VWC Executive Director Ellen Stuart-Haentjens was interviewed by Politico for an article on FOFA, click here to read more.

"The “Fix Our Forests Act,” S. 1462, which advanced out of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee with bipartisan support earlier this month, would give the Agriculture secretary wide latitude to declare “emergency” situations on millions of acres of federal land...

“This administration is redefining what we call an emergency,” said Ellen Stuart-Haentjens, executive director of the Virginia Wilderness Committee, a nonprofit environmental group."

The Virginia Wilderness Committee is pleased to announce that the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry passed both the Shenandoah Mountain Act and the Virginia Wilderness Additions Act this morning with unanimous support! Thank you to Senator Tim Kaine, Senator Mark Warner, and to Senator Amy Klobuchar and the bipartisan support on this Senate Committee. And thank you to all of the partners and supporters who have joined us in crafting and championing these bills. It now heads to the full Senate!

Press release from Senator Tim Kaine's office:
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Warner & Kaine Applaud Unanimous Committee Passage of Virginia Wilderness Bills
October 21 2025
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senators Mark R. Warner and Tim Kaine (both D-VA) applauded the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry’s unanimous passage of their two bills to protect lands and watersheds in Rockingham, Augusta, Highland, and Bath counties. Both bills are the result of years of Virginia stakeholder-driven collaboration. In June, the senators sent a letter to the committee’s leadership requesting consideration of the legislation.

“Virginia is home to beautiful wilderness spaces and natural resources that should be preserved for future generations to enjoy,” said Warner. “These two bills protect and expand the Commonwealth’s lands as well as support local economies that depend on tourism and outdoor recreation. I urge my Senate colleagues to join us in supporting this legislation for the benefit of all Virginians.”

“As an avid hiker, I know how important it is to preserve Virginia’s natural resources, which are some of our greatest treasures and critical parts of local economies,” said Kaine. “I’m glad the Senate Agriculture Committee advanced our legislation to preserve wilderness in Rockingham, Augusta, Highland, and Bath counties. I urge my colleagues to support these bills on the Senate floor.”

The Shenandoah Mountain Act would establish a 92,562-acre Shenandoah Mountain National Scenic Area (SMNSA) in Rockingham, Augusta, and Highland counties. National Scenic Areas protect the scenic, historic, recreational, and natural resources in specific areas and allow compatible uses such as outdoor recreation activities.
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The Virginia Wilderness Additions Act would add 5,600 acres to the existing Rough Mountain and Rich Hole wilderness areas within the George Washington National Forest in Bath County.

Our friends at SELC have set up a comment submission site and will mail or hand deliver your letters, at this link: https://selc.link/4g6WMGs
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OR you can email your comments to us at [email protected] and VWC Executive Director Ellen Stuart-Haentjens will hand deliver your comments when she is in DC for National Wilderness Week (Sept. 15-17).

Last Wednesday, US Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins announced the USDA has taken the next step in the rulemaking process for rescinding the 2001 Roadless Rule. (Read USDA Press Release here)

The rescission would apply to nearly 45 million acres of national forest land, including 394,000 acres on the George Washington/Jefferson National Forest in Virginia.

Virginia’s largest roadless area protects part of a watershed that Staunton uses for drinking water. A nearby complex of roadless areas protects part of the water supply for Harrisonburg. Together, more than 75,000 people live in the cities that rely on the two water systems. If protections are lost, new roads and logging steep slopes will eventually harm drinking water quality and increase water filtration costs, as sediment, debris, and pollutants wash off newly-logged denuded slopes and into drinking water reservoirs.

The removal of the Roadless Rule is expected to increase oil and gas leasing and other harmful development on public lands, hurt wildlife and biodiversity through habitat loss, and increase the possibility of wildfire ignition. 

The public has been given until September 19 to comment on this latest attack to our shared lands. You can submit public comments here. 

Photo taken of Little River Roadless Area by Lynn Cameron

We appreciate the chance to submit comments to the USDA concerning this plan, however, comment submissions are not currently accessible to the public. It remains unclear whether they ever will be. To enable more public debate and discussion on this plan, and increase transparency and visibility, we are publishing comments written and submitted by VWC members.

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​As landowners of multiple lots and over 100 acres adjoining the National Forest in Stuarts Draft Virginia, we are deeply concerned about the staff reductions in the forest service. The recent wildfires likely would have burned our house down but for the heroic actions of the firefighters. We watched with deep admiration as brave crews battled the fire within a mile of our house. Their efforts are essential to preserve the beautiful forests, wildlife and surrounding areas. Cutting these essential services will have a negative impact on our community as these capable people are vital. We implore our government to continue to invest in the vitality and preservation of our important forests by increasing, rather than slashing, the budgets relating to forests.

