Washington, D.C. – Senate Interior-Environment Appropriations Subcommittee Ranking Member Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Senate Appropriations Committee Vice Chair Patty Murray (D-WA), Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Martin Heinrich (D-NM), and Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee Ranking Member Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) directed the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to immediately cease its plans to reduce Forest Service staffing and to distribute federal funding to states and communities as the law requires.
The letter to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins follows U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz testifying before the Senate Interior-Environment Appropriations Subcommittee and admitting the agency was intentionally withholding Congressionally approved federal funding.
“We write to express our concern that the staff reductions and unauthorized funding cuts that have occurred since February 2025 threaten the Forest Service’s ability to fulfill its statutory responsibilities to states, local governments, Tribes, and forest landowners. These actions do not align with the funding provided in fiscal year 2025 and make flawed assumptions about funding levels that Congress could provide for fiscal year 2026,” the Senators wrote. “Therefore, the Department should discontinue any action to further staff and program reorganization for the Forest Service without specific direction from Congress.”
Their latest letter follows a series of actions by Merkley, Murray, Heinrich, and Klobuchar to sound the alarm over funding freezes and cuts at the Forest Service that undermined critical wildfire mitigation work ahead of another deadly wildfire season.
The Senators continued, “State, private, and tribal forestry grants are authorized under a variety of statutes to promote coordinated Federal, state, and local stewardship of non-Federal forestlands. States, Tribes, and private landowners put these resources toward forest stewardship, fuels reduction, and forest health, which are important initiatives due to the cross-boundary nature of wildfire and other forests threats and the checkerboard pattern of forestland ownership. Reducing these grants, with no warning to states, will diminish states’ and Tribes’ ability respond to pest and disease outbreaks and degrade our national capacity to respond to wildfire across all jurisdictional lines.”
“[The] Forest Service has a statutory responsibility to assist and support healthy ecosystems across the country regardless of jurisdictional lines, not just within the 193 million acres of the National Forest System. The recent decisions to decimate the Forest Service’s research, international, and grant programs will make our forests, and the communities and businesses that rely on them, more susceptible to foreign interference, more susceptible to pest and disease, more susceptible to wildfire, and less likely to produce the next-generation of innovations that drive our forest economy,” the Senators underscored.
Full text of the letter can be found by clicking here and follows below:
Dear Secretary Rollins:
We write to express our concern that the staff reductions and unauthorized funding cuts that have occurred since February 2025 threaten the Forest Service’s ability to fulfill its statutory responsibilities to states, local governments, Tribes, and forest landowners. These actions do not align with the funding provided in fiscal year 2025 and make flawed assumptions about funding levels that Congress could provide for fiscal year 2026. Therefore, the Department should discontinue any action to further staff and program reorganization for the Forest Service without specific direction from Congress.
On June 11, Chief Schultz testified before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies that the Forest Service is intentionally withholding funds Congress made available for state grants, federal and partner research, and the International Program to further the Department’s staffing reorganization plan proposed for fiscal year 2026. These actions – the withholding of funds and anticipated program terminations – use current funding to implement the fiscal year 2026 proposed budget request before Congress has acted on it and are occurring absent Congressional authorization through the appropriations process.
Congress passed, and the President signed, a full-year Continuing Resolution for fiscal year 2025. Congress did not make cuts to these Forest Service programs, which it could have done even under a full-year Continuing Resolution. Therefore, Congress expects the Department to continue to fully staff and operate all of the program offices and research stations at their 2024 levels. This means continuing state grants at $212.5 million, continuing the International Program and Trade at $19 million, and continuing research and development programs at $53.5 million.
State, private, and tribal forestry grants are authorized under a variety of statutes to promote coordinated Federal, state, and local stewardship of non-Federal forestlands. States, Tribes, and private landowners put these resources toward forest stewardship, fuels reduction, and forest health, which are important initiatives due to the cross-boundary nature of wildfire and other forests threats and the checkerboard pattern of forestland ownership. Reducing these grants, with no warning to states, will diminish states’ and Tribes’ ability respond to pest and disease outbreaks and degrade our national capacity to respond to wildfire across all jurisdictional lines.
Research has always been the foundation of the Forest Service, starting with the agency’s origins as the Office of the Special Agent for forest research in 1876. Modern statutes have continued the Department’s authorization to conduct and support research into protecting, managing, and utilizing forest and rangeland resources. Science conducted by the network of federal research stations, institutes, laboratories, and experimental forests generates invaluable, publicly available research to understand the forest ecosystem, which informs management of forests under public and private ownership. It also leads to the development of American-controlled and owned innovations, empowering domestic producers to stay on the cutting edge of wood products and build new markets for the low-value woody biomass that must be removed to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire. These activities are required under foundational laws for the Forest Service and include supporting the Forest Products Laboratory, an applied research hub that has been and continues to be an incubator for forest products, as well as individual research stations. Reducing this funding now and proposing to totally terminate these programs in fiscal year 2026 will end more than 150 years of data and investigation into understanding forests’ contributions to our communities, predicting future forest conditions used by federal and state managers, private landowners and industry, and the expansion of innovative wood usage.
The International Program and Trade Office is statutorily authorized and required by law to support forestry and natural resources activities outside of the U.S. that uphold U.S. interests, and to enforce regulation of wildlife and plant trad5. The Office’s work is essential to preventing illegally logged timber overseas from being exported to the U.S., protecting domestic producers and markets, and promoting American wood products globally in the face of tariffs imposed by other countries. Since 2019, the Office has provided the critical forensic analysis for over 130 cases of illegal imports brought by the Department of Homeland Security and other enforcement agencies. Reducing these funds will hamper our ability to protect the U.S. timber industry from an influx of illegal limber or address wood export barriers like the European Union Deforestation Regulation and Chinese bans on softwood logs.
As noted above, the Forest Service has a statutory responsibility to assist and support healthy ecosystems across the country regardless of jurisdictional lines, not just within the 193 million acres of the National Forest System. The recent decisions to decimate the Forest Service’s research, international, and grant programs will make our forests, and the communities and businesses that rely on them, more susceptible to foreign interference, more susceptible to pest and disease, more susceptible to wildfire, and less likely to produce the next-generation of innovations that drive our forest economy.
We reiterate our strong opposition to any further efforts to reduce Forest Service staffing, request the distribution of all state grant funds immediately, and insist that the Department wait for Congress to enact fiscal year 2026 appropriations prior to any further efforts to close Forest Service facilities or terminate programs.
Thank you for your attention to this matter so that we can continue to work with you in service to the Forest Service’s mission and the American people. We look forward to receiving your response by July 9, 2025.
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