This episode originally aired on April 23, 2026.
In addition to slashing the budget of National Parks, the Trump administration now plans to restructure the U.S. Forest Service by moving its headquarters, closing regional offices and reducing staff and research.
On this hour of All Sides, we’re talking about what this move, which critics are calling a “gutting,” will mean for America’s public lands.
Guests:
- Jory Heckman, senior reporter, Federal News Network
- Gabrielle Berthel, forest advocate, Natural Resources Defense Council
- Jim Pattiz, filmmaker, conservationist, co-founder, More Than Just Parks
Transcript
This transcript is generated with AI. To ensure its accuracy, review the audio file.
Amy Juravich: Welcome to All Sides with Amy Juravich. The U.S. Forest Service has been in existence for over a century. The national forests were created by President Theodore Roosevelt to protect our public lands. However, a century of research and protection could be changing significantly after the Trump administration recently announced a major reorganization plan for the U. S. Forest Service.
We begin today with a look at what this means for the nation's public lands with Jory Heckman, senior reporter for the Federal News Network. Welcome to All Sides Jory.
Jory Heckman: Thanks for having me.
Juravich: And so, what are some of the major changes the Trump administration is planning for the U.S. Forest Service? Let's start with the headquarters. Why do they want to move it away from Washington, D.C.? And where is it headed?
Heckman: So they're looking to move the headquarters to Salt Lake City, Utah. And the stated reason for that is that they are looking to bring the Forest Service employees closer to where the mission is, that a lot of the federal lands that they oversee are based out west, and that they feel that is a more significant outpost for employees to work out of, as opposed to Washington, D.C.
Juravich: And, um, I, you know, I read in your piece that what they're basically asking some employees to relocate, maybe about 500 would need to relocated, but the forest service overall has 30,000 workers. So I, I know for those 500 that that's, that's bad. They don't want to relocates that kind of thing, but, um the forest service chief is saying it's only one and a half percent of the agency. So is that what you're hearing from other people that moving it to Salt Lake city is not that big of a deal?
Heckman: It's significant if you're one of the employees being asked to move. What these employees are being asked to do all around, it's about 500 employees give or take that will be asked to move to Salt Lake City or move significantly far away from where they're currently working. And that's something that we've seen in the past with USDA reorganizations that has been a challenge.
Under the first Trump administration, there were plans to move two of its component agencies, the Economic Research Service and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture to Kansas City for a lot of the same stated reasons as we've mentioned with the move to Salt Lake City. And that was a much smaller move. That was a move of about several hundred employees.
But what we saw with that reorganization is that more than half of the employees tapped to move, they chose to quit their jobs rather than relocate. And so. That's something that the Forest Service has to anticipate to some degree. You know, they can't really at this point say whether they're going to have significant attrition or not.
The Forest Service chief, Tom Schultz, says he doesn't expect there to be a lot of attrition, that he expects a lot people will be able to move. He says that Salt Lake City will be a more affordable place for these employees in terms of cost of living, things of that nature.
But these are mid- career senior employees who are not only themselves being asked to move, but they're operating their families, potentially children, potentially spouses, asking them all to move to a place where they may not have a significant social network. They're moving from a place they've known for years and moving somewhere else where they might not know anyone.
Juravich: Another part of the reorganization involves shutting down 57 of 77 research facilities so I mean in the course of preparing for the show I learned a lot about the Forest Service research that I didn't know so what what are they saying about why they're shutting down so many research facilities
Heckman: What we've heard from Forest Service leadership about this is that they are more concerned with the facilities side of the research operations than the personnel, that they have a multi-billion dollar facilities backlog and a lot of that does rest with the research operations and so Chief Schultz has told lawmakers that he's more concerned with shuttering facilities that are underutilized that do have this.
Significant maintenance backlog. And at this point, he says that for the 77 facilities that we're looking at, the Forest Service is definitely planning to keep 20 of them. The other three quarters or so remain up in the air that there's at this time no definitive plans to close them, but their future is in question here.
And they do do a lot of different research, especially in the world of wildland fire mitigation. They study things like droughts, their impact on wildland fires. Fuels management is a growing part of what they do. Doing prescribed burns is a big part of what the Forest Service does. Making sure forests are going through controlled, man-made burns to avoid more severe natural burns down the line.
