USDA proposes closing regional Forest Service offices in Portland

In a July 24 memo, Brooke Rollins, head of the agriculture department that oversees the Forest Service, outlined an agency restructuring plan that includes closing all nine regional Forest Service offices across the country — including the Region 6 headquarters in Portland — and moving their functions over the next year to five “hub locations.” Those are: Fort Collins, Colorado; Indianapolis; Kansas City, Missouri; Raleigh, North Carolina; and Salt Lake City.

The Forest Service’s 100-year-old Pacific Northwest Research Station in Portland, along with six other research stations across the country, are also slated to be closed and consolidated, with their functions moved to the USDA hub in Fort Collins, according to the memo.

“Implementation activities will take into consideration the ongoing fire season,” Rollins wrote.

The number of employees working for the U.S. Forest Service Northwest Region Headquarters is unclear and agency spokespersons did not provide a number via email. There are roughly 246 permanent, full-time employees, mostly scientists, employed by the Pacific Northwest Research Station, according to its website. Offices for both are located in Portland. It’s unclear if employees would be able to keep their jobs and relocate or if there will be cuts.

Rollins in her memo said the agency is “not conducting a large-scale workforce reduction.”

In an email to the Capital Chronicle, an unnamed USDA spokesperson for the Forest Service Region 6 office said Rollins’ announcement last week was a “first step.”

“Some aspects of the reorganization will take place over the coming months, while others will take more time,” they wrote. “We recognize this change may be difficult, but we are hopeful that affected employees will remain with us through this transition as we work to improve, and continue delivering benefits to the people and communities we serve.”

Oregon’s senior U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat, called the plan “inane,” in an email, and said he would fight it.

“You don’t have to look at a map to know that Utah and Colorado are hundreds of miles away from the Pacific Northwest and thus much less accessible on the ground to Oregonians’ needs,” he said. “This latest Trump administration proposal shutting down the Oregon office for the Forest Service takes direct aim at quality of life in rural Oregon.”

Restructuring

Rollins said the restructuring was meant to cut agency spending by moving staff to cities with a lower cost of living and “refocusing its (USDA’s) core operations to better align with its founding mission of supporting American farming, ranching, and forestry.”

About 4,600 people work at the department’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., according to the memo. Rollins said this would be reduced to 2,000 as employees are moved to hub cities.

The five new hub cities were chosen for their “existing concentrations of current USDA employees,” a lower cost of living than D.C. and to “ensure USDA is located closer to the people it serves while achieving savings to the American taxpayer,” she wrote.

There are about 100,000 employees of the USDA nationwide, and about 30,000 are employees of the U.S. Forest Service. More than 15,300 people have left the agency under the Trump administration’s deferred resignation program, Rollins said.

Impact

Officials at the Oregon Department of Forestry have not been in conversation with USDA or Forestry Service officials about the proposed changes, according to Joy Krawczyk, a spokesperson for the state forestry department. She said moving the offices out of Portland would be inconvenient but not detrimental to the collaborative work between the state and federal agencies.

“While not having the regional office in Portland would certainly be less convenient for in-person interactions, the ability to coordinate and collaborate isn’t as limited by physical proximity today as it was pre-COVID,” Krawczyk said. “ODF and our partner agencies regularly and effectively use the variety of virtual communication tools available to us. We’ll also continue to work closely at the local level with the many USFS ranger districts across the state.”

Tom DeLuca, dean of Oregon State University’s College of Forestry, said students at the college work collaboratively on projects and research with staff from both the U.S. Forest Service Northwest Headquarters and the Northwest Research Station. Many students end up going on to work for the Forest Service after undertaking studies with federal scientists and staff.

DeLuca said closing the Oregon offices and moving their functions out of state would likely make that collaboration more difficult, and more expensive. He said these are costs that would also be borne by Northwest foresters, who would lose the technical support and ongoing research and monitoring work that offices do to improve forest ecosystems, study pests, boost timber production and respond to a changing climate.

“Secretary Rollins specifically stated that one of the objectives was to put the offices where the farmers are by moving people from D.C. to other locations. Yet for the U.S. Forest Service, it takes them out of the specific locations where there is a lot of forest management,” DeLuca said. “It’s a decision that feels very much like a centralized, D.C.-based decision masquerading as a decision for foresters and farmers, and that’s not meeting the needs of the foresters.”