Forest Service axes research stations as severe fire season threatens Pacific Northwest

The U.S. Forest Service is shutting down research stations around the country, including centers in Portland, Seattle, and Wenatchee, Washington.

Though much of the stations’ research is long-term, some fire experts say the cuts could hamper firefighting efforts as soon as this summer.

The closures are part of an agencywide restructuring that includes moving the Forest Service headquarters from Washington, D.C. to Salt Lake City and replacing nine regional offices with 15 state-level offices.

“The Forest Service is implementing a sweeping restructuring to move leadership and decision making closer to the forests and communities it serves,” according to an agency announcement.

The agency is shutting down 50 of its 70 research stations.

More than 200 people work in the Northwest research stations that are closing.

The Forest Service says researchers at shuttered stations won’t lose their jobs, but they will have to relocate.

“There is a position for every permanent employee willing to accept reassignment,” Forest Service Chief Thomas Schultz Jr. said in a memo to research branch staff.

Schultz Jr., a Trump appointee, was previously a lobbyist for Idaho Forest Group, one of the nation’s largest lumber producers, based in Coeur d’Alene.

“Whenever people are then required to uproot and move, that disrupts their ability to conduct place-based research,” said University of Washington fire ecologist Susan Prichard. She collaborates with several Forest Service researchers whose stations are closing.

Prichard said some employees might be able to work remotely, but scientists studying nearby forests would find it difficult to do their jobs from afar.

“That's harder to do when the forest research is so tied to what happens on the ground, including what's happening in this upcoming wildfire season, which will be a doozy,” she said.

The Forest Service lab in Seattle, called the Pacific Wildland Fire Sciences Laboratory, specializes in the impacts of fire on human health, wildlife habitat, and ecosystem functioning.

"One of the most direct applications of the research is telling people how to manage fires in their forest districts," said University of Washington fire ecologist Don McKenzie, who retired from the Forest Service after researching wildfires and climate change at the Seattle lab.

Current projects include researching the most effective ways to reduce fire hazards in degraded forests and updating maps of fire threats to rural communities, wildlife habitats, and carbon storage.

Prichard said the lab will be busy making smoke forecasts this summer, helping land managers decide when to issue regional smoke warnings and when it is safe to light intentional fires.

“That particular team within the Seattle lab works on smoke prediction, and so they will be fully occupied this summer,” Prichard said.

Federal agencies expect severe fire conditions to arrive in eastern Washington and eastern Oregon as early as June due to a meager snowpack melting off and letting soils and vegetation dry out early. Conditions are expected to worsen in July.

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According to the Forest Service, wildfire smoke is “the largest source of air pollution faced by the American public.

The agency restructuring comes on the heels of many federal employees being encouraged by Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” to leave federal employment in 2025.

“I have witnessed just a huge loss of research staff throughout the country through those early retirements,” Prichard sad.

Who will be told to relocate where has not been determined.

“The number of relocations beyond those already identified from the National Capital Region is unknown at this time,” Forest Service spokesperson Lisa Bryant said by email after declining an interview request. “Employees will receive clear information about relocation timelines, available options, and resources to support their decisions.”

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“They say no [layoffs] but I personally think a lot of this announcement-with-no-details is to sow chaos and fear and get folks to leave voluntarily,” one Forest Service researcher, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, said in a text message. “That’s obviously the point with the [headquarters] moving to Salt Lake. I was told my office was closing but not where I’d end up. Same town? Same state? Who knows!”

Bryant said the agency’s frontline work will continue without interruption.

“This includes active forest management, wildfire response, forest and watershed restoration, recreation services, research, and sustained collaboration with states, tribes, and communities,” she said.

Nick Smith, a spokesperson for the American Forest Resource Council, a Western states timber industry group, said he welcomes the Forest Service restructuring.

“This reorganization comes at a time when the Forest Service needs to refocus on its core mission of active forest management,” Smith said by email. “We understand the intent behind [research-station] consolidation is to reduce duplication, and a more streamlined structure could help ensure that research is more directly tied to real-world forest conditions and the needs of field managers.”

Jasmine Minbashian, spokesperson for the nonprofit Conservation Northwest, said the group was deeply saddened by the announced closures.

“The body of research produced over decades by these stations has been pivotal to protecting forests, landscapes, and wildlife across the Northwest,” Minbashian said by email. “The Northwest would look very different today without these scientists asking hard questions and producing trusted answers."

McKenzie said his biggest concern is researchers being pressured to corrupt their science in order to boost timber sales and other resource extraction.

“That's the energy that people are getting from the administration,” he said. “It's not, ‘We want answers about the science.’ It’s, ‘We want the right answers so that we can implement the policies that we want to implement anyway. You're here to give us a justification in case we need it.’”

Prichard said she had not heard of researchers being pressured to twist their findings to suit political agendas, other than what she called “almost comical” censorship of terms like “climate change” deemed unacceptable by the Trump administration.

She said Forest Service researchers are still pursuing the scientific truth, even if they have to avoid terms like climate change.

“They talk about ‘longer, hotter, drier summers’ perhaps instead,” Prichard said.