MISSOULA — Plans to restructure the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the branches within it — including the U.S. Forest Service — have city and county officials watching and waiting for the potential impacts.
The loss of the Region 1 USFS office in Missoula could hurt the local economy, local programs and on-the-ground work within the agency, said Eric Melson, a member of the Missoula City Council and the program director at the Selway-Bitterroot Frank Church Foundation.
“It would be a big mistake if these regions were consolidated,” he said. “We need to keep all the Forest Service folks who are employed at the Region 1 office here in Missoula.”
Melson said a young Forest Service dedicated the Region 1 office in Missoula in 1908. By 1930, it was redesignated and fully staffed. Over time, it became a prominent presence in Missoula, the state and beyond.
“It's Region 1 for a reason. It's where the Forest Service really began,” he said.
Melson added that the concept of wilderness began at Region 1, along with the first “let-it-burn” policy. The Smoke Jumper program also began at Region 1, and the Nine Mile historic remount center.
It is, Melson added, “the beating heart of the Forest Service.”
“There are efforts underway to consolidate all of the Forest Service regions and remove the nearly 100-year-old office we have in Missoula today,” he said. “I think it's tragic. I think it's an intentional brain drain to move forest people out of the agency.”
Missoula County has also expressed concerns regarding the proposal, and it's likely to send a letter to the state's congressional delegation asking it to protect local resources, not only within Region 1, but also the communities it serves.
Chet Crowser, director of the county's Community and Planning Services, said the ramifications of a USDA centralization are hard to predict.
“There's a history that's tied to this structure, where you have regional forests, you have districts, you have this connection to the geographic areas of the country and the communities doing that work,” he said. “Changing that structure to another will require a lot of energy and inertia.”
The Forest Service operates 10 regional offices across the country. They include scientists, engineers, foresters and grant writers.
Under the proposal released by the Trump administration last month, those offices would close and be consolidated into five hubs located in Utah, Colorado, Indiana, North Carolina and Missouri.
“There's a notion that they're trying to push them out from D.C. Having management close to the ground isn't a bad idea, but placing them in centralized hubs over regional offices may be contrary to that,” said Crowser. “That leads to questions over organizational structure.”
The county also expressed concern over the impacts on other agencies within the USDA, including farm and ranch services and the Natural Resource Conservation Service, among others.
The NRCS works with local communities on projects, which could be impacted by the proposed restructuring.
“It would be a big assumption to say that everything else will remain the same,” said Karen Hughes, director of county planning, development and sustainability.
As proposed, the restructuring looks to align the USDA to support agriculture, address overspending and any perceived inefficiencies. Under the move, more than half of the USDA's 4,600 employees in the National Capital Region would be moved to one of the new hubs.
While the county said some aspects of the proposal are good, uncertainties remain. Losing access to the Forest Service at the Region 1 office may disrupt programs and dump institutional knowledge at one of the agency's oldest offices.
“If this is a centralization of authority and a centralization of offices, that disempowers people on the ground,” said Commissioner Josh Slotnick. “It rises to the standard complaint we hear that federal land management happens at a distance from the people on the ground. It's a common complaint.”
