Arguments about logging, grazing, mining, energy, trails, roads, wilderness, wildlife, water, wildfire, access, and recreation have long dominated public land policy discussions. Those debates still matter. Beneath all of them, however, lies a quieter question: do our institutions still have the structure, capacity, funding, and public trust required to manage the lands, waters, and wildlife that belong to all Americans?
I believe in multiple use—the concept of managing public lands in a way that balances many uses and serves a variety of public purposes. Public lands should support outdoor recreation, hunting, fishing, grazing, timber, responsible energy development, cultural uses, watershed protection, wildlife habitat, and local economies. The question, in my view, is not whether public lands should serve more than one purpose. The question is whether we are honest enough to admit that multiple use only works if the land, water, and wildlife base remains healthy enough to support those many uses over time.
This is what I call a conservation-first approach to public land management. Putting conservation first is not anti-use. Conservation creates the conditions that make durable use possible. If watersheds fail, fisheries decline, migration corridors collapse, forests become less resilient, access infrastructure deteriorates, and agencies lose the ability to monitor what is happening on the ground, then multiple use becomes a slogan rather than a system. There may still be permits, leases, roads, and maps, but the public inheritance is being spent down.
The question, in my view, is not whether public lands should serve more than one purpose. The question is whether we are honest enough to admit that multiple use only works if the land, water, and wildlife base remains healthy enough to support those many uses over time.
The federal government manages roughly 650 million acres of land, more than a quarter of the country. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service, and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are among the agencies shaping what happens on public lands and waters. Other federal programs influence private working lands, wetlands, coastal resources, Tribal lands, wildlife habitat, and public access. This is not one system. It is a patchwork of missions, budgets, field offices, data systems, grant programs, and political oversight.
Some of that complexity is necessary. A national park is not a grazing allotment. A wildlife refuge is not a working national forest. A coastal fishery is not a trail system. Different places need different tools.
The American people are the owners of our public lands and waters in the civic sense. They should expect one coherent standard of management across all of it, focused on the long-term public interest. Federal agencies are the managers. Congress writes the rules and controls the money. Presidents appoint leaders of government agencies. States, Tribes, local governments, nonprofits, businesses, permittees, and citizens all have legitimate roles. The core expectation should be simple: public assets should be managed for public benefit, with public accountability.
The reorganization of government can help achieve that goal. It can also undermine it.
The Bureau of Land Management shows why moving offices is not reform
In 2019, the BLM moved its headquarters from Washington, D.C., to Grand Junction, Colorado, and relocated many headquarters positions across western states. The logic was understandable on its face: Put decision-makers closer to the lands and communities most affected by BLM decisions. For an agency that manages 245 million acres of surface land and 700 million acres of subsurface mineral estate, proximity to the resources it manages is not a trivial issue.
But a good slogan does not make a good implementation plan.
The Government Accountability Office, or GAO, found in a 2021 analysis that BLM headquarters vacancies increased by about 169 percent after the relocation was announced. The agency also lacked reliable data on vacancies and temporary staff assignments, while employees reported delays in policy guidance and reduced performance because state personnel were being pulled into temporary headquarters duties. That year, the Department of the Interior restored BLM’s national headquarters to Washington while maintaining a western headquarters presence.
The lesson is not that Washington knows best, or that moving an agency’s headquarters out of D.C. is automatically better. Public-land agencies need both national policy connection and regional field capacity.
National policy connection matters because Congress, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the White House, cabinet departments, and national partners shape the laws, budgets, and standards under which agencies operate. Regional field capacity matters because field leaders need to understand local economies, Tribal governments, fire behavior, water realities, access disputes, grazing systems, recreation pressure, and the history of trust or distrust in a place. They also need enough authority, staff, and budget flexibility to solve problems on the ground rather than simply pass paperwork upward.
Washington connection without field capacity becomes remote bureaucracy. Field presence without national policy connection can leave an agency weaker where money, law, and national priorities are decided.
The BLM move treated location as a substitute for capacity. It disrupted people before proving mission benefit, and promised efficiency without first establishing how success would be measured.
The core expectation should be simple: public assets should be managed for public benefit, with public accountability. The reorganization of government can help achieve that goal. It can also undermine it.
Any serious reorganization of our public lands agencies should begin with a clear public case for change. Agencies should explain which problems they are trying to solve, which decisions are too slow, which functions are duplicative, which field offices lack staff, which data systems do not communicate, which restoration projects are stalled, and which ecological outcomes are declining. They should also explain how a proposed reorganization would solve those problems, what improvements the public should expect, and how success will be measured, before offices are moved or people are uprooted.
The test should never be, “Did we shake up the organizational chart?” The test should be, “Did land health, water quality, wildlife habitat, access, restoration delivery, permitting clarity, and public trust improve?”
The Forest Service is the next test
The current U.S. Forest Service reorganization raises the same questions in real time.
