President Biden on Monday chose a Bay Area resident who has spent the past 14 years overseeing millions of acres of public land in California to be the new chief of the U.S. Forest Service.
Biden selected Randy Moore, head of the Forest Service’s regional office in Vallejo, to lead the agency. Moore will become the first African-American to run the Forest Service, which is the second-largest landowner in the United States.
“Randy has been a conservation leader on the forefront of climate change, most notably leading the region’s response to the dramatic increase in catastrophic wildfires in California over the last decade,” said Tom Vilsack, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service.
“His proven track record of supporting and developing employees and putting communities at the center of the Forest Service’s work positions him well to lead the agency into the future at this critical time in our country.”
The U.S. Forest Service, established in 1905 under President Theodore Roosevelt, manages 193 million acres across the United States — an area twice as large as all units of the National Park Service combined.
In California, there are 18 national forests that make up 20 million acres, or 20% of all the land in the state. The agency oversees 154 national forests, 122 ski areas, 158,000 miles of trails, 4,300 campgrounds and 57,000 miles of streams and rivers. Its mascot, Smokey Bear, has reminded Americans for generations “Only you can prevent forest fires.”
Although many people view national parks like Yosemite and Yellowstone as the crown jewels of the American West, the Forest Service also manages hundreds of popular and beloved landscapes, including Los Padres National Forest in Big Sur, Tahoe National Forest around Lake Tahoe, the massive trees of Sequoia National Forest in the southern Sierra Nevada and Angeles National Forest in the San Gabriel Mountains overlooking Los Angeles.
Unlike in national parks, however, commercial logging, cattle grazing and hunting are allowed in national forests.
As head of the sprawling agency, its 30,000 employees and $5.3 billion budget, Moore will negotiate traditional controversies between industry and environmentalists on the proper uses of the national forest system. But he will face an immediate crisis the first day he is sworn in: A historic drought that has led to parched landscapes across the West and tens of millions of acres at risk of wildfire as the climate continues to warm.
Former President Trump criticized California for its forest management after massive wildfires in 2018, but failed to note that 59% of the forestland in the state is owned by the federal government. Last year, the Trump administration and Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an agreement to double the rate of mechanical thinning and prescribed burns on forests across California to 1 million acres a year by 2025 to reduce fire risk.
With Moore at the helm of the Forest Service, Newsom, who so far has not met forest thinning targets he announced when he took office, will have a partner who knows California’s issue and geography, and can push for more federal funding to pay for fire-safety projects.
“California understands all too well the challenges facing our forests and I’m glad a Californian will head efforts to tackle them,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who called Moore “an excellent choice.”
Before taking the helm at the Forest Service’s Region 5 in 2007 in Vallejo, Moore served as the regional forester for the Eastern Region headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisc., for five years. He has worked on the Pike and San Isabel National Forests in Colorado and the Comanche and Cimarron National Grasslands in Kansas. He also served as deputy forest supervisor and supervisor of the Mark Twain National Forest in Missouri. Moore also has national-level experience in Washington, D.C., having served as acting associate deputy chief for the National Forest System and the national deputy soils program manager.
He earned a bachelor’s degree in plant and soil science from Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He and his wife Antoinette have two sons, a daughter-in-law and two grandsons.
