More than fifty research and development facilities across thirty-one states. Gone. Consolidated into a single location in Fort Collins, Colorado. And “consolidated” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence, because what it actually means is that decades of place-based, long-term ecological research — the kind that literally cannot exist anywhere else because it depends on specific forests, specific watersheds, specific ecosystems studied over generations — will be snuffed out.
This is incredibly depressing, and leaves some huge questions I am afraid to even seek answers for. I worked alongside some brilliant, dedicated scientists stationed at Los Alamos-- does this mean that everyone there on behalf of the forest service is being moved to a desk in SLC?
It’s plainly a mass firing dressed up as a re-org, and it will cripple our understanding of how to proactively address localized climate change for decades. Fuck.
Not to mention, aren’t they vital for wildfire prevention? A lot of the planned burns originated from studies done by the forestry service. This is incredibly short sighted.
IMO this doesn’t pass the smell test for average joes, especially with wildfires increasing in frequency
