Conservation activists who work closely with the Forest Service have been informed that unprecedented changes are now underway for the agency’s Regional Offices.
For many decades of the U.S. Forest Service’s management of national forests across America, there have been nine Regional Offices. Each of those Regional Offices has overseen management of all the individual national forests in that region.
If you go to the website for the Pacific Southwest Region of the U.S. Forest Service, you’ll see that Region 5 oversees 20 million acres of national forest lands across 18 national forests in California plus federal lands in Hawaii and the Pacific Islands. For many years, a main Regional Office in Vallejo has been staffed with upper management Forest Service employees who have overseen recreation, wildlife, timber management, wildlife, wilderness, agency contracting, Human Resources, and other program areas.
Earlier this year, the new Administration publicized plans to “downsize” — to drastically reduce upper level employees and to streamline USFS management. Many positions at the national level offices in Washington, DC were eliminated. Forest Service employees at all levels across the agency were encouraged to retire early. A significant number of agency positions were eliminated in order to shrink the agency. And a significant number of other Forest Service employees simply quit when the agency’s primary focus was shifted to increasing timber production.
Now the agency has taken a major step to consolidate the agency’s long-established nine Regional Offices into just a few. Region 5 is being combined with Region 6 and will now have leadership provided by R-6 Regional Forester Jacqueline (Jacque) Buchanan, who currently heads up Region 6 and is headquartered in Portland, Oregon.
In addition her existing role leading Region 6 (all USFS lands in Oregon and Washington) Regional Forester Buchanan will become the Acting Regional Forester for Region 5 (California) as well as for Region 10, which covers the vast expanse of national forest lands in Alaska. Altogether, the new Regional Office will cover from California, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska.
Elsewhere across the country, other long-time Regional Offices are also being consolidated to reduce upper management positions and to result in a “flattening” of management levels, with the emphasis being on a national level, an individual national forest level, and a district level within each national forest.
What these unprecedented management changes may mean for conservation, wilderness, wildlife, recreation, and water resources is not yet clear.
At the least, there will no longer be the same level of Forest Service leadership for the agency within the state of California, and the distance between national forests in Southern California or in the Sierra Nevada and the main headquarters for the newly expanded Region in Portland, Oregon will obviously make field visits or direct personal contacts far more challenging. It will be even more difficult for environmental advocates and organizations to build personal relationships with agency decision-makers and key officials.
The link below provides information about Regional Forester Jacque Buchanan and describes her new expanded leadership role.
