Chief Randy Moore announced his resignation from the Forest Service this week. Appointed to lead the agency in 2021, Moore helped distribute billions of dollars of supplemental funding the service received from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act.
Last year, the Forest Service saw job losses and steep budget cuts. Since the Trump administration took over last month, around 350 agency workers in Montana have been laid off, according to the National Federation of Federal Employees. That’s about 10 percent of the agency’s workforce in the state, based on data from the federal Office of Personnel Management.
In a resignation letter published by WyoFile, Moore told employees the “past several weeks have been incredibly difficult,” as the Trump Administration has reduced the size of the Forest Service.
Moore’s successor will be Tom Schultz, a land manager with deep Montana ties. Schultz oversaw Montana’s State Trust Lands from 1997 to 2011 and is a graduate of the University of Montana’s College of Forestry and Conservation.
In a statement, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said Schulz was the right person to “execute the agenda of President Trump to make America’s forests healthy and productive again.”
The Forest Service manages 17 million acres in Montana across seven national forests.