Respectfully,

Bo Fisher

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To whom it may concern,

I have read through the Secretary Memorandum: SM 1078-015 from Brooke L Rollins, Secretary of Agriculture. Although I understand downsizing or consolidating staff and offices to help with decreasing redundancy, finances and bureaucracy, I am concerned that the very rapid changes this administration pushes through does not allow for critical thorough planning to make these changes. I am always concerned with how this administration’s startling and rapid staff reduction numbers equate to these being “voluntary.”  I am very skeptical of the tactics to enforce these reductions in staffing thus affecting how many staff are there to continue monitoring our parks and forests.  I read the list of planned regional hubs but this will result in poor localized oversight of our national parks and forests that we as Americans have access to. It is also surprisingly interesting that there was not even a regional hub listed for the entire west coast. 

I live near the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Appalachian Trail (AT) and utilize the natural beauty here often. I am very concerned that this administration is "out of touch" with the U.S.’s natural beauty we as Americans enjoy. Also they are quite out of touch with the little pleasures from our natural surroundings most people enjoy that do not cost us a lot of money. I am also very wary of what this administration has planned in regard to reduction of land in our current National Parks System. I recently returned from Glacier National Park and read this excerpt at Logan Pass regarding the history of oil drilling:

​The picture shows an oil drilling station in 1901 at the head of Kintla Lake in Glacier NP. It was a doomed project and even caused a gas sparked fire in 1902-1903. And the drilling went bust. There was not enough oil worth ruining the land and beauty.

We the people do NOT need politicians and oil companies ruining our natural beauty and landscape for profit. The indigenous people of our nation knew how to balance their natural surrounding without exploiting it. We have lost that art. This administration’s leaders would do better to listen and learn from those who are educated and knowledgeable in the areas rather than have knee-jerk reactions from those who are not educated or qualified to run national departments.

Scott D. Rankins, M.S., CCC-SLP
             

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​Dear Secretary Rollins:

Our interest in your proposal to reorganize the USDA stems from our long-term service as volunteer trail maintainers in the George Washington and Jefferson National Forest (GWJNF) and our interest as naturalists who enjoy the beauty and biodiversity of Virginia’s national forests. Our comments will focus on impacts to the U.S. Forest Service.

Virginia’s national forests play a critical role in providing essential resources, like clean water, wildlife habitat, outdoor recreation opportunities, and timber. The GWJNF supports some of the richest biodiversity on the planet. Our national forest administrators and managers at all levels need to place a high priority on maintaining this biodiversity. Secretary Memorandum: SM 1078-015 does not give many details about how the reorganization will affect the Forest Service, which has a core mission of caring for the land and serving the people. The national forest system was created over 100 years ago to stop the degradation of forests from unregulated logging and extraction of minerals. These past abuses resulted in erosion of topsoil and silt into headwater streams, clogging our rivers with sediment and making them unnavigable. The Forest Service was formed to manage our forests sustainably for the benefit of current and future generations, with clean water being a primary purpose.

To serve the public interest, we think it is important for the Forest Service to have a strong local presence to maintain relationships with local governments, surrounding communities, and forest user groups. The current model of having national forests grouped together in regions, as they are now, makes sense. The Southern Region, which includes the GWJNF, is very different from other regions in the Southwest, Northwest or Alaska with respect to ecology, diseases, nonnative invasive species, fire risk, forest types, climate, and terrain. Regional staff play a crucial role in coordinating research, sharing information, encouraging collaboration among regional forests, and planning for disaster recovery, as with Hurricane Helene, a multi-state disaster that affected several national forests in the Southeast.

Eliminating Forest Service regional offices that have relationships in place with federal and state agencies and nonprofit partners and absorbing them into the five USDA offices you proposed would be disruptive and counterproductive. Although the Forest Service is under the Department of Agriculture, the management of our National Forest system requires specialized expertise that is very different from that required to manage agriculture, for example. Agriculture is more market-driven, whereas our federally owned forests have values that are not market driven, like clean water, wildlife habitat, and outdoor recreation, all very important to the American public interest. It is critical for the Forest Service to keep these multiple uses in a healthy balance.

We ask that the Forest Service Research Stations remain intact. Each one is pursuing important research pertinent to its specific area that should not be interrupted, as the health of our forests may depend on what they learn. It would be difficult, if not impossible, for a central research station in Colorado to coordinate land-based forest research all over the country.

