On a summer morning, Mark Schulze cranes his neck to inspect the canopies of several large trees in the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest. Though the trunks are charred black, the branches near the crowns are still green. Across the rest of the steep slope, most of the smaller trees are dead from wildfire.
“These old Doug-firs, they have such thick bark that if it doesn’t get up into the canopy, it’s going to survive in most circumstances,” said Schulze, an assistant professor and senior researcher at Oregon State University.
This experimental forest straddles 1600 acres in the Willamette National Forest about 50 miles east of Eugene, Oregon. Schulze, who serves as the forest’s director, has lived onsite for 18 years. He’s watched the forest change, but never so dramatically as in the summer of 2023.
The Lookout fire started on August 5 when lightning struck a tree on Lookout Mountain, near the experimental forest’s eastern edge. Dry hot weather fueled the fire, which ultimately burned over 25,000 acres, including 70% of the Andrews.
The fire, though traumatic, presented an incredible opportunity to study the effects of a major disturbance on the forest ecosystem. Among other things, researchers can compare how old-growth stands recover compared to areas that were logged and replanted.
When the US Forest Service established the Andrews Experimental Forest in 1948, the forest had not been logged before, and its purpose was to study the effects of different timber harvesting strategies. Over time, its mission expanded. For decades, scientists have been collecting data on streams, climate, wildlife, and more here. Since 1980, the forest has been one of 26 sites in the Long Term Ecological Research network, which is funded through the National Science Foundation.
Now, some are worried that the Trump administration is putting this work in jeopardy. A reorganization of the Forest Service, reduced levels of staffing, and lapses in federal funding could affect decades of long-term research conducted here and elsewhere.
Uncertainty surrounds Forest Service restructuring
On March 31 of this year, the Forest Service announced a “sweeping restructuring” of the agency. It includes moving the headquarters from Washington D.C. to Salt Lake City, Utah, swapping regional offices for new state offices, and potentially closing 57 of 77 research and development facilities, including the Pacific Northwest Research Station headquarters in Portland, Oregon.
Other sites in the Pacific Northwest being considered for closure are in Seattle and Wenatchee, Washington. Facilities in Olympia, Washington and LaGrande and Corvallis, Oregon will be retained.
According to Chris French, associate chief at the Forest Service, the agency’s reorganization does not eliminate scientific positions or cancel research programs, but rather streamlines management.
“The intent is to actually be able to put more funding towards basic research than towards the administration of that research, to get our facilities footprint into a sustainable place, and to make sure that we have the right geographic distribution of labs and duty locations across the agency.”
French said his agency is working to find leased space within commuting areas, defined as within 49 miles, so that fewer employees will have to relocate, and that details on facility closures should be released soon.
Pacific Northwest Research Station staff, he said, will remain within commuting distance, with some of them reporting to a new office being established in Salem.
The Pacific Northwest Research Station coordinates research at 11 experimental forests and ranges across Oregon, Washington, and Alaska – part of a nationwide network of around 80 sites. French said the agency is not shutting any of the experimental forests down, and that there are no plans to close physical facilities that are actively being used.
Because so much is unclear about the plan, it’s been difficult for research scientists to plan for the future.
Sherri Johnson, former research ecologist with USFS Pacific Northwest Research Station who served as lead Forest Service scientist at Andrews for 20 years, said uncertainty around the reorganization is worrying researchers.
“It’s making people anxious,” said Johnson. “It’s putting all kinds of stress on the people who are still working for the Forest Service on the research side.”
Ongoing changes in federal hiring and funding complicate the issue
The restructuring plan follows a trend of reduced hiring at the Forest Service. The agency shed 5,680 employees in 2025, due to Department of Government Efficiency layoffs and early retirements.
Johnson delayed her own retirement so she could mentor a scientist to take over the hydrology and chemistry program. That person was never hired, so a Pacific Northwest Research Station scientist eventually added those duties to their already full plate.
