The U.S. Forest Service is undergoing significant changes that (could lead) to its dismantling. This process is driven by the current administration’s policies aimed at maximizing resource extraction activities such as logging, drilling and mining.
The Forest Service has been in existence for 121 years. The role of the Forest Service is to protect our ecosystems and wildlife habitat. Trump and his hatchet group are ripping the headquarters out of Washington, D.C., and shipping it to Salt Lake City. Every regional office is being shuttered.
Over a century ago Gifford Pinchot built the system to protect the national forests. Pinchot and Teddy Roosevelt created the USFS to protect the forests from exactly the kind of industrial plunder this administration is trying to do. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins is proposing a radical overhaul of the entire department by moving 2,600 of the agency’s 4,600 Washington employees to five regional hubs.
The Forest Service will be unrecognizable to Gifford Pinchot. The national forests belong to all of us. If there is any way to protect it, do so like your life depends on it. Because it does.
Lois Eisenberg
Valencia