Understanding the patterns of wildfires when they emerge. And how to mitigate them there and also air quality when there are wildfires, how to effectively evacuate areas to ensure that people are safe. This is a wide portfolio of work that the Forest Service Research Operations carry out and this is something that critics of this plan are very concerned about.
Juravich: Now, for the Trump administration to make these reorganization plans, is congressional approval needed? Is this more, are they taking kind of like the Doge tactic where they're just kind of changing everything the way they did with the Department of Government Efficiency or with executive orders? Or does Congress need to approve any changes?
Heckman: Well, Congress, of course, controls the power of the purse. This would be involving some amount of money, right? This would closing facilities in Washington, DC, moving people, there are mandatory relocation costs for employees that are being asked to move significant distances here. This does cost money and a significant amount of money at that.
So in that regard, The agency is asking for Congress to step in and provide money here. We've seen this play out at other organizations, reorganizations at other agencies. Asked point blank, though, in a recent appropriations hearing, whether the Forest Service needs Congress's approval, Congress's blessing on this.
Chief Schultz did say that the agriculture secretary does have the discretion to move forward with this. So one reading of this is that the Forest Services planning to go ahead with us. In some way, shape or form, with or without Congress's blessing. But at the end of the day, this is something that they're gonna need money on and Congress is the entity that controls that money.
Juravich: You're listening to All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about the Trump administration's plans to reorganize the U.S. Forest Service with Jorie Heckman, senior reporter for the Federal News Network. Now, you mentioned all that research that's being done, especially with wildfire mitigation.
You know, I read in your piece and elsewhere that basically the Forest Service chief is saying that that research isn't done in a vacuum. It's not done just by the federal government. States are doing it. Universities are doing. It so he didn't seem very concerned about loss of research. What have you heard about that? Is he correct that other people will pick up the research?
Heckman: I think we'd have to wait and see on that. The overall theme of the foresters leadership on this is that they do think that states and academia can shoulder more of this work. They're already partnered with both of those groups as so as it is, and they feel that they can step back a bit that this budget request for fiscal 2027 would.
Would eliminate significant numbers of research positions, about 800 of the more than a thousand research scientist positions that are currently on the rolls here, and it remains to be seen if states have the capacity, have the resources to fund these positions. One thing that I have heard from folks on the ground, the union representing Forest Service employees, is that in many cases universities, academia is already stepping up in this regard.
A lot of these Forest Service scientists are co-located at universities. A lot of these are university sponsored positions, so they are concerned and maybe don't agree with the Forest Service's position here that this is a significant cost for the agency that they have to offload somewhere else.
Juravich: What is the overall reason the Trump administration is giving for the restructuring? Is it doge-like where they're trying to like streamline things or is there a big picture reason for all of it?
Heckman: Cost is definitely a big part of it. It's what we hear time and again. I mentioned the multi-billion dollar facility backlog that they just can't keep these facilities in good working order. One other thing is just overall a budget shortfall that Chief Schultz has mentioned for the Forest Service that it is getting more expensive to mitigate for wildland fires.
That that's a big of the Forest service mission and that they need to rein in spending where they can and they feel that this is one way that they're able to do this consolidating facilities and bringing people to Salt Lake City where they feel it's a lower cost of living. But what we've seen in the past with these things is that relocations come with their own costs.
Critics of this plan say that the Forest Service is not accounting for those costs as part of this move and that they are only looking at long-term cost savings which may or may not be realized.
Juravich: So the only national forest in Ohio is called Wayne National Forest. It covers about 240,000 acres in the Appalachian foothills. It's in southeastern Ohio. Um, I did look at a map on the forest service website about the reorganization and it's not really clear to me if anything was going to change at Wayne National Forest, um, now truly, I guess it seems like these plans are not completely flushed out in your reporting. Were you able to understand what areas and offices are affected? What's staying open? What's closing?
Heckman: You know, at this point, there are a lot of elements of this plan that are subject to change. The Forest Service leadership will say the same thing, that they have a rough sketch of what they'd like to do, but of course that is contingent on how Congress acts with all of this.
