The Trump administration is gearing up to redirect the Forest Service’s scientific work toward timber and wildfire and away from pests, diseases, forest ecology and the effects of climate change.
The realignment of the forest agency’s research priorities has been in the works for weeks and reflects staff reductions — some already completed through deferred resignations, others on the way — as well as forthcoming spending proposals that would be left to Congress to decide, according to employees and outside organizations familiar with the administration’s thinking.
The fallout of the shift in the Forest Service’s focus would ripple not just through national forests but on state and privately owned land across the country, where the agency’s research guides land management practices.
Preliminary budget-related communications within the Agriculture Department and the ever-changing internal roster of employees and their jobs offer clues about where the research mission may be headed, said an employee who shared some of the materials with POLITICO’s E&E News.
