Trump administration orders dismantling of the U.S. Forest Service

4/9/2026 at 1:47:34 AM

People like to think the pendulum will always swing back. That is because of survivor bias. They have always seen it swing back. Every fallen civilization believed in the pendulum theory too, until the last one. You can't magically remake our forests. We are just stupid.

by jmward01

4/9/2026 at 3:10:43 AM

This is kind of one of the points I try to make. All of the damage that is being done right now is very hard to fix when we have sane people back in power (if that happens). It’s 100x easier to destroy than build, and we are seeing it happen in real time.

by csto12

4/9/2026 at 3:43:51 AM

Also, attempts to undo the damage will be painted as extreme, whether it’s rehiring / recreating the agencies that were destroyed or prosecuting the crazy corruption and seizing funds.

by stfp

4/9/2026 at 1:30:24 AM

US is one of the very few countries that is left with irreplaceable natural beauty. It is sad that we’re at a point where a multi trillion dollar economy cannot leave this public treasure alone because private interests want everything to be a race to the bottom.

by darth_avocado

4/9/2026 at 1:41:24 AM

nitpick: I think almost every single country has irreplaceable natural beauty.

It is incredibly sad that the US has come to this though. Yet another example of the country self-harming in ways that will leave permanent scarring.

A quote I've repeated before: "The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment".

by BLKNSLVR

4/9/2026 at 8:47:20 AM

I haven't studied this but isn't it the case that England basically completely transformed their ecosystem over time? Like there are essentially no parts of it that look like they did before humans arrived.

Personally, I'm a big believer in upscale cities massively and leave lots of nature. Like Hong Kong.

by coreyh14444

4/9/2026 at 1:54:39 AM

> private interests want everything to be a race to the bottom

This is also about rich guys wanting to play rancher.

by hackingonempty

4/9/2026 at 8:38:48 AM

And a nice, wide, security perimeter between their ranches and the hordes they imagine will come for them.

by actionfromafar

4/9/2026 at 9:38:12 AM

What makes you think that is happening, the announcement looks more like a reorg.

https://www.fs.usda.gov/about-agency/reorganization

Moving headquarters out of DC seems like a good idea on the surface.

by mlrtime

4/9/2026 at 10:25:29 AM

It is explained in the article. You should read it.

by M95D

4/9/2026 at 1:42:27 AM

This seems opposite to my experience. Sure, the US has beautiful places (and national parks), but also many visually polluted spaces with ads etc.

I see many other countries in LatAM, Asia etc having just as many beautiful places of nature. And then in Europe there’s the beauty of e.g Gothic architecture in cities that are kept (mostly) clean.

by Insanity

4/9/2026 at 2:29:01 AM

No matter how beautiful architecture is it's still not natural beauty.

I do agree there's plenty of places in other countries that have natural beauty, but the US has a combination of very large natural spaces, kept in a mostly natural state (not over developed), and does a decent job maintaining it. This is relatively rare (although the US is not the only one).

The US Forest Service has nothing to do with the amount of ads and billboards in US cities.

by OneMorePerson

4/9/2026 at 4:04:40 AM

Canada & Australia are better examples than the US.

by grebc

4/9/2026 at 4:43:56 AM

How is that relevant to this conversation?

by OneMorePerson

4/9/2026 at 5:38:11 AM

> How is that relevant to this conversation?

Because it's important to put Americans in their place. They are not good, and must be reminded that others are better.

by palmotea

4/9/2026 at 6:07:06 AM

I'm 90% sure this is satire, but given how things are and how fashionable it is to hate on America/Americans I'm not sure. I guess that says something ha

by OneMorePerson

4/9/2026 at 6:22:28 AM

It’s not as rare as you think.

Anyway not hating, just giving some other examples.

by grebc

4/9/2026 at 7:41:02 AM

There's hundreds of countries in the world. I said "relatively rare" and I said explicitly US is not the only one with worthwhile nature. Where did I give the impression I thought it was uniquely rare?

by OneMorePerson

4/9/2026 at 3:00:50 AM

I'm visiting the Los Padres National Forest this weekend, and reading this story makes me cry for the fleeting beauty that doesn't have to be fleeting yet is. In the name of greed an irreplaceable treasure is being lost. I don't understand why we want something when it costs something we can never replace.

by skyberrys

4/9/2026 at 1:45:35 AM

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47626641

by ChrisArchitect

4/9/2026 at 1:41:51 AM

Isn't there a losing war going on to focus on?

by tayo42

4/9/2026 at 1:43:31 AM

What better time to do deeply unpopular things than when everyone is looking the other way?

by BLKNSLVR

4/9/2026 at 1:24:57 AM

in FY2024 the entire budget for the Forest Service was $10.8B

by convolvatron

4/9/2026 at 1:43:48 AM

1 day of military special operations?

by actionfromafar

4/9/2026 at 1:56:27 AM

no idea how big or small that is, so here's my OoM analysis:

10B$ is equal to 100k people with 100k$ a year salaries

that's 2k such salaries per state, I guess half or more can be counted for buildings/traveling/equipment expenses

no idea what to do with "1k people per state" estimate tho

by NooneAtAll3

4/9/2026 at 2:29:11 AM

Budget for an entity costs far, far, far more than just salaries alone. Also, all in cost on a salaried employee is usually 2-3x their actual salary cost… this isn’t 100k people. It’s roughly 35k people (per their own publicly available info) as well as presumably a large amount of actual physical costs. You gotta pay for offices, equipment, consumables, etc etc.

by Kirby64

4/9/2026 at 4:34:52 AM

> You gotta pay for offices, equipment, consumables, etc etc.

aka literally what I said in the next line :-)

35k is same Order-of-magnitude as the 50k I set. Still no idea what to do/compare with those numbers tho

---

numbers in sister comment say FBI has same budget/headcount, so... 300m pop vs 35k agents is ~10k:1, and since area-wise ~1% is urban and ~10% is forests... each Forest Service employee gets to keep and eye on ~100k house lots worth of trees?

medium-sized city worth of forests per every man

by NooneAtAll3

4/9/2026 at 2:55:20 AM

The US collected $5.23T in tax revenue in 2025, $2.1T is individual income tax [0]. GDP is estimated at around $30T.

Spending on social security is about $680B, medicare is $480B, defense is at $410B [1].

Microsoft's valuation is approx. $2.8T [2], Google $3.8T [3], Amazon $2.3T [4], Facebook $1.6T [5] (Linux supply side is valued at approx. $8.8T).

The FBI employs roughly 38k people with about $10B in funding [7]. The CIA employs roughly 22k people with about $15B (?) in funding [8].

So, from that perspective, $10B is roughly .5% of yearly tax revenue (and about how much the FBI/CIA are funded) and estimated 50k people is about the size of the FBI and CIA combined.

[0] https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/gover...

[1] https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...

[2] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/MSFT/key-statistics/

[3] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GOOG/key-statistics/

[4] https://companiesmarketcap.com/amazon/marketcap/

[5] https://companiesmarketcap.com/meta-platforms/marketcap/

[6] https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/24-038_51f8444f-...

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Bureau_of_Investigatio...

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Intelligence_Agency

by abetusk

4/9/2026 at 5:47:12 AM

Now do the same calculations for the DOD