The House Appropriations Committee has asked the Government Accountability Office to examine the possibility of merging the Forest Service into the Department of the Interior. This idea is raised about every decade or so and is beaten down by a combination of special interest groups who all fear they might lose from such a change.
About a decade ago, however, the Antiplanner made a prediction that the next administration that proposed such a merger would succeed, mainly because many of the special interest groups that once relied on the Forest Service — timber companies, ranchers, and miners — have been so shut out of the national forests that they would have no incentive to stop such a merger.