The big priority first is the move of the headquarters to Salt Lake City. That's the first priority that. The Forest Service leadership is looking at here and everything is kind of a secondary or tertiary priority after that. So at this point, I'm clear of what impacts would be happening beyond that, but we have a rough outline of what to expect.
Juravich: And we're gonna talk about this later in the hour, but critics are saying that also this is like a precursor for the Trump administration's plans to sell off some public lands, like moving around the Forest Service, changing things is just the beginning, and it will lead to that. Now, I have to say in defense of the Forest service on their website, they have a page where they're debunking myths and they say that is not true, it has not been discussed. What have you found in your reporting?
Heckman: You know, pretty much have seen the same things that you've seen, Amy, on this. There is that page on the Forest Service website where they are trying to debunk or later ask some of the concerns or rumors about this plan, that they don't have any plans or intentions of doing anything of what you described, sailing off public lands.
This is largely a reorganization of the agency. It may come to drastic changes. As far as who remains on board, who decides to relocate, who decides quit rather than move significantly far away from where they work now. One other thing we didn't perhaps bring up is the merging of the four services, wildland fire service capabilities to the wildland Fire Service.
This is this brand new agency that the Trump administration is trying to stand up. Basically merging. The wildland fire capabilities of the Forest Service with those at the Interior Department. As it stands, present day, this is only a half-done operation here.
The Interior Department has moved and merged its capabilities to this new agency, but the Forest service has not because Congress did step in in the budget plan for this year. They said that they weren't gonna go ahead and approve the money for this merger and. That's another concern as well, is that this is a significant change to how the organization of wildland fire operations is carried out.
And they say, you know, why fix what isn't broken? That's the perspective of critics of this plan. It would be a significant change to these agencies have been organized in the past.
Juravich: And the Forest Service isn't the first public lands agency the Trump administration has tried to change significantly, reduce staff, reduce, you know, programming. It made cuts to the National Park Service, too. Are there other things that are being affected by this reorganization? I mean, what you just mentioned, the wildfires, that seems like a big one. Are there are other pieces and parts to this that we don't even know about yet?
Heckman: I guess one other thing to talk about is that at the Agriculture Department more broadly, they are carrying out their own reorganization of their headquarters employees. The plan for them is to move more than half of their Headquarters employees out to other parts of the country as well, move them outside of Washington DC, and move them to including Salt Lake City.
That's one of the five. Regional hubs that they've mentioned. This would be another significant move of a significant number of employees. It would be thousands of employees affected by this. The Agriculture Department, in a early step on these plans, they recently announced that they are selling one of their headquarters buildings downtown in Washington, D.C. That they are looking to sell and get rid of the south building.
The Agriculture department has several headquarter buildings is kind of a complex, it's. This massive city block wide building that they say is massively underutilized, that this is a drain on taxpayer resources. And so the first step of this reorganization is selling this building.
And then at some point in the coming years, these employees would be sent off to other hubs, but it raises the same concerns as we've been discussing here. These are mid-career employees that have families. They would be. Asked to move to places where they don't have a significant presence.
They don't know anyone out there perhaps and that they're asking their families to move as well. And so as we've seen in the past, you see a lot of attrition with these moves and that is one thing that folks watching this plan are very concerned about.
Juravich: That's a lot of moving out of D.C. I didn't realize that many departments were trying to, that they were trying move them around the country. I think that's something we'll have to just keep an eye on. Washington, D. C. Could look very different in a couple of years.
Heckman: It really could.
Juravich: Well, we have been speaking with Jory Heckman, senior reporter for the Federal News Network. Thank you so much for talking with us about the Forest Service today. Thank you. And coming up, we're going to speak with an advocate from the Natural Resources Defense Council about the restructuring of the U.S. Forest Service. That's when All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
Juravich: You're listening to All Sides. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. The restructuring of the U.S. Forest Service would move its headquarters from Washington, D.C. To Salt Lake City and consolidate 57 of its 77 research stations. We're looking at what the restructuring of the US Forest Service will mean for America's public lands.
Joining us now to talk about the work of protecting public lands is Gabrielle Berthel, forest advocate for the Natural Resources Defense Council. Thanks for joining us today. Thanks so much for having me. So can you tell me, I like the title Forest Advocate. What does a forest advocate do for the Natural Resources Defense Council?
