MISSOULA - A federal plan to reorganize, cut and consolidate various offices within the U.S. Department of Agriculture will have devastating economic impacts on Missoula County, officials warned this week.
With the clock ticking, members of the Missoula City Council, along with retired Forest Service employees and educators, are calling on Montana's congressional delegation to proceed with transparency and consider the potential ramifications of the “reorganization memorandum,” which would all but erase the Region 1 office in Missoula and the many services it provides.
The City Council's Committee of the Whole adopted the resolution calling for transparency on Wednesday.
“It feels like there may be conversations happening behind the scenes, but from a public standpoint, people are confused, questioning things and they're worried,” said council member Mike Nugent. “If decisions are made, cuts are made and labs are moved, they're not coming back. We want to make sure the conversation is based on facts.”
The Department of Agriculture and especially the Forest Service has a particular significance to Missoula, with a number of regional, national and local offices located in the city. Among them, the Region 1 office is among the nation's oldest, and it stands among the agency's crown jewels.
Region 1 includes the Lolo National Forest's supervisor's office, the Missoula Ranger District, the Northern Regional Headquarters, the National Development and Technology Center, the Missoula Fire Sciences Lab and the forestry program at the University of Montana, among others.
Under the proposed reorganization, only the fire lab would remain in Missoula.
“There's no rationale behind it,” said Carolyn Upton, former Lolo National Forest supervisor. “The plan eliminates the nine Forest Service regional offices, including the one here in Missoula. The plan says that will be gone by the end of the year. This is an important issue. These are real people. They're your neighbors. This is going to be a very destructive time for the Forest Service.”
The federal government employed around 1,500 people in Missoula County at the end of 2024, according to quarterly Census data. Together, they earned roughly $138 million in wages.
Upton said that even a 25% reduction in federal workers equates to a loss of $34 million in wages. The economic impacts range from a loss in spending to employed households and contracting.
“We don't know the exact impact of how many people have already left. We don't know that yet, but it's significant,” Upton said, placing the figure at around 33%. “That's a lot of people whose wages are higher than the average wage in Missoula. That enables people and families to live here, stay here and invest in the community.”
Other concerns
Under the reorganization, the nine regional offices would close and be consolidated into five hubs located in Utah, Colorado, Indiana, North Carolina and Missouri.
The impacts of the proposal haven't been widely discussed, which remains a concern among professionals. The regional office in Missoula is staffed with skills ranging from scientists to engineers, and their work is closely tied to the community.
As the agency has evolved over the last century, its mission has become central to Missoula's identity. It also has grown side by side with the University of Montana, which claims one of the nation's top forestry programs.
Under the proposal, the school stands to lose a number of USFS programs.
“There's this myth that you can get more efficient if you have fewer people,” said Jim Burchfield, a retired Forest Service employee and former dean of the School of Forestry. “When you try to manage a forest without people, you're overwhelmed by the complexity and often make very poor decisions because you don't have the information you need by training people who understand all the nuances of what's going on.”
The resolution approved on Wednesday calls for a number of actions beyond vocal support for maintaining the Region 1 office. It asks Montana's congressional delegation and governor to engage and advocate for the agency's local presence, and to share “timely and transparent” information as talks continue.
It also asks the delegation to consider the economic impacts on Missoula and contractors across the state if the move takes place.
“It's not just losing those wages,” Nugent said. “Those wages have stayed in Missoula and western Montana with local hardware, local restaurants and small businesses. If we lose part of our economy like that, there will be a ripple impact. Missoulians and Western Montana who have no idea they're going to be impacted by that, it's going to be felt really strongly.”
The reorganization also includes wildland firefighting – another niche that hasn't been publicly vetted, opponents said.
Council member Sandra Vasecka said she supports transparency in government, but she opposed the resolution.
“I do believe in transparency, especially with government,” she said. “If this resolution was only about that, I'd fully be in support. However, it seems to be about wage preservation and reinforcing dependency on the federal government.”
Opponents of the proposal disagreed.
“Reducing Forest Service staff will make our forests worse off. That's a scary thing to me, because our forests are in crisis right now,” said Burchfield. “The economy and identity of Missoula will be greatly diminished if we don't do a better job (advocating).”
