For Immediate Release

April 10, 2026

United University Professions, America’s largest higher education union, today criticized the Trump administration’s March 31 reorganization of the U.S. Forest Service, which will close the Forest Service’s regional headquarters and shut down almost all of its research facilities and experimental forests in New York and across the nation.

UUP President Frederick E. Kowal said the Forest Service reorganization underscores the need for state leaders to significantly invest in the cash-strapped SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, one of the country’s premier environmental colleges and top-ranked forestry programs.

Three New York-based Forest Service research and development facilities — in New York City, Cortland and Lakeville, Livingston County — are set to close in the reorganization. SUNY ESF researchers can help fill the void left by the near-total loss of Forest Service research facilities and programs that inform stewardship of healthy, productive and resilient forests.

“SUNY ESF is uniquely positioned to help compensate for the loss of Forest Service research in New York and the Northeast,” Kowal said. “Few institutions nationally are poised or respected enough in the field to help fill this gap the way ESF can.”

“But ESF can only provide that support with a substantial state investment that will allow this college to grow and thrive,” Kowal continued. “ESF already oversees more than 30,000 acres of state forests for research, teaching and training. It is crucial to invest in ESF, now more than ever.”

The college has a structural $8.3 million deficit; administration has enacted an austerity plan to cut funding and courses, reduce the number of full-time faculty and staff and cut support to graduate students. UUP has urged state leaders—through advocacy and a social media campaign—to set aside funding in the 2026-2027 state budget to eradicate ESF’s shortfall, caused by deep Great Recession-era cuts and flat funding since 2012.

ESF Professor Colin Beier said that one way ESF can help is by providing statewide monitoring and reporting on forest carbon sequestration. Until recently, that was done by the Forest Service and the federal Environmental Protection Agency – using information from the Climate & Applied Forest Research Institute (CAFRI), a partnership of ESF, the Cornell College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

“The folks at the U.S. Forest Service are our colleagues, collaborators and our friends, people we respect a great deal,” Beier said. “Many are seeing their life's work and careers tossed aside by careless leaders making senseless, shortsighted decisions. I don't want to minimize the impact of this catastrophe by suggesting that we at ESF can step up and make everything OK again. But we can help."

“ESF is willing to take on a bigger role,” said Kowal. “To do so will require a commitment from the state to ESF’s mission and a financial investment that will allow this college to expand and thrive.”