the imbroglio 2.0

I was alarmed yesterday to see this story about the imminent destruction of the United States Forest Service. As that story explains:

Late Tuesday afternoon, with the subtlety of a wrecking ball and the morality of a foreclosure notice, the Trump administration announced the most devastating attack on the U.S. Forest Service in the agency’s 121-year history. Not a budget cut. Not a policy shift. Not a “reorganization.” An execution.

They’re ripping the headquarters out of Washington and shipping it to Salt Lake City, Utah — the beating heart of the anti-public-lands movement in America. They’re shuttering every single one of the ten regional offices that have governed this agency since Gifford Pinchot built the system over a century ago — and with them, the career professionals who spent entire lifetimes earning the expertise and the authority to push back when politicians came calling with bad ideas and worse motives. They’re destroying more than fifty research facilities across thirty-one states, labs that house decades of irreplaceable long-term science, the kind you literally cannot restart once it’s gone. And they’re replacing all of it — the offices, the scientists, the institutional knowledge, the professional independence — with fifteen political appointees called “state directors,” embedded in state capitals alongside the very governors, legislators, and industry lobbyists who have spent their careers demanding that the Forest Service log more, protect less, and get out of the way.

Is there anythign we can do to stop this? Maybe. First, SaveUSFS.org is encouraging us to contact companies and corprations who might join the fight, explaining that:

In 2019, Columbia Sportswear ran full-page newspaper ads. REI published public blogs. The North Face ran social campaigns. That pressure worked. When the outdoor industry speaks collectively, Congress listens. Their silence right now is a choice. And you can change it.

You could also contact your representatives. It might seem like a low priority amid everything else that’s being destroyed all the time, but our forests and public lands are something that, once lost, we will never be able to get back or restore.