JACKSON — Last week, the U.S. Forest Service began implementing a reorganization plan that has been months in the making.

The restructuring, announced in March, will relocate the agency’s headquarters from Washington, D.C. to Salt Lake City and dissolve its nine regional offices. The agency will also establish 15 state offices, including one in Cheyenne.

On July 22, Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz sent a memo to all Forest Service employees announcing that reassignments would begin that week.

The agency has already sent letters offering new positions or locations to some senior employees, said Kathryn Conant, who worked for the Forest Service for 23 years before taking an early retirement agreement in April 2025 and is still in contact with many Forest Service employees. Conant worked at the national and regional levels during her career, as well as served as the acting forest supervisor of the Bridger-Teton National Forest for six months in the mid-2010s.

“I am hearing that more and more people are now resigning,” Conant said. “Those people have already been assigned where they’re going to go and they’re already leaving.”

Conant and other former Forest Service employees are concerned that the plan to relocate and reassign employees from Washington and regional offices will drive staff away from the agency, which has lost about 3,800 full-time employees since the beginning of the Trump Administration, according to the agency’s budget request for the coming fiscal year.

Critics also worry that the reorganization will leave forests with less access to technical specialists, who are currently housed in the regional offices, and that the reorganization will turn out to be a boondoggle that wastes staff time and agency resources.

Loss of ‘mission critical’ skills

“A big portion of my concern is around this loss of mission-critical skills,” said Mel Bolling, the former supervisor of the Caribou-Targhee National Forest. “Losing people that have worked in public lands for a long time – and gained experience and skills over that period of time —  will have wide-reaching ramifications on the overall operations and capabilities of forests.”

Forests rely on specialists in ski resorts, water quality, water rights, land exchanges, engineering and more that are housed in regional offices. 

Following the reorganization, those services will be housed in five operations service centers, with the closest in Fort Collins, Colorado, and Missoula, Montana. Staff at those centers will assist with forest plan revisions and activities requiring technical skills.

The Caribou-Targhee and Bridger-Teton national forests currently consult with specialists at the Ogden, Utah, regional office, which serves Utah, Nevada and parts of Idaho and Wyoming. 

Options for employees whose offices are shuttered as part of the reorganization, like those in Ogden, will include relocating to Salt Lake City or a new service center; taking another job with the Forest Service; taking a different job with the federal government or retiring from or leaving federal service.

About 500 of the agency’s 30,000 employees will need to relocate, according to the Forest Service. Just under 200 of those employees are currently located in Washington, D.C.

Factors including children in school, elder care, the job market for a spouse and the housing market could impact an employee’s ability to relocate, Bolling said.

“Taxpayers are going to lose a lot of really good people that are committed to serving the public and caring for the public lands we all enjoy,” he said.

The Forest Service did not respond to a list of questions by press time, but a spokesperson directed the News&Guide to a page on the agency’s website dedicated to information about the reorganization.

‘Sweeping restructuring’

The aim of the agency’s self-described “sweeping restructuring” is to move leadership and decision-making closer to forests, according to an agency factsheet. The plans will modernize the Forest Service and reduce bureaucracy, according to the document.

As part of the plan, two-thirds of the agency’s 290 employees located in Washington will relocate to Salt Lake City and service centers. One-third will remain in the capital to work on congressional engagement and policy work.

“This whole idea of moving headquarters out of D.C. is a paper exercise, because there’s not that many people left in D.C.,” Conant said.

The state offices will simplify the chain of command and strengthen local relationships, according to the agency. Those offices will be in locations including Salt Lake City, Fort Collins, Helena, Boise and Cheyenne. They will be staffed by state directors, whose job is to represent forests’ interests at the national level and coordinate with states, and a small team that works on communications, legislative affairs and intergovernmental coordination.

The Cheyenne office will serve Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska.

Every impacted employee will be offered a new position, according to the agency.

“It feels like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic,” Conant said.

Adding a state office between forests and specialists at service centers adds an additional layer of bureaucracy and removal from forests, she said.

“I would not assume that the Bridger-Teton is going to have the same level of access going forward to technical people as it does now, when they’re dedicated nationally and not necessarily specific to support Wyoming,” Conant said.

The new offices could also cost the agency millions of dollars in leases, technology and more, Conant said. She spent her last year with the Forest Service working remotely for the national office to reduce the cost of office space.

“It’s going to cost a lot of money to taxpayers and we’re going to lose more and more technical expertise,” she said. “The long-term ramifications are just shocking.”