Gabrielle Berthel: Yeah, I feel like my role is to really take our science and legal expertise that we have in house at NRDC and make it more understandable for public audiences for general audiences and to really get public involved in protecting our public lands.
Juravich: And so recently, what has been the reaction of your organization and you as a forest advocate to these plans to restructure the U.S. Forest Service? I mean, what comes to mind first when you think of the restructuring?
Berthel: I mean, I think this is a massive reduction in forest that's just poorly disguised as a reorganization. We saw something very similar play out in 2019 with the Bureau of Land Management when they went through a similar restructuring and they lost something like 87% of their Washington-based workforce.
So I see this as an opportunity to let attrition really reduce an already understaffed and overburdened forest service.
Juravich: Does the loss of staff mean the loss of public land, the loss of, like, it doesn't necessarily mean we're reducing the amount of land, but are we reducing the number of people taking care of the land? Is that what you mean? Absolutely.
Berthel: So with less staff, they'll be less able to do the things that they need to do. So protecting communities from fire, restoring watersheds, managing forest ecosystems effectively, all of this will suffer from fewer of these lifelong dedicated staff. Some of these forest service staff been here through many administrations and really just care about these lands and these ecosystems.
Juravich: So some of them would say maybe no politics aside or no politics involved, they just care about the forest. Is that what you mean?
Berthel: Absolutely. And I think this is one of the few topics that we really do see people coming together on is public lands defense. We see people all across the political spectrum care about protecting and utilizing these lands not only today, but for their children and their children's children far into the future.
Juravich: Have you heard about any lawsuits being filed maybe to prevent this from happening? Can someone try to stop the restructuring of the U.S. Forest Service?
Berthel: Looking into that. There's, there's some potential legal avenues, but it's still, it's Still in the works. And it's still something that we're looking into very seriously, but nothing concrete.
Juravich: I guess if it's through attrition, there's not even an issue with like a staff that has a union or anything because it's just it is open jobs not being filled. Is that the problem?
Berthel: It's, they are saying that they're technically not eliminating staff, they're just closing offices and hoping folks will move. But if I was told that the job that I've had for the last decade was being moved halfway across the country and I had to pull my kids out of school or tell my spouse to find a new job in somewhere else, I don't think I would take that deal, especially with an agency that's being.
Cut with its funding and it's going through all of this turmoil, it just seems like they're going to have very few people, I would expect, take this move.
Juravich: So moving the headquarters from D.C. To Utah, to Salt Lake City, they're saying that it makes sense because there's more public land out west. So it's kind of like moving the main office to where more public land is rather than having it in D. C. I mean, D. C. Is where all the government agencies are. But can you see that argument of having people out where more land is, I guess? I
Berthel: I mean, they say this in their announcement too, that this is a reorganization or a move that I think really shifts the focus of the forest service from caring for the land and serving the public to really focusing primarily on servicing the timber industry. They say this is gonna be great for timber out West.
And it's only the most recent in a chain of decisions that prioritize timber over these more fulsome values like watershed protection, recreation, wildlife habitat. And so I think they don't really hide the ball even in their own messaging that this is very much to service more timber extraction off of these lands.
Juravich: Okay, so you're saying that basically they're wanting to cut down more forests to make timber. Is that what you mean? Absolutely. Well, tell me a little bit about the regional offices, because honestly, I didn't know the U.S. Forest Service had regional offices until I read about them closing 57 of the 77 of them. So why have regional offices? What did they do?
Berthel: So there's there's two things that there were the regional offices and there were their research stations. And so the research stations is that 57 of 70 some odd number you were referencing. And the reduction of those research stations, those are places that we have long term place based scientific research going on, that you really can't just pick up and move.
And that's going to be a massive load for science. And then the regional offices being replaced with state-based offices, I think, is going to lead to probably more politicization of these forest service entities because the regional offices allowed for some buffering between what's going on at the states, what's going on with the federal, and we're able to look more specifically at like the local ecology.
So these were, yeah, just buffered from I think some of the minutia, and by putting these now Forest Service offices directly in states, they're gonna be working much more closely with states. And I think you're going to lose some of that neutrality.
Like I mentioned, this is not a flu issue or a red issue, this is an everybody issue. And I that we're gonna see some bleed over from state level politics into the Forest Service.
