communities are found—not just behind a desk in the capital," Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz said. Critics, however, see the move as an attempt to undermine the agency, the Washington Post reports.

Nearly 90% of National Forest System land is in the West, though Utah is only the 11th-ranked state for national forest coverage, with about 14,300 square miles. During his first term, Trump moved the Bureau of Land Management to Colorado, citing many of the same reasons, including a desire to put top officials closer to the public lands they oversee. But it wasn't long before the Biden administration reversed course, moving BLM headquarters back to Washington, DC, after two years. With the move to Utah, about 260 Forest Service positions currently located in Washington are expected to relocate, and 130 workers will stay put, the agency said.

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, celebrated the move Tuesday as "a big win for Utah and the West," while environmental groups viewed it as a precursor to the agency's dismantling. Taylor McKinnon at the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity described the move as "a costly bureaucratic reshuffle" that will put more power in the hands of corporations and states to log, mine, and drill public lands. "National forests belong to all Americans," said McKinnon, the environmental group's Southwest director. "Our nation's capital is where federal policy is made and where the Forest Service headquarters belongs."

• Char Miller, a professor of environmental analysis and history at Pomona College, tells the Post that the decentralization process "is an attempt to destroy the capacity and effectiveness" of the agency. Miller says an office in the capital is needed "because that's where Congress is, that makes the budgetary decisions that drive the mission of the organization and what it can do."
• US Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, a New Mexico Democrat who sits on the House's Natural Resources Committee, agreed that it's the wrong time for upheaval as the Mountain West is facing historically low snowpack, extreme heat, and the prospect of a dangerous fire season. But she expressed cautious optimism that the Forest Service reorganization could be positive if leadership and jobs are ultimately brought closer to New Mexico and other states.

The Wilderness Society pointed to Trump's prior attempt with the BLM, saying that resulted in many staffers leaving who had valuable years of management experience. The group said this could end up hollowing out the Forest Service. Many regional offices will close in the reorganization, and their services will shift to hubs in New Mexico, Georgia, Colorado, Wisconsin, Montana, and California. Instead of maintaining multiple dispersed research stations with their own leadership, the agency will anchor its research at a single location in Fort Collins, Colorado.