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I
was on a road trip to visit a friend
late in March when my phone started
lighting up. The Trump administration
had just announced a sweeping
reorganization of the U.S. Forest
Service. People — among them current and
former agency staffers — had thoughts.
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Under
the overhaul, the Forest Service will
move from a regional to a state-based
leadership structure, relocate its
headquarters from Washington, D.C., to
Salt Lake City and close nearly
three-quarters of its research stations.
A news release described this as a
much-needed shift to streamline the
agency and bring its leadership closer
to the forests and grasslands it
manages, which are primarily west of the
Mississippi.
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But
a common refrain emerged among the
sources I spoke with: The Trump
administration is trying to break the
Forest Service, they claimed, to pave
the way for privatizing or even selling
off the 193 million acres of land it
oversees.
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On
a recent
podcast, Forest Service Chief Tom
Schultz said this is false, that the
reorganization is about prudently
stewarding taxpayer dollars, not
dismantling the agency. Trump officials
have also said that a public lands
sell-off is not part of the
president’s agenda.
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I
figured the controversy would die down a
bit by the time I wrote this newsletter.
But nearly a month later, it’s still top
of mind for most of the former
firefighters and recreation and
environment advocates I speak with.
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“I
worry that I sound paranoid like a
conspiracy theorist — why would anybody
want to break a federal agency?” said
Rich Fairbanks, a former Forest Service
firefighter and board member of
Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics
and Ecology. “But that’s exactly what
they appear to be trying to do.”
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To
him, the reorganization smacks of an
attempt to sow chaos and drive
experienced employees out the door. He
described the decision to move the
headquarters to Salt Lake City as a red
flag. Not only is it likely to prompt
more staff departures, he said, but Utah
is widely seen as the epicenter of an
ongoing movement for states to take over
federal public lands. It’s also home to
Sen. Mike Lee, who last year proposed
selling off millions of acres of
public lands.
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Max
Alonzo, a former Forest Service
firefighter who now works as national
secretary treasurer for the National
Federation of Federal Employees,
similarly believes the administration is
setting the agency up to fail. He noted
the president has also proposed deep
cuts that would slash the USFS
operations budget by 44% and eliminate
funding for forest and rangeland
research to refocus the agency’s mission
primarily on timber sales.
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The
administration plans to replace its nine
regional offices with 15 state
directors. These changes to leadership
structure make little sense to Alonzo
unless the intention is to lay the
groundwork for an eventual state
takeover of the agency and its lands, he
said.
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“They’re putting the chess pieces in
place to get rid of our national
forests,” he said. He believes the goal
is to open the door to more mineral
extraction, logging and drilling.
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“It’s
all about breaking the government so
people decide the government doesn’t
work,” echoed Hugh Safford, a UC Davis
researcher who worked for the Forest
Service for over two decades.
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Safford
is concerned that the move to shutter
dozens of research stations will prevent
Forest Service scientists from doing
on-the-ground work on issues affecting
local lands, like seeing how different
ecosystems respond to wildfire, pests
and drought. This research has driven
some of the most important global
advancements in fire planning and forest
management, he said. He would know:
Until 2021, he managed a staff of
ecologists that provided science support
to Forest Service leadership.
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“They
are destroying the research part of the
agency,” he said. “These plans are so
draconian and so depressing my hair
stands up when I even read about them.”
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Dave
Calkin worked for 23 years at the Forest
Service, overseeing a team of scientists
that researched wildfire management. He
took an early retirement offer last
April, just after the agency terminated
thousands of probationary employees,
including a young researcher in his
office.
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“The
more you can demonstrate government
isn’t working, the more you can argue to
privatize and sell off public lands,” he
said. “And that’s clearly one of the
intentions of everything they’re doing.”
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More
recent land news
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Although
administration officials would later
distance themselves from the effort, the
Interior Department helped craft talking
points that Sen. Lee used to pitch his
controversial proposal to sell off
federal public land last summer, Chris D’Angelo
of Public Domain reports.
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Trump
has withdrawn hospitality executive
Scott Socha as his nominee to lead the
National Park Service, reports Jake
Spring of the Washington Post.
That comes as many parks face their peak
seasons with a dramatically reduced
staff and the agency braces for more
potential cuts, my colleague
Justine McDaniel writes.
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It’s
not just the Park Service: The
president’s budget proposal also seeks
to decrease staff at the Bureau of Land
Management and eliminate its wilderness
management funding in favor of focusing
on energy production, reports
Christine Peterson of Outdoor Life.
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The
Trump administration is again planning
border wall-related construction inside
Big Bend National Park, weeks after U.S.
Customs and Border Protection backed
away from such plans amid bipartisan
backlash, according to
Travis Bubenik of Marfa Public Radio,
who cited an online map showing the
planned construction.
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A
day after Bubenik’s report, the border
wall map disappeared from the Customs
and Border Protection website, leaving
the public with no way to know where and
when construction on the wall will take
place, writes Mary
Andino of Gear Junkie.
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A
few last things in climate news
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Wildfire,
insurance and the price of gas took
center stage at the California
governor’s debate on Tuesday night. My
colleague Blanca Begert
broke down each candidate’s defining
statements.
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In
yet another escalation of President
Trump’s efforts to obstruct clean energy
projects in favor of fossil fuels, the
administration said it will pay two
energy companies to abandon their
offshore wind projects in federal waters
— including one off Morro Bay, according to
The Times’ Hayley Smith.
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Extreme
drought is fueling wildfires in the
southeastern U.S., Zachary
Handlos writes for The Conversation,
as concern also grows over intensifying
drought conditions in Nevada and
Northern California.
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Winters
have grown shorter in most places across
the country, upending everything from
tourism and recreation to the
transmission season of certain diseases,
report
Ignacio Calderon, Ramon Padilla,
Veronica Bravo and Janet Loehrke in
this interactive USA Today project.
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This
is the latest edition of Boiling
Point, a newsletter about climate
change and the environment in the
American West. Sign up here
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And listen to our Boiling Point
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For
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