“We thought this spring twice that we might have to turn these measurements off because we didn’t have anyone to do them,” said Johnson. “You can restart gauges, but there’s no guarantee that the data will be comparable to what you had before.”
Threats to federal funding have ramped up under the Trump Administration. In April, the administration fired the governing board of the National Science Foundation, which funds the Long Term Ecological Research network program, and proposed cutting the foundation’s budget by more than 50%.
Trump’s budget also proposes zeroing out Forest Service funding for forest and rangeland research. Congress has not yet set the 2027 budget.
In a House Subcommittee Appropriations hearing in April, Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz explained that the president’s proposed budget “is looking to shift research from where it is today to more of a model that would be done either in the private sector or with universities.”
Schultz said states have already been contributing more funding and expertise on federal lands as federal budgets have dwindled. At the same time, he assured members, “We are not proposing to reduce any scientists.”
Many experimental forests rely on partnerships and draw from several streams of funding. The Andrews, for example, relies on sustained commitments of funding and expertise from the Willamette National Forest, Pacific Northwest Research Station, and Oregon State University.
“If any one partner were to not be able to commit to the partnership then all the remaining partners would suffer and the whole operation would suffer,” said Mark Schulze, director of the Andrews Experimental Forest.
Adding to the uncertainty, the White House is considering a radical proposal to overhaul how federal grants are awarded. Political appointees (rather than panels of experts) would have final say on which proposals are approved, and they could withhold funding at any time if they perceive a project as advancing a politicized agenda. If approved, the new rule would affect every federal agency, plus the hundreds of universities, nonprofits, and research organizations that receive federal funding.
Fred Swanson, a retired Forest Service geologist who spent most of his career at the Andrews Experimental Forest, said that scientific research there and elsewhere is not political, even if it sometimes leads to policy changes. He worries that under this new rule, funding for research projects could be cut off abruptly.
“It takes so much infrastructure of talent, of knowledge, of tools to run these programs to address the changes in the world we live in, and you never can tell what the outcomes may be of a line of inquiry,” said Swanson.
Research at Andrews has informed Northwest forest policy
Experimental forests and ranges are living laboratories that support long-term studies that reveal how ecosystems change over time. Groundbreaking research at the Andrews has changed our understanding of how forests work.
For example, in 1985, ecologist Mark Harmon launched a 200-year study to learn how dead, fallen trees decompose and how quickly they release carbon. Over 500 logs were bucked from healthy trees that were cut down; the logs were placed at six sites across the forest. Over the decades, the study has yielded important insights about the role decaying logs play in forest ecosystems — findings that directly inform forest management today.
Such work has become more urgent as climate change accelerates. Wildfires have been increasing in intensity in the Pacific Northwest, and 2020 saw the most destructive fire season in Oregon history. This year, managers are grappling with another record-breaking season that is straining resources and prompting evacuations across Oregon and Washington.
Meanwhile, researchers are trying to learn what they can from recent fires.
The Pacific Northwest Research Station is collaborating with 25 partners on a comprehensive wildfire water security study. Brooke Penaluna, fisheries biologist at the Pacific Northwest Research Station and lead scientist at the Andrews, is monitoring 30 streams that burned in the Labor Day fires in 2020, in the Andrews and elsewhere in Western Oregon, to study the effects of the fire on drinking water sources.
“Much of the drinking water that supports Salem, Eugene comes from forested watersheds that are supported by the Forest Service,” said Penaluna. According to the US Department of Agriculture, in the West, national forests and grasslands supply drinking water to nearly 90% of those who rely on public water systems.
It’s research like this that some worry could be jeopardized by changing federal priorities.
“I think it is so critical that as a nation, as a species, we pay attention to what is happening in the world that we so depend upon,” said Swanson. “History shows how things often change in unexpected ways; we should be paying close attention to how we can best navigate those inevitable changes.”
Juliet Grable is a freelance reporter for the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.