Juravich: You're listening to All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about the restructuring of the U.S. Forest Service with Gabrielle Berthel, forest advocate for the Natural Resources Defense Council.
There's also some talk of the transfer of public lands, and does that mean that maybe some of these, like, national forests or some of this public land could become state land instead of being national? Or what does that means whenever you talk about transfer of lands?
Berthel: So I don't think this this reorg specifically calls for any of that, but it opens up the vulnerability right for privatization, whether that be transfer to state or to like outright privatizing because you have an agency that's underfunded, it's understaffed, and now you've got this chaotic upheaval of structure layered on top of that with fewer staff able to do us work.
The case for this privatization sort of makes itself, if the federal government can't handle it, let's give it to somebody who can. But the problem there is once you've given away federal lands, it's extremely difficult to claw them back, if possible at all.
Juravich: Yeah, I was wondering that, like, could the changes that are being made, could they change under a different administration? So come 2028, if things change, could this be changed back?
Berthel: Yeah, so we saw this a little bit with the Bureau of Land Management example, and that's kind of the only reference point I have, but in 2019, under Trump's first administration, we saw a similar shift.
And then in 2022, I want to say, the Biden administration under Deb Haaland switched the headquarters back to D.C. So there was still a massive loss of staffing because, again, people, once you lose staff, they won't come back. Oftentimes, but there might be an opportunity to reverse course.
Juravich: Has this actually happened? Are there people moving from DC to Salt Lake City? Or is it still like a press release?
Berthel: I think they said that they're expecting all of this to go into effect over the next year. So I think we'll see this happen in waves.
Juravich: Okay. What about the research that you mentioned? So these research facilities are a part of these, you know, all these facilities that are being closed. There's a lot of research happening there. Basically, the government is saying that all of these research facilities are already affiliated with either state agencies or universities to do the research. So they're saying that the universities or the states will fill the void. The research will still happen. Everything will be fine. What are your thoughts on that?
Berthel: I mean, this is a defunding of government science, right? The Forest Service is one of the most preeminent forest research entities the world over. There really is no parallel. And so saying that states and universities just have to pick up the slack and figure it out is really heartbreaking to me.
I think that's a real loss for the United States and for our brain drain, right, our brain trust. There's a lot of great science being done. Um at this level and I just don't think that there will there will at the very least be a long delay before folks are able to do this kind of work and then that bars the question like with what funding if the government isn't you know giving grants or or investing in this kind of science there's going to be a dearth of funding.
Juravich: Can you tell me, give me some examples of some of the research being done that could be lost?
Berthel: I mean, wildland fire research is top of mind, I think for most people going into the summer, there's lots of experimental forests. Other research being done are things like insect and disease. These are the kinds of topics that are gonna be increasingly more relevant as climate change impacts are felt more in our forests and across our landscapes.
And these are the kind of long-term research that we need in order to effectively look ahead and you know, manage these forests into a changing future. We don't have a lot of time to waste. Did you say an experimental forest? What does that mean? What's an experimental?
Experimental forests are where you do a certain kind of treatment to a given stand, and then you track it year over year. So you can conduct an experiment forest wide on existing forest stands.
Juravich: Okay, to see about ways to prevent future forest fires or to see about keeping things healthy, like that kind of thing.
Berthel: Yeah, whatever variable you're trying to test for, you can have your little control stand and your experimental stand and use nice comparisons. And sometimes these experiments are done over 20 years. Though, you know, cause forests, they take a long time to mature and these ecosystems take centuries to develop. Long-term place-based science is really important.
Juravich: Has the Natural Resources Defense Council worked at all with any tribes, reservations, indigenous groups to weigh in on this issue? Is there any concern there or any connection? Absolutely.
Berthel: We've worked with tribes on a lot of our issues. The roadless area conservation rule is the one that I'm currently working with tribes to get their voice out on. We haven't interfaced much on the reorganization itself, but like I mentioned, this is part of a larger suite of attacks on public lands and on our public forests that have happened over the last year.
Even just less. This time last year in March, we had two executive orders about increasing timber production on federal lands followed by an appropriations bill that called for increased timber targets.
