President Donald Trump’s administration will move the U.S. Forest Service headquarters out of the nation’s capital to Salt Lake City as part of an organizational overhaul that involves shuttering research facilities in 31 states and concentrating resources in the West, the agency announced on March 31.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said the move, which is expected to be completed by summer 2027, will bring leaders closer to the landscapes they manage and the people who depend on them.

Many regional offices will close in the reorganization, and their services will shift to hubs around the country.

Instead of maintaining multiple research stations, the agency will anchor its research at a single location in Fort Collins, Colorado.

The agency has two forestry research stations in Alaska — one each in Juneau and Anchorage. The Juneau center dates back to 1948.

The public affairs officer for the Tongass National Forest directed all questions about the reorganization to the agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.

“The transition will occur in phases. Employees will receive clear information about relocation timelines, available options and resources to support their decisions,” a spokesperson in the Washington office responded by email on Monday, April 6.

The Forest Service told the Associated Press it did not yet know how many workers in regional offices will need to relocate. A spokesperson did not answer whether the transition would involve layoffs.

In addition to relocating the headquarters, the Forest Service will start a transition to a “state-based organizational model,” in which 15 state directors will be assigned throughout the country overseeing the agency’s operations within one or more states.

Those office locations are planned for states including Alabama, Alaska, California, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, New Mexico, among others.

All existing regional offices are set to close under the new model, though some facilities will be retained to serve other needs, the agency said. The formal restructuring will be implemented over the coming year, the agency said in the release.

Nearly 90% of National Forest System land is in the West, though Utah is only the 11th-ranked state for national forest coverage, with about 14,300 square miles.

The nation’s two largest national forests — the Tongass and the Chugach, in Alaska — total more than 34,000 square miles.

During his first term, Trump moved the Bureau of Land Management to Colorado, citing a desire to put top officials closer to the public lands they oversee. But it wasn’t long before the Biden administration reversed course, moving BLM headquarters back to Washington after two years.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has been moving thousands of employees out of Washington over the past year and eliminating layers of management as part of Trump’s push to slim down the federal workforce and allegedly make it more efficient.

With the move to Utah, about 260 Forest Service positions currently stationed in Washington are expected to relocate, and 130 workers will stay put, the agency said.

Deputy Agriculture Secretary Stephen Vaden said Salt Lake City stuck out for its reasonable cost of living and the state’s “family-focused way of life.”

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, celebrated the move as “a big win for Utah and the West,” while environmental groups viewed it as a precursor to the agency’s dismantling.

Taylor McKinnon at the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity described the move as “a costly bureaucratic reshuffle” that will put more power in the hands of corporations and states to log, mine and drill public lands.

“At a time when wildfires are getting worse, and access to public lands is already under strain, the last thing we need is an unnecessary reorganization that creates chaos and confusion for the land managers, researchers and wildland firefighters who help keep our forests healthy now and for future generations,” said Josh Hicks, conservation campaigns director at The Wilderness Society.

The Wilderness Society also pointed to Trump’s prior attempt with the BLM, saying that resulted in many staffers leaving who had valuable years of management experience. The group said this could end up hollowing out the Forest Service.

The Sentinel contributed reporting for this story.