Is Donald Trump closing all regional offices of the U.S. Forest Service? No, that's not true: Official terminology will change, but there will still be offices in many regions of the U.S. under the plan announced March 31, 2026. Fifteen new "State Offices", most of them in the national-lands-heavy western states, will replace the Forest Service's 1908 system of nine roughly equal-sized regions, each with a headquarters called a "Regional Office". Forest Service headquarters will move from Washington, D.C. to Salt Lake City, Utah, and about two-thirds of the National Capital staff will be reassigned there or to the new "Operations Service Centers." The administration's announcement noted that only 10 % of the 193 million acres of national forest lands lie east of the Mississippi River.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) made on Facebook on April 9, 2026, by the briantylercohen account. It opened:
BREAKING: Trump is dismantling the US Forest Service. All regional offices will be closed and the research program destroyed.
This is what the image included in the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Image source: Post by briantylercohen on Facebook.)
The 1908 system of organization divided the U.S. into nine roughly equivalent-sized regions, each with a "Regional Office," even though the states east of the Mississippi River account for less than 10% of the nation's lands. Meanwhile Alaska, which wasn't a state until 1959, holds 17% of all Forest Service Lands, and California and Idaho each hold 10%. In Idaho, the Forest Service controls (archived here) 38% of all land; in Oregon and Montana, it's more than 25%. By contrast, the Forest Service manages less than 1% of several New England states.
The Forest Service, a subdivision of the United States Department of Agriculture, announced the plan to move its center of operations closer to the lands it manages on March, 31, 2026 in a press release (archived here) that spelled out the following details:
- Fifteen "state directors" - career federal employees, the agency emphasized, will be distributed throughout the country to oversee operations within one or more states;
- Those State Directors will be based in Juneau, Alaska ; Placerville, California; Boise, Idaho; Salem, Oregon; Salt Lake City; Helena, Montana; Fort Collins, Colorado; Albuquerque, N.M.; Phoenix, Ariz.; Cheyenne, Wyo; Olympia, Wash.; Madison, Wisconsin; Warren, Pennsylvania; Athens, Georgia and Auburn, Alabama;
- Most western states with millions of Forest Service acres will get their own State Director, while east-of-the-Mississippi states with minor federal holdings will share a director with several other states;
- Forest Service functions that had been housed in the nine Regional Offices will be moved to "Operations Service Centers" in Placerville, Missoula, Fort Collins, Albuquerque, Madison, and Athens;
- Locations were selected based on existing USDA workforce and infrastructure presence and proximity to natural resource industries that rely on the national lands;
- A few existing Forest Service buildings will be kept and reopened under the new organizational naming scheme.
Other Claims In The Facebook Post
The Facebook post said the Forest Service research program will be "destroyed."
In a "Setting the Record Straight" post (archived here), the Forest Service wrote that:
- About 53 "Research & Development" facilities will be closed in 31 states, replaced by 16 new operations, centrally managed out of Fort Collins;
- The reorganization does not eliminate scientific positions (archived here) or cancel research programs. It eliminates multiple local research facility leaders and places projects under the supervision of the Fort Collins center.
This fact check does not address the opinion expressed in the post that the reorganization is a dismantling of the US Forest Service.