And so we've worked with tribes really closely to do resolutions at inter-tribal organizations like the National Congress of American Indians or the affiliated tribes of Northwest Indians and just elevating their voices and how they want to see this. Lands managed.
Juravich: We should probably back up though because you said you're working with them on the roadless rule. Can you tell us what the road-less rule means?
Berthel: Absolutely, yeah. So the roadless area conservation role, also called the road this role, protects about 60 million acres of federal public lands. There's a rescission out right now that is about to open for comment period where they're going to repeal those protections for about 45 million acres.
In these areas, you can hike, hunt, fish, camp, do all the great sort of recreational things that Americans love. They protect massive amounts of drinking watersheds and habitat, but the only thing you can't do on them right now is clear cut log them or build roads. And that level of protection is being rescinded. Again, part of that reorientation towards logging.
Juravich: Okay, and you're saying there's going to be a hearing, so are you saying that there's a way to stop the roadless rule from being changed? I was trying not to do a double negative there.
Berthel: No, I understand and I apologize if I'm being a little unclear. The rescission has been announced they're going through the NEPA process to get public comment to make see how this plan is going to play out, get expert input.
And so there was a public comment back in September, we got more than half a million folks weighing in. 99% said don't rescind the rule, this rule keep it intact. And then they are going to release a draft of their proposal sometime this spring. It could be any day now.
And that will open up another comment period where the public can weigh in and say, no, really, don't risk in the role this role. Keep these protections. And so NRDC will have on our website and on our social media links and ways to get involved in the comment period for the role of this role
Juravich: Okay, I want to thank you so much for your time. We've been speaking with Gabrielle Berthel, Forest Advocate for the Natural Resources Defense Council. Thank you so for joining us today. Thank you. And coming up, we're going to talk with a filmmaker and conservationist about the history and possible future of public lands. That's when All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to All Sides. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. According to our next guest, the U.S. Forest Service has been handed on a silver platter to the people who are trying to destroy it. We're talking about what the restructuring of the U S Forest Service means for public lands this hour.
Joining us now is Jim Pattiz, an award-winning filmmaker, conservationist, and co-founder of More Than Just Parks, a comprehensive national park resource. Welcome to Allsides, Jim.
Jim Pattiz: Thanks for having me, Amy.
Juravich: So as a conservationist, what are your biggest concerns when it comes to this restructuring plan that was announced for the U.S. Forest Service?
Pattiz: Yeah, that's a difficult question to answer because there's a lot to unpack with this reorganization as they're calling it. And I think my biggest concerns are it's going to further gut Forest Service staff. I think we should keep in mind when President Trump, since he took office last January, the Forest Service has already lost over a fourth of their down.
Due to doge cuts and things like that. So you're talking about an agency that didn't even have enough staffing before that. Now they've lost a fourth. Now you're looking at up to 6,500 employees across the forest service are gonna be affected by this reorganization.
And so it's gonna further drive people out of the agency, which I think is very much what the Trump administration wants. With this decision. So I think that's top line. And then also, of course, what does that mean? For our, for our forests, our national forests, we're talking about 193 million acres of public lands.
And when you don't have the institutional knowledge in an agency like this, this is 121 year old agency, I mean, it's really an American institution. And When you don't Have that, you know, that kind of leadership. And all of those important career employees there anymore, it allows, frankly, an unhinged administration to start making drastic moves.
Juravich: The idea of restructuring or making some changes, whatever word you want to use, reorganizing the Forest Service, did start under the Biden administration, though. I read that some of it was necessary to make it more efficient, to change the agency to be more efficient. You know, streamline some things. So would you concede that, like a lot of government agencies, there is room for improvement and streamlining?
Pattiz: Absolutely. You know, Jimmy Carter did a lot of streamlining to the federal government and he's probably, since Theodore Roosevelt, the greatest conservation president we've ever had. So, you know, he understood that and absolutely the government, you know, has plenty of bloat, look no further than the Pentagon, right?
But there are a lot ways that, yes, we can do streamlining, but this administration has used, um, has has used those terms, streamlining and efficiency, to do things that really have nothing to do with that. And they have everything to do with making these agencies, hobbling them, and making them a tool of, in this case, the resource extraction industry, which this administration is very much aligned with.
