To the editor: Staff writer Alex Wigglesworth is right to raise alarm about the U.S. Forest Service “overhaul” (“Why a major reorganization at the Forest Service has people concerned,” April 30). For those of us who have worked alongside the agency for decades, it looks less like “efficiency” and more like dismantling.
For 50 years, CalWild has been studying and protecting California’s 20 million acres of national forest. We’ve relied on critical forest protection laws and knowledgeable USFS staffers, who are now disappearing. Prospect Partners recently validated our on-the-ground experience: Since 2025, California has lost 14% of its public-lands workforce, with a 9% reduction in an already understaffed U.S. Forest Service.
Congress has starved the USFS for funding since the 1990s, especially for non-fire suppression. Additional proposed budget cuts and policy changes, including efforts to weaken the Roadless Rule, add to the strain. That’s why closing California’s regional USFS office, all our research facilities and moving leadership from Washington bodes of further destruction.
The 2019 Bureau of Land Management headquarters move lost experienced staff and decades of institutional knowledge. The weakened agency, even in the last few weeks, has lost at least five state directors.
That’s why Californians should worry.
Despite knowledgeable, dedicated people that remain to hold everything together, there’s only so much a small, under-resourced team can do. Especially when the top-down objective becomes ramming through extraction projects.
Californians will feel the consequences where it matters most: in places like the Angeles and Cleveland National Forests we all love to visit.
Mark Green, Oakland
The writer is executive director of wild space preservation organization CalWild.