The Trump administration announced this week it will shut down six of eight U.S. Forest Service research facilities in California as part of a major national reorganization that could leave the state underequipped to manage escalating wildfire and drought threats.
The closures in Fresno, Chico, Fort Bragg, Mount Shasta, Anderson and Hat Creek in Shasta County are part of a broader plan announced this week to shutter 57 of the agency’s 77 research facilities across 31 states and move its headquarters from Washington, D.C. to Salt Lake City, Utah. In California, just two research facilities will remain, in Placerville and Riverside.
Two U.S. Forest Service firefighters confer on the Park Fire as smoke fills the air near Paynes Creek (Tehama County) on Saturday, July 27, 2024. The Trump administration is radically changing the U.S. Forest Service, including shutting down the majority of its California research facilities. (Stephen Lam/S.F. Chronicle)
The closures come amid record warm winter temperatures in California that have rapidly eroded the state’s snowpack and heightened concerns that wildfire season could come early. Scientists at the research facilities study how forests change over time, including how they recover following fires.
Employees have said they are concerned the reorganization will cause many of the agency’s leading scientists to quit, as many did during President Donald Trump’s first term after he moved the Bureau of Land Management headquarters to Colorado, only to have the decision reversed by the Biden administration.
The agency has also seen major staff reductions. An inspector general report found that in the first half of 2025, the Forest Service lost 5,860 of its 35,550 employees to cuts from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
In a March 31 email reviewed by the New York Times, the head of the agency, Tom Schultz, told employees that the consolidation of the research stations “does not mean a retreat from the agency’s mission.”
“Forest Service R&D has produced world-class science for over a century, and that will continue,” Schultz wrote. “The consolidation is about organizing the research enterprise more efficiently, not diminishing it.”
California’s Forest Service facilities have overseen research on everything from forest management to studying endangered species. The Fresno Forestry Sciences Laboratory, for example, focused its research ecosystems in the Sierra Nevada mountains, looking at strategies to help sustain species like the California spotted owls, fishers and yellow-legged frogs.
In addition to closing the research stations, the agency is also set to close nine regional offices and create 15 new state-based offices. California’s will be in Placerville.
This article originally published at These California research stations prepare for fire risk. The Trump administration is shutting them down.