Juravich: There's conflicting numbers between what you put in your article, what the National Federation of Federal Employees, like that's the union that represents Forest Service employees, the number that they say of employees that would lose their jobs versus what the Forest Service Chief, Tom Schultz, has said.
Because he's saying that it would only be maybe like 500 employees have to relocate. He's using a lot lower numbers than you just used earlier and then the union is using. So Where how is that discrepancy is he is because I think that the Forest Service is saying that they're going to Accomplish changes through attrition. What what do you make of that?
Pattiz: Yeah, well, you know, after we released our initial reporting on this, the White House responded to it on Twitter and called it more lies from these losers. So you know I'm not surprised that they're coming out with different numbers than we are and then the unions are.
But you know the fact of the matter is it is going to affect a large amount of employees. You know, Schultz may be referring to the Washington, D.C. Staff at the headquarters. So for that, he may be kind of cherry picking there and referring just to the Salt Lake City move.
But in all of our research and according to the employees themselves and their unions, it is going to be thousands of employees are going to affected by this decision. We can't know! How many employees are going to be lost because of this, but the administration has this way of saying, well, we're not firing anybody, we are not doing a reduction in force.
Juravich: We're just asking you to move halfway across the country, right? Exactly.
Pattiz: Exactly. And so, you know, especially with a lot of these career employees, they've got kids in school, they have all kinds of things, you know, they own a home maybe, they have all kind of things to take into consideration.
And as some of the previous guests you've had on here have pointed out, you know, the administration has done this before. With the Bureau of Land Management, they did it on a much smaller scale with USDA as well, in the first Trump administration. And you saw with those two small USDA agencies that they did.
75% of the staff, affected staff, walked out the door and with the BLM it was 87% of the staff. So I think we can expect similar numbers to leave the agency in this restructuring as well. I don't think that's unreasonable.
Juravich: You're listening to All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. And we are talking about protecting America's public lands and we're talking about changes with the U.S. Forest Service with Jim Padas, an award-winning filmmaker, conservationist, and co-founder of More Than Just Parks, a comprehensive national park resource.
So as you mentioned, the Forest Service website does have a webpage that is dedicated to this reorganization. And it has a section on it called debunking, or it's debunk what is being called myths being circulated. So we don't have time to go through all of the myths, but that was what you were just mentioning.
They're trying to debunk things that you wrote in your article and that other people have said. But one of them says that the Forest Service has no, it says no plans have been discussed about transferring public land anywhere. So what do you make of that? Why are there all of these calls, including yourself, saying that this is the first step toward us losing public land? They say it hasn't even been discussed.
Pattiz: Yeah, you know, I think off the top, I would just say, you know, I found that their response to to my reporting and, you know, the idea that this is setting up our public lands for eventual transfer, their response was really wanting, right?
They said it hasn't been discussed. Now in that myth versus fact, you know, resource that they put out they were pretty vehement in many of their denials, but for the land transfer, it was really that, they could have said, that's never going to happen. We are opposed to that, it's not, but they simply said, it hasn't been discussed.
So to me, that sounds like something that, maybe is part of this or is potentially going to happened, but they're not ready to reveal their plans for it yet. Um, but... I think there's a tremendous amount of evidence showing that that is something that this administration wants to do. Whether or not they'll be able to get away with it is another story.
The polling on this overwhelming bipartisan support for keeping our public lands as federal lands. But if you look at the Trump administration, they are staffed up and down throughout the management agencies with avowed proponents of transferring federal land to states and private entities.
The Forest Service Chief who's doing this right now, his job before this was as a logging executive. That's unprecedented. That's never happened before. We've never had a Forest Service chief who's been a logging executive. You go through it and the Department of Interior has numerous people in all of their positions of leadership that are, you know... Proponents of transferring public land to the states.
We've never had that in the United States. So that in of itself is unprecedented. It shows you what their thinking is. I would also point out that they're moving the Forest Service to Salt Lake City, Utah. Utah is currently suing the federal government to take control of 18 and a half million acres of public land in their state.
Now, when you send the Forest Service headquarters to their state capital, you've already signed an unprecedented cooperative agreement with their governor, Spencer Cox, to allow the state of Utah to have more management control over Forest Service lands in the state. That sends a message, I think, to a lot of people.
