Forest Service Seattle, Wenatchee labs to close in restructuringSubscriber Exclusive

The U.S. Forest Service research labs in Seattle and Wenatchee are targeted for closure, part of a broader restructuring of the agency that is housed in the Department of Agriculture.

Of the agency’s 77 research labs across the nation, 57 will be shuttered over the coming year including the two in Washington. The state office in Olympia will remain open.

As part of the administrative overhaul, the Forest Service plans to relocate its headquarters from Washington D.C. to Salt Lake City, Utah, and consolidate management of research labs into one location in Fort Collins, Colo. The goal is to get staff closer to the roughly 90 percent of the federal lands managed by the agency, leaders say.

The agency says scientists will not lose their jobs and research programs will not be ended.

“This is about building a Forest Service that is nimble, efficient, effective and closer to the forests and communities it serves,” said Tom Schultz, chief of the Forest Service, when the reorganization was announced last month. Schultz was in Washington this week speaking at logging conferences.

The closure of the two Washington labs raises questions about the future of forestry research, particularly east of the Cascades where a different type of forest demands different management strategies. The two labs also inform state and local policy decisions and support academic programs with partnering universities.

Washington’s logging industry sees the restructuring as a way to improve efficiency and open doors for shared land management opportunities. A former Forest Service employee worries the restructuring will cause further instability for an agency that is still recovering from deep cuts in staffing last year.

The research conducted in Wenatchee has informed federal and state forestry policies, including the state Department of Natural Resources’ 20-year Forest Health Strategic Plan.

About eight staff members work at Wenatchee Forestry Sciences Lab. Other temporary employees include seasonal field crews and researchers from the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education, an asset of the U.S. Department of Energy. It also has cooperative agreements with Washington State University and Oregon State University.

“I’m less worried about a need to reorganize than I am about the political environment in which it’s being done,” said Bill Gaines, a wildlife ecologist formerly employed by the Forest Service in Wenatchee for nearly 25 years.

Gaines, who worked closely with the Wenatchee lab, said that agency staff already “took a severe hit under this administration.” Adding a reorganization effort on top “is going to create probably two years of chaos.”

Roughly 10 percent of the U.S. Forest Service staff was terminated last year amid the Trump Administration’s mass cuts to federal agencies. Those cuts targeted new hires, but Gaines said it also led to many early retirements.

Closing the Wenatchee lab, in particular, he said, could mean losing vital scientific insight on the unique needs east of the Cascades in Washington.

“It warrants that we have a different set of policies to manage because of all the differences there,” Gaines said, pointing to fire behavior, forest types and recreational activities.

Seattle-based Pacific Wildland Fire Sciences Lab’s work has helped forest managers at the Department of Natural Resources understand the changing dynamics of fires west of the Cascades and help small forest landowners carry out climate resilient land management practices.

The facility supports around 21 staff members plus graduate students through a partnership with the University of Washington. The lab has hosted scholars from Brazil to Mexico and currently hosts a Fulbright climate fellow.

In an email to the Standard, an unnamed Department of Agriculture spokesperson said, “in many cities, the ‘closures’ refer only to individual buildings where small groups of scientists sit today. Those staff and programs are simply moving into fewer facilities.”

Perspectives

Washington Public Lands Commissioner Dave Upthegrove, who runs the Department of Natural Resources, said he hopes the restructuring creates closer coordination between the two agencies, but worries that the impacts on the federal workforce could negatively affect in-state services.

“We want to ensure that consolidating locations doesn’t result in any loss of the valuable scientific research underway,” he said.

With the Forest Service managing 193 million acres of land, concerns around management efficacy amid a dwindling federal budget, and more recently a dwindling staff, have been echoed for years.

“The Forest Service can be doing more to manage national forests in Washington, particularly to reduce wildfire risks, to mitigate climate change impacts, and yes, to provide some supply of timber,” said Nick Smith, public affairs director for the American Forest Resource Council, a regional timber trade group.

But Smith said the Forest Service cannot manage all those acres on its own. He said he hopes the reorganization will lead to federal and state agencies and tribal governments engaging in more shared stewardship of forestlands.

While Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins is behind the agency’s relocation mandates, it is Schultz who is pushing the internal policy change.