The Trump administration has badly understated the upheaval its restructure of the United States Forest Service will inflict on a 30,000-strong workforce, according to a whistleblower letter delivered to Congress yesterday. The complaint, lodged through the nonprofit Government Accountability Project, warns that as many as 1,900 staff face relocation, far above the 500 figure put forward by Deputy Agriculture Secretary Stephen Vaden.
Drawn from disclosures by anonymous employees shielded under federal whistleblower laws, the letter maps where the 6,500 workers it could affect — relocated or not — currently sit. Those same protections forbid any retaliation against the staff who supplied the breakdowns, the letter states.
Whilst the disruption would span the agency, the heaviest toll would fall on New Mexico, California and Montana, each of which would face more than 500 affected employees. The single most exposed unit is business operations, where as many as 1,590 roles could be hit, according to the letter.
The complaint comes after Republicans moved to cut the Forest Service’s timber funding, tightening the squeeze on an agency already set to move its headquarters to Salt Lake City and shutter 57 of its 77 research facilities. Those closures would hollow out programmes studying wildfire, drought and pests, even as the administration insists the restructure pushes decisions closer to the forests it manages.
Vaden has defended the overhaul as a way to strip out...
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