In conclusion, we want to emphasize that many communities in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia depend on both the clean water that flows out of the GWJNF for municipal use and outdoor recreation to support their tourism-based economies. We hope that this reorganization does not favor timber and mineral production at the expense of other essential services that we all depend on.

Given the important purpose of the Forest Service, we ask that you reconsider eliminating the regional offices and research stations.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment.

Sincerely,

Lynn and Malcolm Cameron

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Dear Secretary Rollins,

I oppose the reorganization of the US Forest Service as described in Secretary Memorandum: SM 1078-015.

The proposal to eliminate our Regional Offices feels like an attempt to further gut the Forest Service in a transparent effort to squash its ability to manage our public lands. This blatant dismantling of the managing hierarchy is an underhanded strategy to ultimately privative our public lands.  By annihilating its established structure and then suggesting to the American people that our government is inadequately qualified to steward our national forests, nefarious forces that are not representative of the public, nor acting on our behalf, seek exploitation of our forests through extraction of our natural resources, and other unknown objectives.

If the USDA is indeed the "People's Department", the reversion to serving the public will entail a rehiring of not only the experienced and committed staff serving in the US Forest Service who were fired in 2025, but will also fill vacant positions that have been empty for years.   Personnel levels need to be increased so that our public lands can be stewarded by trained professionals and staff whose work is fundamental to the future health of our forests.   The Department of Agriculture needs to show appreciation and support for forest service personnel by recognizing and respecting their expertise and commitments to our forests instead of discarding them and their knowledge of our forests. 

While any bureaucracy inherently experiences some waste, virtually vanquishing an agency to reduce costs is in no way a step that will serve the people, and is an action both irrational and irresponsible that shows a disregard and lack of knowledge of our public lands, and their place in the heart and soul of America.  To reiterate, our public lands have been suffering from decreased staff levels over about the last decade, and are in dire need of increased staff.  We need these folks to steward our American property in order for it to flourish and stay healthy.

At a time when our forests are being plagued by invasive plants, insects and mammals, we need to be increasing staff at our Forest Research Stations.   Our forests are fundamentally important to the future health of our society, and to consolidate the research in one place given their great diversity is a step that is takes us backwards instead of forwards.  Do not eliminate existing Forest Research Stations.  Existing research sites need to be retained to facilitate scientific study in the varying ecosystems.   

I have been recreating in the George Washington Jefferson National Forest for many decades, and have a deep appreciation for the fact that these lands belong to the American people.   For many of us, the GWJeff is the place that provides opportunity for experiences in the Great Outdoors.  It has been difficult to see campgrounds close, bathrooms close, potable water systems fail and close, and picnic areas close.  I do not want to go to private campgrounds.  I want to see our public recreation destinations repaired and maintained and re-opened.      

Good stewardship of our national forests is important to stream health and all of the systems downstream that rely on our forests to act as natural filtration systems.  Municipal water supplies depend on the good health of our forests.

We need biologists, botanists, geologists, hydrologists, and foresters who have on the ground knowledge and whose supervisors have on the ground knowledge to support their work.  Consolidating the regional offices for the diverse forests in our county to two locations would create a disconnect between the offices and the people who steward the forests.  

As one of the owners of our public lands, for they belong to each of us equally, being public, I oppose a reorganization as described.  It would be an appalling disservice to the American people.

Laura Neale

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As of the morning of August 26th, the USDA extended the public comment period deadline to August 31, 2025. 
You still have time to submit your feedback on the USDA Reorganization Plan. To do so, email your comments to [email protected], and consider sending them to us as well at [email protected]. ​

This spring, USDA agencies—including the Forest Service—experienced significant staff losses. These layoffs affected programs that protect forests, maintain trails, reduce wildfire risk, and manage the areas where millions of Americans recreate. In Virginia, we lost 22 percent of Forest Service staff—double the national average. The disruption to institutional knowledge, trail management, and program continuity is already evident. 

The USDA has announced a new staffing reorganization plan and is asking for public comment on it. 

Healthy forests, thriving recreation economies, and resilient public lands depend on a well-resourced, experienced, and locally rooted Forest Service workforce. 

VWC is concerned how the proposed reorganization of the Forest Service, including the closing of nine Regional Offices, will impact public lands in Virginia and the Forest Service's long-term ability to meet its mission.

If you love Virginia's public lands, YOU have the opportunity to comment on the future of the agency and how staffing affects your outdoor recreation experience.

All stakeholders are encouraged to provide feedback by emailing [email protected]. The comment period is open through August 26, 2025. Let your voice be heard today. 

​Please share your comments with us at [email protected].