What gets lost in the move: Is the Forest Service repeating a USDA misstep?

The mission of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service is to “sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the Nation’s forests and grasslands to meet the needs of present and future generations.” This means doing hard and sometimes dangerous work to protect the ecological and economic value of these managed lands, as well as protecting members of the public who use the land or live nearby. A well-staffed, expert and engaged workforce is required to make sure the Forest Service can perform its best.

On March 31, 2026, the Forest Service announced a restructuring plan that would change who is doing that work and where they will do it. Notably, the Forest Service’s headquarters and two-thirds of the office’s Washington, D.C.-based staff would relocate to Salt Lake City. The plan also involves reorganizing the organization’s field presence and consolidating up to three-quarters of the service’s 77 research stations. Justifications given for the reorganization include reducing facilities and deferred maintainance costs and bringing headquarters staff closer to the lands the organization manages.

This restructuring plan comes on the heels of a year that included significant attrition among the Forest Service’s workforce, low employee engagement levels, and Forest Service employees reporting declines in their organization’s performance.

Since the announcement, observers have compared this plan to other recent cases of major agency reorganizations, particularly the 2019 relocation of the USDA’s Economic Research Service and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture from Washington, D.C. to Kansas City, Missouri. This brief examines this previous example to explore the implications for the current Forest Service plan and other possible land management reorganizations.

Historical Lessons

The ERS and NIFA relocations provide a vivid example of how changing locations and uprooting and shedding employees, especially when there is not a strong, analysis-based case tied to the organization’s long-term strategy or operational needs, can hurt performance as the workforce becomes overburdened, less engaged and loses valuable experience.

USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue announced the initial relocation of both offices in August 2018, with Kansas City selected as the site in June 2019 and the move effective Sept. 30, 2019. According to a 2020 Congressional Research Service report, the USDA’s accompanying cost-benefit analysis indicated only 76 (23.1%) of ERS employees and 21 (6.7%) of NIFA employees would remain in Washington, D.C.

Most affected employees left rather than relocate to Missouri, and both organizations operated at less than half their usual staffing levels at various points during the move, with NIFA falling as low as one-third. In fiscal years 2017–2018, the ERS had an average of 298 permanent full-time employees while NIFA had an average of 303. Following the relocation process, both offices saw significant declines during fiscal year 2019 as attrition was at least three times the previous average. NIFA’s smallest headcount was in September 2019 at 97 permanent full-time staff, while the ERS reached its lowest point of 144 in January 2020. In the next fiscal year, separations at the offices returned to average levels and hiring began to fill vacated positions. While staffing levels recovered by September 2022, it was with a less-experienced staff, as we will outline later. Much of it also occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic under different hiring and duty station rules as the health safety situation required.

The relocation and related staff departures severely impacted employee engagement, performance and institutional knowledge at both agencies. Their Best Places to Work in the Federal Government® employee engagement and satisfaction scores experienced double-digit decreases from 2018 to 2019. This measure is used by the Partnership to rate the commitment of the organization’s workforce, their job and organizational satisfaction and the willingness to put forth discretionary effort into achieving results. Our past research indicates that improving this measure has a notable impact on the organization’s ability to deliver quality and timely services to the public.

In 2019, the Economic Research Service fell 30 points, from 66.6 to 36.5 and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture dropped more than 24 points, from 44.5 to 20.3. During the same period, the USDA remained one of the lowest scoring large agencies in the Best Places to Work rankings but only saw a 2.5-point decline in their score.

Unfortunately, the impact of COVID-19 on the employee experience and changes to our analysis of federal surveys make it impossible to see how employee engagement trended at the offices after the relocation.

A December 2022 Government Accountability Office report on the relocation captured changes in performance. The ERS released about half the usual number of research reports and additional research declined as remaining staff members were diverted to complete statute-mandated outlook reports. Some of these delayed research reports addressed the opioid epidemic, obesity, veteran dietary health and how herbicide use can negatively impact neighboring farms.

