OLYMPIA, Wash. — The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced March 31 that the Forest Service will relocate its headquarters from Washington, D.C. to Salt Lake City, Utah, and undergo the most sweeping restructuring in the agency's 121-year history. The move, framed by the Trump administration as a step toward more efficient, on-the-ground forest management, is already drawing fierce opposition from conservation groups who see it as a deliberate gutting of the nation's largest public land agency.
Under the plan, the agency's ten regional offices — the backbone of its administrative structure since Gifford Pinchot established the Forest Service — will all close. They will be replaced by 15 state directors operating from state capitals, supported by six operational service centers distributed across the country. All Forest Service research stations, currently spread across more than 50 facilities in 31 states, will be consolidated into a single location in Fort Collins, Colorado.
USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins described the relocation as positioning Forest Service leadership closer to the landscapes and communities it serves. "Nearly 90% of Forest Service lands are west of the Mississippi," noted Utah Governor Spencer Cox in the official press release, calling the move "a big win for Utah and the West."
But not everyone sees it that way. Writing for Hatch Magazine, conservationist and filmmaker Jim Pattiz argues the restructuring amounts to the agency's functional elimination comparing it to the Bureau of Land Management's 2019 headquarters relocation, after which the agency lost 87% of its Washington-based workforce. Pattiz points out that Utah is simultaneously pursuing a lawsuit seeking to seize 18.5 million acres of federal public land and that Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz previously worked as a logging executive before his appointment to lead the agency.
The restructuring is particularly consequential for Washington State, which hosts millions of acres of national forest across the Cascades and Olympics — lands vital to recreation, watershed health, timber communities, and tribal partners. The new state-based model means Washington's forests would be overseen by a single state director rather than the existing regional structure, raising questions about local capacity and accountability.
The administration insists frontline operations, wildfire response, recreation management, active forest management, and state and tribal partnerships, will continue without interruption during the transition. Fire and aviation management will retain its existing coordination structure and continue reporting from the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise.
The full transition to the state-based model, including formal elimination of regional office structures, is expected to unfold over the coming year.