Forest Service Chief’s Departure Fine By Us, Says Wyoming Delegation

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Word that U.S. Forest Service Chief Randy Moore is retiring in the midst of deep cuts to the agency’s workforce was greeted matter-of-factly, for the most part, by Wyoming’s members of Congress.

Republican Rep. Harriet Hageman said she’s fine with Moore’s announcement, telling Cowboy State Daily that he mismanaged the agency.

Moore announced he’s retiring effective March 3 in a message to Forest Service staff in which he disclosed his plans to leave and said the cuts over the past several weeks have been “incredibly difficult.”

But none of Wyoming’s lawmakers in Washington viewed Moore’s forthcoming departure as a sign of chaos in the land-use agency.

“Randy Moore’s mismanagement, such as diverting millions in temporary funding to hire permanent staff, exemplifies the out-of-touch, D.C.-centric approach voters rejected,” Hageman told Cowboy State Daily. “As evidenced by our own forests, it is time to return to local supervision and management.

“President Trump recently stated he is going to ‘unlock’ our forests and this is welcome news to forest managers and landowners alike who, for decades, have been precluded from managing the land to have healthy, flourishing forests.”

Sen. Cynthia Lummis predicted that President Donald Trump will replace Moore with someone not worried about climate change.

“I wish Forest Service Chief Randy Moore well as he heads into retirement,” Lummis told Cowboy State Daily. “I’m confident President Trump will appoint a qualified replacement who is committed to our forests, the multiple use of our lands, and steering the department away from the previous administration’s failed climate change agenda.”

Barrasso thanked Moore for his service to the agency, but said he expects Wyoming to continue its good relationship with the Forest Service.

“The Forest Service has always been a strong partner for Wyoming and the West,” he said. “I thank Chief Moore for his time leading the Forest Service. I look forward to working with the next chief to support our nation’s national forests and make sure Wyoming’s timber and agriculture industries continue to thrive.” 

Not About Forestry Anymore

In Wyoming, reaction to Moore’s announcement was mostly met with optimism.

Retired forester and wildland firefighter Karl Brauneis of Lander told Cowboy State Daily that the current round of cuts under President Donald Trump could bring welcome change.

“The Forest Service is extremely top-heavy with bureaucrats, and it needs to be reduced in size,” he said.

“Cuts started under (President Bill) Clinton, and they have continued ever since,” added Kevin Moore, who worked for the Forest Service in California, Washington and Oregon.

Brauneis and Moore both said they think the agency also started heading in the wrong direction under President Bill Clinton, away from practical forest management.

“Bill Clinton did the same thing to the Forest Service when he became president and he turned the Forest Service from a resource management agency into an environmental bureaucracy,” Brauneis said.

He said that when he started his career with the Forest Service, the agency was staffed by “professional foresters” and was focused on resource management, including a robust logging.

“You can’t manage a forest without the timber industry,” he said.

The Forest Service at one time produced about 12 billion board feet of timber annually, with 30,000 employees, he said. But timber cutting has been reduced to about 3 billion board feet annually, with the roughly the same number of employees.

“Timber financed everything” in the past, but the agency’s funding has since shifted more toward the taxpayers, he said.

The focus of the agency shifted from boots-on-the-ground employees and small, local offices — to more employees stationed in huge regional offices, Brauneis said.

The Forest Service should be “more de-centralized. With more people on the ground collecting garbage and painting outhouses — where we used to be — and certainly harvesting more timber,” he said.

While cuts at the top levels of administration are needed, Brauneis said he hopes that any field-level employees who are laid off “will be reinstated.”

Chief Moore ‘Not Well Liked’

Moore said he isn’t sorry to see Chief Moore step down.

“He was not well-liked when he was a regional forester, with his priorities centered on climate change and getting Region 5 to the ‘proper mix’ of identity groups in hiring, not on resource management,” he said.

Brauneis also said that during his tenure with the Forest Service, he noticed a shift away from resource management and toward social change within the agency’s ranks.

As far as any differences visitors to national forests might experience as the result of the cuts, Moore said that in his region, many Forest Service offices “have been closed since Covid,” so public service was already lacking.

Brauneis said that small, local offices in places such as Meeteetse have been missed since the Clinton-era cuts to the Forest Service.

He hopes that if the current round of cuts permanently trim the top-levels of the agency, perhaps some of those local offices can return.

About Those Cuts

The Forest Service did not reply on short notice to a Cowboy State Daily email about the reported 3,400 job cuts or 10% of its total workforce.

The agency falls under the U.S. Department of Agriculture, headed by Brooke Rollins. In an email last week to Cowboy State Daily, the USDA confirmed the firings of Forest Service personnel and did not answer questions about how many of them worked in Wyoming.

Eight national forests are located in whole or in part in Wyoming, totaling more than 9 million acres in the state. Bridger-Teton, which is entirely within Wyoming’s borders, is the third-largest national forest in the Lower 48 and fifth-largest altogether at 3.4 million acres.

“It’s unfortunate that the Biden administration hired thousands of people with no plan in place to pay them long term,” a USDA spokesman told Cowboy State Daily in last week’s email. “Secretary Rollins is committed to preserving essential safety positions and will ensure that critical services remain uninterrupted.”

The Forest Service issues permits for energy development, timber harvesting and livestock grazing on national forestland, while also managing recreational uses such as hiking and off-roading.

Other agencies including the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management play similar roles.

The Forest Service cuts are part of Trump’s cost-slashing across nearly the whole federal government, carried out largely by the Department of Government Efficiency, headed by Elon Musk.

Democrats in Congress have blasted the cuts in general, and a handful of Republicans have pushed back against Musk’s team to a limited degree. Barrasso, Lummis and Hageman are not among the critics and instead have praised DOGE.

Sean Barry can be reached at sean@cowboystatedaily.com and Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.