Likewise, NIFA saw its median time to process competitive grants extend 30 days over the previous year and NIFA-managed capacity grant payments saw significant delays as seven out of eight budget staff members had to be replaced between September 2019 and March 2020. This impacted a grant budget of $1.7 billion, which helped fund programs like the Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Network intended to combat the mental health and suicide crisis in the agricultural industry.

Finally, both offices lost experienced employees due to turnover. Figure 3 illustrates the decline of the average years of service both offices experienced, falling from between 16.7 and 17.7 years in September 2018 to between 8.2 and 10.3 years of service in September 2021. GAO found that between 2018 and 2021 the percentage of employes with two or fewer years of service at the ERS increased from 16.1% to 66.3% while this increased from 18.1% to 79.3% at NIFA.

Concerning parallels

Despite reassurances from Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz that the agency’s intent is “not to push anyone out the door,” early reports suggest that the reorganization effort may have that eventual outcome. Polls conducted by unions among the likely impacted employees indicate that three-fourths are likely to leave federal service rather than relocate to new offices.

Recent events are likely contributing to experienced staff saying they would rather not relocate. The agency experienced significant departures in 2025 because of voluntary and involuntary mechanisms aimed at reducing headcount. These mechanisms increased attrition among the Forest Service’s permanent staff to 2.5 times the previous five-year average while hiring declined to a third of the previous rate.

These workforce cuts coupled with other efforts by the Trump administration to reshape the federal government have significantly impacted the experiences and performance of Forest Service employees. A little over half of the respondents to our 2025 Public Service Viewpoint Survey from the Forest Service (50.4%) reported feeling less engaged than in 2024 and collectively reported an employee engagement and satisfaction score of 30.6 out of 100 compared to a government-wide score of 32.0. While poor, these engagement results are better than those reported by staff at similar federal land management organizations like the National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management.

A plurality (45.9%) of Forest Service respondents to our survey reported that the quality of the organization’s services has degraded since 2024. This is another trait they have in common with other federal land management organizations and highlighted by the anecdotal and statistical data collected in the Partnership’s Cost of Cutting American Science.

The proposed reorganization may have further impact on agency efficiency and performance. A crucial difference between the Forest Service proposal and the previous USDA relocations is that periodic close contact with the forests is required to achieve the agency’s mission. Currently some of the service’s mandated research, like the Forest Inventory Analysis, is locally conducted by staff based at facilities likely to be closed. To continue this research and monitor the forests for resource health and wildfire safety, staff will have to travel from their new duty stations to temporarily work at non-federal facilities at agency expense.

While the comparison is not exact, parallels between the Forest Service today and ERS and NIFA relocations in 2019 have already developed with increasing departures in 2025 and staff reporting low employee engagement along with degraded organizational performance.

A way forward

The proposed reorganization will likely continue on the previously trajectory unless USDA and Forest Service leaders take a step back to consider the shortcomings and recommendations that the GAO highlighted in their review of the ERS and NIFA relocations. Among these were utilizing employee feedback, along with performance and employee engagement metrics, to assess the impact of reorganization throughout the process. They also advised ensuring that robust succession planning practices are in place to mitigate the impact of staffing challenges on the performance and engagement of the workforce.

A shortcoming identified in this report and a report on the 2019 reorganization at the Bureau of Land Management has been recently echoed by members of Congress. They point out that any cost-benefit analysis—which has not been released for the proposed Forest Service reorganization as of the time of writing—should include the economic and performance costs of employee attrition as variables in the analysis.

Only once this is completed can the proposed reorganization of the Forest Service be seriously considered on its merits. If it is determined that moving forward would be best for the performance and strategic interests of the agency, then the USDA and Forest Service need to implement the suggested steps to mitigate the negative consequences for the workforce and, ultimately, their agency’s ability serve the American public.