In March 2026, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced that the Forest Service would move its headquarters to Salt Lake City and transition toward a state-based model. The plan creates 15 state directors, moves many regional office functions into Operations Service Centers, and consolidates research leadership into a unified organization in Fort Collins, Colorado. The USDA and the Forest Service say the changes will strengthen local leadership, streamline operations, and improve mission delivery.
Those goals are reasonable, but they are not self-proving.
The Forest Service manages 193 million acres of national forests and grasslands, supports forestry research, works with private landowners and communities, and manages resources tied to drinking water, wildfire, recreation, wildlife habitat, and rural economies. The case for reform is real. Field leaders often know the problem they need to solve but lack authority, staffing, contracting support, or budget flexibility to actually solve it. Shared service centers such as those proposed in the new plan could reduce duplication. State-based leadership could strengthen relationships with governors, state foresters, wildlife agencies, Tribes, counties, and local partners.
The concern, however, is that the reorganization could repeat the BLM mistake at a larger scale by disrupting experienced staff, weakening national policy connection, reducing the reach or independence of research, and organizing ecological decisions too closely around state lines. Watersheds, fire regimes, migration corridors, timber markets, and recreation systems cross political boundaries.
The test should never be, “Did we shake up the organizational chart?” The test should be, “Did land health, water quality, wildlife habitat, access, restoration delivery, permitting clarity, and public trust improve?”
A public agency cannot build trust by asking the public to trust a plan before the plan is measurable. The USDA should publish a mission-delivery scorecard before, during, and after implementation. It should track a focused set of outcomes, including wildfire-risk reduction, trail and watershed restoration, permitting timelines, scientific capacity, employee retention, Tribal consultation, and public-facing service.
The Forest Service does not need a prettier organizational chart. It needs a better operating system.
Conservation first makes multiple use possible
The phrase “multiple use” is often treated as if it means every use should be available everywhere. BLM itself explains that multiple use does not mean every use on every acre. That distinction should guide federal reform.
A conservation-first system, applied to multiple use, would help agencies make decisions based on three priorities:
- Protect what should not be lost. This includes intact watersheds, wetlands, native grasslands, migration corridors, spawning habitat, cultural landscapes, and high-functioning public access systems. Some places are valuable because they still work.
- Restore what has been damaged. This includes abandoned mine lands, failing culverts, degraded riparian areas, invasive species outbreaks, disconnected floodplains, and fragmented habitat. Restoration should be a core public-land function, not a temporary project category.
- Sustain compatible use where the ecological base can support it. This includes grazing, timber, energy, mining, recreation, hunting, fishing, tourism, transmission, and infrastructure, with clear standards for siting, mitigation, monitoring, reclamation, and public benefit.
This is the tiered logic I have explored through the Public Lands and Waters Conservation Fund Project. In concept, PLWCF would be a permanent conservation finance model to support those priorities, which responds to mounting pressure on public lands, waters, wildlife, and outdoor access by increasing durable funding and routing those dollars through a clear hierarchy of need. A durable conservation finance model should not send money into existing silos and hope for the best. It should protect high-value intact systems, restore degraded systems, and steward compatible use. Federal, state, Tribal, local, and nonprofit partners should all be eligible to deliver work, but only with clear objectives, measurable outcomes, anti-raiding guardrails, and public reporting.
Instead of asking which office or agency should be given more power or less power, we should ask which ecological and public-use outcomes need to be delivered, who is best positioned to deliver them, and what accountability should follow the money.
A national mission with regional delivery
It is tempting to try to solve bureaucratic fragmentation through consolidation of agencies and functions. That could mean moving the Forest Service into the Department of the Interior, merging related programs, or creating a new Department of Public Lands, Waters, and Wildlife. There is logic to that idea. Public lands, marine systems, wildlife, forestry, water, private-land conservation, science, and restoration are spread across too many jurisdictions.
But creating a new department could become another expensive reshuffle if it is not built around delivery. The country does not need a larger box to house the same machinery.
The mission should come first. The agency structure, funding streams, staffing model, and partnership agreements should follow.
What it needs first is a national conservation and restoration mission for public land management agencies that organizes existing institutions around shared outcomes: healthier watersheds, restored habitat, resilient forests, durable public access, credible science, and visible accountability.
The mission should come first. The agency structure, funding streams, staffing model, and partnership agreements should follow.
Congress could establish a National Public Lands, Waters, and Wildlife Stewardship Council with real budget, data, and performance authority, not another advisory body that produces reports without changing decisions, missions, or management. It should include the Department of the Interior, USDA, Department of Commerce, Environmental Protection Agency, Army Corps, OMB, Council on Environmental Quality, Tribal and state representatives, and independent scientific expertise. Its job would be to align budgets, maps, data standards, restoration priorities, access goals, and performance measures across agencies.
Under that framework, regional delivery should be organized around watersheds, ecoregions, migration corridors, and recreation systems rather than agency or state boundaries alone. The Chesapeake watershed, Appalachian forests, Great Plains grasslands, sagebrush country, and Colorado River Basin do not fit neatly inside one organizational chart. The delivery system should match the landscape.
