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USDA revamps U.S. Forest Service; Athens gets regional office

On March 31, the U.S. Forest Service announced it will move its headquarters to Salt Lake City, Utah, from Washington, D.C., and begin a sweeping restructuring of the agency to move leadership closer to the forests and communities it serves.

In making the announcement, the USDA, which oversees the U.S. Forest Service, said the shift represents a structural reset and a common-sense approach to improve mission delivery because most of the forest service’s lands, partners and operational challenges are concentrated in the West.

Along with the relocation of its headquarters, the Forest Service will begin transitioning to a state-based organizational model designed to shift authority closer to the field by organizing leadership around what the agency referred to as “state-level accountability, supported by shared operational service centers and a unified national research enterprise.”

Under the new model, 15 state directors will be distributed throughout the country to oversee Forest Service operations within one or more states. State directors will serve as national leaders with primary oversight of forest supervisors, operational priorities, and relationships with states, tribes, and other partners. Each state office will include a small leadership support team responsible for functions such as legislative affairs, communications, and intergovernmental coordination.

As the agency transitions to the state-based model, the Forest Service will shift many functions currently housed in regional offices to a network of operational service centers that will be established in Athens, Georgia; Albuquerque, New Mexico, Fort Collins, Colorado; Madison, Wisconsin and, Missoula, Montana and Placerville, California. Additional service center locations may be added as the transition progresses.

Athens will be home to the Southern Appalachian State Office, covering Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, Kentucky and Puerto Rico.

For a comprehensive list of state offices and their area of responsibility, click here.

Locations were selected based on existing USDA workforce and infrastructure presence, operational needs and efficiency, and proximity to agricultural and natural resource stakeholders.

Together, these centers will provide shared administrative, technical, and enabling support to forests and state offices nationwide, allowing field leadership to focus more directly on actions that improve the health, productivity, and resilience of our nation’s forests.

The Forest Service will also consolidate leadership of its research enterprise. The agency currently operates multiple geographically dispersed research stations, each with its own leadership structure. Under the reorganization, the Forest Service will bring those stations together under a single Forest Service research organization, located in Fort Collins. These changes are designed to unify research priorities, accelerate the application of science to management decisions, and reduce administrative duplication, according to the USDA. Information on retained research facilities and research facility closures is available here.

Under this reorganization, the agency’s Fire and Aviation Management program will retain its existing Geographic Area Coordination Center structure, which remains the backbone of national incident coordination. There will be no interruption or change to our field-based operational firefighters or their positions. The program will continue reporting to the Deputy Chief for Fire and Aviation Management at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho. This structure ensures the agency’s ongoing, close coordination with the Department of the Interior and interagency partners. It will reinforce the unified, national approach essential to effective wildland fire response until the Forest Service’s wildland fire management operations are unified into the U.S. Wildland Fire Service (USWFS) within the Department of the Interior (DOI).

The restructuring will also drive a review and consolidation of facilities nationwide. As part of this transition, all regional offices will close; however, several facilities will be retained to support ongoing mission needs. Additional phases of the reorganization, including the formal elimination of regional and station office structures and the full transition to a state-based model, will be implemented over the coming year.

The agency’s retained facilities will support essential functions during and after the transition, with the facility in Juneau, Alaska serving as a state office, the facility in Vallejo, California repurposed as a national training center, and the facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico retained as a business support service center and state office.

The Forest Service will provide employees and partners with detailed transition guidance as different milestones approach. Throughout the transition, the agency emphasizes frontline operations, including active forest management, wildfire response, forest restoration, recreation management, and partnerships with states and communities, will continue uninterrupted.

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