If Any Agency Ever Needed Reorganized

by Greg Walcher on July 24, 2026

Earlier this year U.S. Forest Service (USFS) Chief Tom Schultz announced a major reorganization of the agency, prompting the usual opposition from employees predictably opposing any change in the status quo. A few environmental industry groups expressed skepticism, but the story was mostly ignored elsewhere. That might be because many people assume it will face the same future as the first Trump Administration’s attempt to move the Bureau of Land Management from Washington to Grand Junction. The Biden Administration simply cancelled that plan and moved the office back to D.C., but this new USFS plan is much more far-reaching in scope and impact.

This plan also involves moving a national headquarters out of Washington, in this case to Salt Lake City. But it’s much more than that. This reorganization has been in the works a decade, under both Trump and Biden, and based on planning discussions since at least 2008. It will consolidate 70 research stations into a single organization in Ft. Collins, and abolish all nine regional offices, replacing them with 15 state-level offices, all designed to move decision-making closer to the affected communities. Hiring is already underway for those state director positions, as well as positions in the new Salt Lake headquarters, where Schultz himself will live and work.

USFS, part of the Agriculture Department, has a $9 billion budget, 30,000 employees, 600 ranger districts, and 193 million acres, including 154 national forests, 209 national grasslands, 80 experimental forests, and six national monuments. It is a very decentralized agency, but at least a few headquarters employees may have to move. They are not happy.

One recent retiree called the plan “chaotic,” saying it “is turning over 100 years of organization.” Another group wrote to Congress saying over 1,900 people could be affected, though the actual number is unclear. The Western Governors Association supports the plan, saying decisions made closer to the state level will be more sensitive to the impacts on communities and economies.

Are the details in this particular reorganization plan the perfect approach? Do they go far enough? I’m not completely sure; time will tell. But despite all the hand wringing and teeth gnashing, the controversy largely ignores the central point. That is, no bureau ever needed reorganization more than the USFS, which has become one of the most notoriously dysfunctional agencies in government.

The current structure was designed by the first Forest Service Chief, Gifford Pinchot, 120 years ago, when the primary goals and challenges were very different. 50 years of additional regulations and processes have led to what another Chief decades later called “analysis paralysis,” the inability of forest managers to manage. Today, decisions are rarely driven by forest health, but by lawsuits and appeals of virtually every action, interminable public processes and hearings, limited budgets and staffing, and the shortage of professional foresters.

It is ironic that one of the concerns expressed by Schultz’s critics is that older employees may take early retirement, leading to what some call a “brain drain,” the loss of experienced staffers. But that already happened – decades ago. The people leaving now are employees who replaced the professional foresters 20-30 years ago. And for the most part, they are not foresters. According to government data, the USFS’s professional forestry workforce shrunk from 5,500 foresters in 1989 to 3,305 in 1998 and just 1,401 by 2024 – a 75 percent decline. The agency hired biologists, hydrologists, climate scientists, and other disciplines for decades and now has a dire shortage of managers who understand forest science. Foresters now comprise barely 4 percent of the workforce.

The numbers speak volumes, providing powerful independent evidence that the nation’s professional forestry workforce has contracted substantially over the past half-century.

It is a difficult problem, because that shrinking forestry workforce is compounded by a long-term decline in the pipeline of new professionals. Enrollment in North American forestry schools peaked during the 1970s and has trended downward for decades, as other trades became more fashionable. By 1981, undergraduate enrollment had fallen 20 percent from its 1975 peak, followed by another sustained decline in the mid-1990s. That trend substantially reduces the government’s capacity to recruit trained forestry professionals to plan and oversee timber harvests, reforestation, fuels reduction, and other active forest management.

The resulting management structure has been a death sentence to the national forests, overseen by a generation that has squandered the conservation movement’s greatest legacy. Over 200 million acres have burned since the need to reorganize the Forest Service was first discussed. It is long overdue.

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Choosing Green Fairways or Green Pastures

by Greg Walcher on July 17, 2026

I met a guy at a golf course recently who expressed grave concern about the health of the grass this summer, because of Colorado’s ongoing drought. We hadn’t met before and knew nothing of each other’s backgrounds. But he entertained me with a tirade about Colorado’s waste of water, especially for agriculture. He asserted that 85 percent of Colorado’s precious water is used to raise livestock and feed for livestock, an outrage when there is so little for watering the greens and fairways.

I was tempted to ask the man if he is a vegetarian, but I didn’t because I already knew the answer. Of course he is not a vegetarian; he is one of those activists who wants everyone else to change their lifestyles. The kind who want everyone else to ride the bus, join carpools, turn off their air conditioners, stop watering lawns, and make other sacrifices he himself has never considered. I’d never met him, but I know him.

His numbers were questionable. Agriculture is often estimated to use 85 percent of the state’s developed water. However, that includes not only livestock and feed production, but also vegetables, potatoes, onions, sugar beets, fruit, vineyards, and nursery crops, collectively consuming 20–30 of the state’s developed water. Livestock production and growing livestock feed probably uses 60-70 percent of the water, not the 85 he claimed.

Yet those raw numbers tell only a minor part of the story. Most people may not associate Colorado with farming and ranching, like Nebraska or Wyoming. But agriculture is central to the state’s economy, history, culture, and way of life.