The federal role would be to set national standards, protect public ownership, uphold Tribal trust and treaty obligations, maintain scientific integrity, provide durable funding, coordinate across jurisdictions, and verify results. States, Tribes, local governments, land trusts, conservation nonprofits, universities, and private landowners could then perform more of the on-the-ground work through transparent and accountable agreements.
This could also allow the federal government to right-size its workforce. Stronger state, Tribal, local, and nonprofit capacity may reduce the need for some layers of direct federal administration. That is not the same as hollowing out agencies. Federal staff should be concentrated in areas where federal authority and expertise are indispensable: science, standards, funding, auditing, coordination, trust responsibilities, public ownership, and enforcement.
In that model, the federal government becomes less of a bottleneck and more of a force multiplier.
We already have partial examples. The Natural Resources Conservation Service works with producers through programs such as the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, while the Regional Conservation Partnership Program brings multiple partners together around regional outcomes. These programs are not perfect, but they show that the federal government does not have to perform every task directly to remain responsible for the result.
Working through partners must not mean dumping federal duties onto underfunded organizations or privatizing public land management or public lands themselves. It should mean using federal money, science, and standards to empower those closest to the ground while preserving public ownership and public accountability.
Accountability is how reform earns trust
If the American people are going to trust agency reform efforts, they need more than assurances. They need proof.
Every major reorganization should come with a public trust test. Before implementation, the agency should publish the problem it is trying to solve, the evidence supporting the proposed structure, expected workforce effects, costs, risks, performance measures, and a schedule for public reporting. Afterward, it should show whether outcomes improved.
Those outcomes should be concrete. Did restoration accelerate? Did watershed conditions improve? Did permit backlogs shrink without weakening environmental review? Did agencies retain experienced scientists and field personnel? Did Tribal consultation improve? Did local offices gain useful authority, or simply new supervisors?
Right now, large sums of federal conservation money are spent on projects around the country, yet there is no easy place for citizens to see where that money is being spent, who received it, what outcome was promised, what work was completed, and what monitoring was done to assess the result. A public dashboard should track those conservation and access outcomes across agencies.
If a culvert was replaced, did fish passage improve? If mine lands were restored, was contamination reduced? If public access was funded, did access actually open and was habitat protected?
Transparency will not eliminate disagreement. Public lands belong to all of us, so disagreement is part of the system. But transparency can make disagreement more honest by showing who benefits, who pays, what tradeoffs were made, and whether promises were kept.
Durable funding must outlast political cycles
When conservation funding and public-land reforms depend on political cycles rather than the timelines of the resources they are meant to protect, public trust erodes. A conservation bill can have a powerful name, bipartisan support, a signing ceremony, and real benefits but still fail to create the permanence people believe they were promised.
When conservation funding and public-land reforms depend on political cycles rather than the timelines of the resources they are meant to protect, public trust erodes.
The Great American Outdoors Act, enacted in 2020, illustrates both the promise and the limits of Washington’s approach. The law permanently funded the Land and Water Conservation Fund, a federal program that uses offshore energy revenues to support conservation and outdoor recreation, at $900 million annually. It also created the National Parks and Public Land Legacy Restoration Fund to address deferred maintenance on public lands and at Bureau of Indian Education schools. But the restoration fund was authorized for only five years, from fiscal year 2021 through fiscal year 2025. Reauthorization has been proposed, including through the America the Beautiful Act, but another political fight is required to continue the program.
That does not make the law meaningless. It funded real projects and delivered real benefits. But it exposes the difference between a popular legislative victory and a durable funding architecture.
Most people do not distinguish between authorizing a program, appropriating funds, distributing money, staffing implementation, completing projects, and maintaining the work afterward. They hear that Congress passed a historic conservation law and reasonably assume the job is funded for the long term.
Conservation timelines are longer than political timelines. Watershed recovery, forest restoration, native grassland recovery, migration-corridor protection, abandoned mine cleanup, invasive species control, and public access maintenance can require decades or generations. A system that swings every four years cannot reliably deliver those outcomes unless its structure and funding are built to withstand the swing.
That is the promise of a PLWCF-style approach. Such a funding mechanism would not replace land management agencies. Rather, it would give them and their partners a permanent funding and accountability architecture tied to clear priorities and measurable public outcomes.
Efficiency is not simply fewer offices or fewer employees. It is fewer dead-end processes, disconnected databases, duplicative grant applications, stalled projects, and plans that sit on shelves. It is more money reaching the ground, more decisions explained to the public, and more outcomes measured after the ribbon cutting.
Real efficiency is the shortest honest path between public investment and public benefit.
The United States should reimagine how it organizes the agencies responsible for public lands, waters, wildlife, and private-land conservation. But it should do so around a clear standard: conservation first, multiple use sustained by ecological reality, public ownership protected, regional delivery strengthened, science respected, durable funding secured, and accountability visible.
If a reorganization meets that standard, it deserves consideration.
If it does not, then it is not reform. It is wasted motion.
America’s public lands, waters, and wildlife need more than motion. They need a system worthy of the trust the public has placed in it.
