To the editor: Employees author Alex Wigglesworth is correct to boost alarm in regards to the U.S. Forest Service “overhaul” (“Why a major reorganization at the Forest Service has people concerned,” April 30). For these of us who’ve labored alongside the company for many years, it seems much less like “effectivity” and extra like dismantling.
For 50 years, CalWild has been finding out and defending California’s 20 million acres of nationwide forest. We’ve relied on vital forest safety legal guidelines and educated USFS staffers, who are actually disappearing. Prospect Partners lately validated our on-the-ground expertise: Since 2025, California has misplaced 14% of its public-lands workforce, with a 9% discount in an already understaffed U.S. Forest Service.
Congress has starved the USFS for funding because the Nineties, particularly for non-fire suppression. Extra proposed finances cuts and coverage adjustments, together with efforts to weaken the Roadless Rule, add to the pressure. That’s why closing California’s regional USFS workplace, all our analysis amenities and transferring management from Washington bodes of additional destruction.
The 2019 Bureau of Land Management headquarters move misplaced skilled workers and a long time of institutional information. The weakened company, even in the previous few weeks, has misplaced no less than 5 state administrators.
That’s why Californians ought to fear.
Regardless of educated, devoted folks that stay to carry all the pieces collectively, there’s solely a lot a small, under-resourced crew can do. Particularly when the top-down goal turns into ramming by extraction initiatives.
Californians will really feel the results the place it issues most: in locations just like the Angeles and Cleveland Nationwide Forests all of us love to go to.
Mark Inexperienced, Oakland
The author is government director of untamed area preservation group CalWild.
