The U.S. Forest Service was founded in 1905 under the Teddy Roosevelt Administration and Gifford Pinchot was its first (and most influential) Director. Pinchot is credited with bringing and embedding professional management to the Forest Service.

The Forest Service currently manages 145 National Forests and 20 National Grasslands totaling approximately 193 million acres.

The Forest Service was created to solve a problem occurring in the late 19th century (but common to our current form of “free market” capitalism today): In the late 1800s, forests were being heavily logged with little regulation, causing deforestation, soil erosion, flooding and environmental damage. Leaders like Gifford Pinchot believed forests needed scientific management to prevent waste.

The key idea behind the Forst Service was “conservation” (not leaving land untouched, but managing it wisely). Forests would be used for: timber, water supply, recreation, and economic development. This meant “responsible use” rather than destruction or total protection.

At its core, this meant forests were to be managed with two key goals in mind:

Yesterday, with the stroke of a pen, the Trump Administration laid waste to that 120-year-old Department that, along with the National Park Service, has been a crown jewel of putting the public good ahead of private exploitation.

Of course, the rationale was, as Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins wrote in a statement, “to position the Chief and operation leaders closer to the landscapes we manage and the people who depend on them.”

But the giveaway from the statement followed not soon thereafter: “This includes supporting our timber growers across the country, including those in the Southeast, by prioritizing a regional office and promoting policies that boost timber production, lowering costs for consumers,".

As it did with the BLM, the Trump Administration is pursuing crony capitalism, placing political and private sector priorities over public benefit.

I wrote about the current Orwellian use of language in the BLM in a previous post.

While the statement said the Forest Service will be moving over 260 jobs to its new Salt Lake City headquarters, the true effect will be to gut the scientific expertise and institutional experience accumulated in the Washington, DC headquarters of the Forest Service over the past 120 years (when the BLM moved in 2019 from DC to Grand Junction Colorado, out of 328 professional positions designated for relocation, only 41, or 12.5%, actually moved).

The new plan also closes all the regional Forest Service offices and replaces them with 15 state offices that will be helmed by political appointees, not professional science-based, experienced staff.

Profit over people. Pillaging of public resources. Cronyism over expertise. Pay to play. Destruction of decades of accumulated knowledge, wisdom and conservation.

There is nothing “conservative” about this Administration and the people running it.