{"id":258719,"date":"2026-04-09T03:45:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T03:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/258719\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T03:45:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T03:45:09","slug":"forest-service-to-close-6-research-stations-in-california","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/258719\/","title":{"rendered":"Forest Service to close 6 research stations in California"},"content":{"rendered":"

The U.S. Forest Service<\/a> announced that it is shuttering dozens of research stations and relocating its headquarters as part of a massive reorganization.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The agency\u2019s headquarters will be moved from Washington, D.C., to Salt Lake City, according to a news release<\/a> published last week. Sweeping closures are also set to take place across its research division: 57 of 77 research facilities across 31 states are set to close, and any remaining facilities will operate under a single research station in Fort Collins, Colorado.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Six research facilities in California \u2014 located in Anderson, Fresno, Chico, Fort Bragg,\u00a0Mount Shasta and Hat Creek \u2014 will close, according to the Forest Service\u2019s website<\/a>. All nine of the agency\u2019s regional offices will also be closed and consolidated to operations centers located in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Athens, Georgia; Fort Collins, Colorado; Madison, Wisconsin;\u00a0Missoula, Montana;\u00a0and Placerville, California.<\/p>\n

According to the Forest Service, these changes are taking place as part of an effort to \u201cunify research priorities, accelerate the application of science to management decisions, and reduce administrative duplication.\u201d Public land advocates, however, said the restructuring could be disastrous for an agency already faced with over a year\u2019s worth of workforce shortages and budget cuts. President Donald Trump\u2019s\u00a0administration fired thousands of Forest Service workers in early 2025, a move that sent\u00a0shockwaves through rural communities<\/a> that depend on the agency for employment opportunities and the management of nearby public land.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is nothing more than intentionally trying to create chaos,\u201d Tracy Stone-Manning, the former director of the Bureau of Land Management and the president of a conservation nonprofit called the Wilderness Society, told SFGATE over the phone.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

A similar restructuring effort took place within the Bureau of Land Management during Trump\u2019s first term, when the administration announced plans to move a large portion of the agency\u2019s administrative staff from Washington, D.C., to Grand Junction,\u00a0Colorado. Stone-Manning, who led the BLM at the time,\u00a0said that she sees echoes of this change in last week\u2019s announcement.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat it did was cripple the agency,\u201d Stone-Manning said. \u201cHundreds of people walked out instead of being forced to relocate. And with that is a loss of a deep, deep understanding how things are supposed to work, and a deep understanding of how best to manage our public lands.\u201d<\/p>\n

The upcoming reorganization could cut the Forest Service\u2019s workforce in half, Stone-Manning said, adding that the loss might result in sweeping closures of campgrounds and trails, along with impacts to wildlife conservation and land stewardship.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis move is not a reorganization. It is a significant shrinking of resources, including staff and budgets,\u201d Wendy Schneider, the executive director of the nonprofit Friends of the Inyo that\u2019s\u00a0based in the Eastern Sierra Nevada, told SFGATE in an email. \u201cIt is coming at a time when staff and budget cuts have already significantly reduced the ability of the forest service to properly manage the lands in their care.\u201d<\/p>\n

Employees affected by the restructuring \u201cwill receive clear information about relocation timelines, available options, and resources to support their decisions,\u201d a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Agriculture told\u00a0SFGATE in an emailed statement. Spokespeople representing several national forests within California said the restructuring will not impact district offices or their staff and that wildfire response operations will remain unchanged.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Relocation efforts will take place in phases, the USDA spokesperson said, adding that an exact number of affected employees is unknown.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The U.S. Forest Service announced that it is shuttering dozens of research stations and relocating its headquarters as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258720,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,6027,1692,1229],"class_list":{"0":"post-258719","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-california-headlines","10":"tag-california-news","11":"tag-sfgmountaintowns","12":"tag-sfgnews","13":"tag-sfgparks"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258719\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}