GRAND RAPIDS — The small U.S. Forest Service research office in Grand Rapids has two major focuses: woods and water.
It makes sense, given its proximity to Minnesota’s Northwoods and the state’s two national forests, the Chippewa and Superior.
In the 65 years since Sen. Hubert Humphrey successfully advocated for funding to build the lab, the office and its scientists have made more of a name for themselves than most people understand.
But the office on the Minnesota North College-Itasca campus is slated to close amid a major reorganization of the Forest Service announced Tuesday, March 31. The agency has shared little other information about what this means moving forward — for the scientists or the research.
Brian Palik was a research forest ecologist in Grand Rapids before he retired in February 2025. In his 30 years at the office, he worked to understand natural forests and how to manage them in a more natural way.
“Between me and about three colleagues across the country, we really spearheaded the development of this whole idea of ecological forestry: what it is and how it works,” he said. “And I can tell you, it’s just ignited like a wildfire nationally and internationally with organizations and agencies and different stewards of forests latching onto these ideas.”
The wetlands research coming out of the office has probably had an even larger impact, Palik said. Early work helped establish how different types of peatlands function, and scientists have continued to make significant discoveries about carbon emissions and capture, mercury and other pollutants, and how climate change will impact forests and wetlands alike.
“The only reason we’ve been able to pull this off — these long-term, large-scale studies that are impacting how people manage wetlands and forests nationally and internationally — is because we’re close to the resource and can develop these partnerships with the different people that actually steward these ecosystems,” Palik said.
“It’s just a short-sighted, just very fickle-feeling decision that is really not serving the history of research there,” said Jessica Gutknecht, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota.
Closure part of nationwide reorganization
Grand Rapids was on a list of research and development facilities to be closed shared by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service on Tuesday.
As part of the agency-wide reorganization — which includes moving the headquarters from Washington, D.C., to Salt Lake City — the Forest Service will consolidate leadership of its research division. Rather than five research stations with their own leadership, there will be one research organization based in Fort Collins, Colorado.
“These changes are designed to unify research priorities, accelerate the application of science to management decisions, and reduce administrative duplication,” a news release stated.
The Forest Service declined an interview request Friday.
The research office has sat on the Minnesota North College-Itasca campus since its inception and shares a building with the U.S. Geological Survey. About 10 Forest Service employees work out of the office, and some university researchers also work out of the space.
The building is owned by the federal government on land leased from the University of Minnesota. The U said Friday there is no cost to the lease. It was first signed in 1959 and renewed in 2009 for 49 years.
Minnesota’s other research station facility in St. Paul will remain open. Part of the State, Tribal and Private Forestry division is based there, and the national Forest Inventory and Analysis program — the nation’s “tree census” — is run out of that office.
Ely was also listed as one of the research and development facility locations to be closed. But the only research facility in Ely is the Kawishiwi Experimental Forest, and experimental forests are not believed to be part of the research closures. It is unclear what facility in Ely is meant to be closing.
Loss of world-renowned researchers ‘a tragedy’
Jim Manolis, director of forest strategy and stewardship for The Nature Conservancy in Minnesota and the Dakotas, said the Grand Rapids office’s research is fundamental to the nonprofit’s work. The Nature Conservancy manages 24,000 acres in Northern Minnesota, and this spring it will plant 3 million trees on land managed by its partners.
“Managing forests is challenging,” he said. “And forests are incredibly valuable for our timber economy, for clean water, for wildlife, for biodiversity. And the research just helps forest managers and ecologists, helps them figure out how to do it.
“It especially is challenging in the light of a changing climate, and there’s been some leading research on that that has given us a lot of ideas on things to try to best manage forests.”
Kawishiwi is one of four experimental forests in Minnesota on the Chippewa and Superior national forests. It is unclear how research in these forests will be impacted by the Grand Rapids office closure, but Palik is unsure how research could continue as it has without local staff.
“University researchers cannot do this. They simply don’t have that ability to pull off that long-term, big-scale, placed-based research like that. And that’s been our strength,” he said.
“ ... Many of them [the projects] require somebody to be working on them every day. Some measurement or some monitoring needs to be done a regular basis. And it can’t be done when you’re three hours away. It would be extremely costly for one thing and logistically difficult.”
Gutknecht agreed. The U of M professor in the Department of Soil, Water and Climate has partnered with researchers in Grand Rapids for more than a decade. Not only is the physical distance a challenge, but university researchers are also juggling teaching and mentoring responsibilities.
“It’s a tragedy. It’s just really devastating because they do excellent research,” she said. “ ... These are people who get invited internationally to present research. We’re talking about people who are globally known that study these really, really important ecosystems.”
It’s a privilege to work with colleagues in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, she said, who get to focus on research full time. They lost almost an entire USDA soil research unit during last year’s federal funding cuts, she said.
“The loss of these colleagues has been very deeply felt,” she said. “So, this is just one more blow.”
The human side
The Forest Service said in a statement Friday that the reorganization will occur in phases.
“Employees will receive clear information about relocation timelines, available options, and resources to support their decisions,” the statement read. “The number of relocations beyond those already identified in the National Capital Region is unknown at this time.”
Gutknecht noted researchers often gave tours in the Marcell Experimental Forest, north of Grand Rapids.
“This is probably not appreciated what a loss it is to those local communities who get to experience these ecosystems from leaders who know the most about them,” she said.
Since the Trump administration began making changes to federal agencies in early 2025, she said, researchers have known that more could be coming.
“It’s already been very stressful, uncertain times for those colleagues that it’s already impacted their work,” she said. “Science has just been so under fire by this administration.
Palik is most worried about how this decision will affect his former colleagues.
“The big thing is just the human side of it. Just the uncertainty in their lives and what it means for them in the future,” he said. “I know that these things happen and people deal with this on a regular basis. But when you’ve been a fixture in the community for 65 years, it will be different.”