Colorado produces the nation’s finest peaches, but not the most – that would be California. The San Luis Valley is famous for its potatoes, but Idaho’s are better known. Colorado is the center of the nation’s lamb industry, but has fewer sheep than Texas. The Centennial State is not the center of the corn belt – that’s Iowa. Nor does Colorado produce the most wheat – that’s Kansas. It isn’t the nation’s dairyland – that’s Wisconsin. But don’t be fooled. Colorado produces a massive share of America’s food. 

There are 36,000 farms and ranches in Colorado, averaging 836 acres, almost double the national average. They contribute $47 billion to the state’s economy, including food processing, transportation, equipment, supplies, wholesalers, retailers, and ripple effects throughout the economy. Over $9 billion worth of agricultural products are sold in Colorado annually. The state has 2.5 million head of cattle, including 200,000 dairy cows, as well as 405,000 sheep. Its growers also produce 635 million gallons of milk, 10.2 billion pounds of corn, 4.3 billion pounds of wheat, and 2.3 billion pounds of potatoes every year.

Those are not just abstract numbers, they directly support communities and families across the state. Consider our central region of the Western Slope. The Business Incubator Center recently commissioned a study of agriculture’s impact on Rio Blanco, Garfield, Mesa, Delta, and Montrose Counties, led by Dr. Nathan Perry, economics professor Colorado Mesa University. He found that “Agriculture supports more than 9,000 jobs across the region, contributes approximately $281.7 million to regional GDP, and generates over $719 million in total economic output, placing it alongside some of Western Colorado’s most consequential economic sectors.” That includes more than 3,500 jobs and $98 million in Mesa County alone. Agriculture also generates $20 million in tax revenue to the state and local governments in those 5 counties.

Still, today’s farmers and ranchers face unprecedented challenges. They are an aging population with descendants less passionate about farming. They see declining acreage and shrinking operations in most areas, coupled with persistent droughts, bewildering technology, rising costs (especially fuel), and unpredictable access to capital. No wonder nearly 40 percent of producers “are unsure whether their operation will be passed to the next generation,” writes Dr. Perry.

The last thing producers need is increased pressure on their water. Colorado growers were early adopters of gated pipe, concrete ditches, drip water systems, no-till planting, and other conservation systems. That should be a source of pride to their fellow citizens, not a reason to demand that they further curtail water they own and are entitled to use. In reality, that water isn’t just for them – it’s for everyone who wants to eat.

That arrogant golfer may think pretty fairways are more important than his fellow citizens eating. Personally, I am confident there is room for both golf and food production. But if people were ever forced to choose between the two, many greens would soon become browns.

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Different Spins on the Same Issue

July 2, 2026

Rodney Page’s first novel, a political thriller called “Powers Not Delegated,” follows a congressman learning how Washington works. He clings to his parents’ advice that “If you never tell a lie, you won’t have to remember what you said.” But eventually he develops “a perverse respect for politicians who had mastered the art of spin… the […]

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Decline of the Aspen – a Prophetic Report

June 24, 2026

German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer wrote that “Truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as self-evident.” Twenty-eight years ago, in the summer of 1998, the Club 20 Research Foundation published a report called “Decline of the Aspen: A Special Report on the Health of National […]

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Why We Build Fences – And Dams

June 22, 2026

A Montana friend reminded me of an old cowboy adage: “Before you take down a fence, you ought to pause long enough to ask why it was put there.” It’s a principle called “Chesterton’s Fence,” coined by writer G.K. Chesterton who cautioned against acting rashly. He wrote, “a “modern reformer” says of the fence, “I […]

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Improving the Environment, One Plant at a Time

June 10, 2026

In a popular Substack publication called Asterisk Magazine, a California physicist named Casey Handmer wrote a great piece titled “It’s 2024 and Drought is Optional,” about desalination technology. But he also touched on an even more fundamental point about how people don’t want to think about the importance of infrastructure. “The past century of prosperity […]

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Climate Future Not What it Used to Be

June 3, 2026

In 1937 the French poet and philosopher Paul Valéry published Reflections on the World Today, in which he originated one of literature’s great lines: “The problem with our times is that the future is no longer what it was.” The line was perfected later by Yogi Berra, who said simply, “The future is not what […]

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Turn Down the Volume on BLM

May 29, 2026

This week the Senate finally confirmed the new Director of the Bureau of Land Management, former New Mexico Congressman Steve Pearce. The firestorm surrounding his nomination a few weeks earlier has not yet cooled and probably won’t. The volume is louder than the situation justifies, though, and the vast western sky above BLM land is […]

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Is the Southwest’s Water Problem Serious Enough Yet?

May 22, 2026

One month after proposing to put a man on the moon, JFK said getting drinking water from the ocean would be “one of the great breakthroughs of history” that would “dwarf any other scientific accomplishments.” Californians have worried about water for decades. The Colorado River, upon which the entire Southwest depends, is dying. The region’s […]

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California Could Finally Get Serious About Water

May 15, 2026

The Wall Street Journal headline said “San Diego Now Has So Much Water That It’s Selling It.” The article said San Diego generates enough water to rescue Arizona, though that’s jumping the gun just a bit. No such deal has actually been finalized yet, but the fact that the conversation is underway marks a new […]

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