1. United States
2. Mo.
3. Letter

Block all funding for the Forest Service headquarters relocation to Salt Lake City and the closure of regional offices and research facilities. This restructuring is designed to purge career scientists and replace them with political appointees, clearing the path for transferring our national forests to state control and industry exploitation. The BLM headquarters move during Trump's first term resulted in 287 of 328 employees leaving the agency, with only 3 relocating. The same will happen here, eliminating decades of institutional knowledge and scientific expertise. Shuttering more than fifty research facilities across thirty-one states will destroy irreplaceable long-term ecological studies on watersheds, old-growth forests, and endangered species. This research cannot be relocated to Fort Collins without losing everything. Moving headquarters to Salt Lake City is no coincidence. Utah is actively suing to seize 18.5 million acres of public land, and Governor Spencer Cox just signed a deal giving Utah control over eight million acres of national forest. Senator Mike Lee has spent his career trying to dismantle public lands. This move hands our forests to the epicenter of the anti-public-lands movement. Our forests protect water quality for millions of Americans, provide habitat for threatened species, and store carbon that stabilizes our climate. This restructuring threatens all of it. Stop this land grab now.