It doesn't take a lot of reading between the lines to see that this is something that the administration supports. I would point out one other thing, Mike Lee. Who, those of us in the outdoor and public lands community know him very well, he's the senator from Utah, he is probably the biggest proponent of transferring public lands to states and private entities.
He's been trying to slip riders into must pass legislation for years and years to transfer public lands out of public hands. His former staffer is now the White House liaison at USDA. Bye. So, you know, the idea that this isn't something that they're interested in doing, it just doesn't pass the smell test.
Juravich: Let's talk a little bit about the research institutions, because it was news to me that there was so much research going on with the US Forest Service, and now they're saying that they're gonna cut back on the research.
Some of the research centers, the numbers are going down from 77 research facilities, going down to 57. The concerns I've heard from my previous guest was mainly in the area of wildfire management and all of the the research being done in that area.
But the Forest Service chief says. That that's gonna be picked up by states and universities and the research, this research won't go anywhere. He's just getting rid of basically underutilized buildings and vacant areas. What do you make of that?
Pattiz: Well, I would clarify there, they're actually, they're shuttering 57 research facilities of 77. Okay. And so, I mean, it's, the Forest Service Research and Development Program is frankly, it is world-renowned. It's the largest forest research program in the world.
Other countries send top scientists to come and study with the Forest service, with our scientists. Over the course of its existence, they've put out, I think it was something like over 60,000 peer-reviewed studies. It's really, really vital research, and it allows us to make informed decisions about managing our public lands, about managing our national forests.
So, what the administration is doing in shuttering most of these research facilities is they're making it so that we will not be able to make those informed decisions. The next time you want to put a logging road somewhere or you want think about having a mine somewhere on public lands or some kind of a development activity, there aren't going to be the scientists and researchers to say, hey, wait a minute, you know what, we've got research that says that that's gonna harm.
This animal or it's going to harm this watershed. And I think that's the goal, is to get rid of people who have the ability to say no in the organization.
Juravich: Before we run out of time, I want to ask you more about just the public land, the forests and the ability. Are you concerned that having less staff means the less ability to go camping, use the hiking trails? Like, are there going to be less people who are going to be taking care of those types of things at the national forests?
Pattiz: With the Doge cuts at the beginning of the year, that is absolutely the case. You saw a fourth of four service staff leave and that is absolute affecting things like campgrounds and recreational activities that Americans kind of see that are more front-facing.
With this reorganization, those frontline staff aren't necessarily gonna be affected by this. However, the decision-making that goes into campgrounds and trails and all those kinds of things, those leadership positions are going to be gone.
All those people that have been working in those positions are gonna be gone, a lot of them. And so that will have sort of an effect on that, but it'll be maybe more of a delayed effect.
Juravich: We have about two minutes left. Do most Americans know about this? Do they understand what the Forest Service is, what public lands even are? Do they know what they need to know? Like, what would you tell people?
Pattiz: It's a good question. You know, I hear a lot of people, they confuse the Forest Service with the National Park Service and things like that. I think something we have to understand, the Forest service is managed for what's called multiple use.
So it's not the National park service. They mining, logging and things that are allowed on Forest Service lands. But, the Forest Service is supposed to manage these lands for, you know... Future generations of Americans. They're supposed to be making the decisions based upon what's good for the longterm and balancing their decisions with recreation and wildlife as well as resource development.
This administration has obviously tipped the scales entirely towards resource extraction. But the Forest Service manages 193 million acres of our public land. It's a lot of the land that Americans fish and hunt. And hike and camp on, it's over twice as much land as the National Park Service.
So regardless of whether you're familiar with the Forest Service's name or exactly what they do, maybe you just think about Smokey Bear, but this very much is an agency that Americans interact with every year when they go out to recreate in the outdoors.
Juravich: We have been speaking with Jim Padas, an award-winning filmmaker, conservationist, and co-founder of More Than Just Parks, a comprehensive national parks resource. Thank you so much for joining us today on All Sides.
Pattiz: Happy to do it Amy, thank you.
Juravich: You're listening to All Sides. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. And thank you listeners for joining us. This is All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. If you missed any part of today's show, you can listen back at www.osu.org slash All Sides. Subscribe to the All Sides podcast. Every episode is available for free in our mobile app. This is all sides on 89 seven NPR news.