Braxton Taylor
Last week, the Trump Administration fired 3,400 Forest Service employees across the country. The firings targeted employees in probationary periods regardless of their length of service with the agency. Positions terminated included new hires and mid- and upper-level employees who recently took new positions that were subject to probationary periods.
The firings gutted the recreation, trails, forestry, range, and biology departments of forests nationwide. Compounded with a freeze on all seasonal hiring, it’s shaping up to be a rough season on public lands.
MeatEater spoke with Kaylee Fritchen, who worked as a wilderness ranger on the Payette National Forest in Idaho until she was fired last week. It was her third year of employment with the agency, but she was in a probationary period as a result of being bumped up to a permanent position last spring. She had received nothing but positive performance reviews on her work, which took her to remote duty stations in the Frank Church Wilderness for up to five months at a time, where she would lead trail crews and patrol the forest.
Last week, she received a phone call from the district ranger informing her that she had been fired, per orders from administrative staff based in D.C. Then she was given an official email memorandum. “We all got the exact same letter saying that our jobs wouldn’t be necessary moving forward, and that they’re not in the likes or favor of the public—which I just don’t believe to be true,” Fritchen said.
“There’s a lot of space here for misuse,” she continued, speaking about the 2.4-million-acre Frank Church Wilderness. “I want to think that people will be responsible recreators, but as we’ve seen during government shutdowns and during COVID, these spaces are open to folks that maybe don’t have leave-no-trace or tread-lightly knowledge. If we aren’t there on the ground, people will take advantage of these areas.”
Fritchen’s department wasn’t the only one impacted. “We had an established trail crew, with one lead and four to six members. We don’t have a trail crew anymore,” Fritchen said of her ranger district. “I can confirm all of those positions are gone.”
It’s a similar story in districts across the country. On the 3-million-acre Custer-Gallatin National Forest in Montana, for instance, the recreation department responsible for all trail work, maintenance, and management of 63 campgrounds, 27 cabins, hundreds of trailheads, and thousands of miles of trails and roads has been reduced to six people. Due to an ongoing hiring freeze, the forest will be unable to bring on any seasonal workers this summer to pick up the work.
MeatEater spoke with Allison Borges, who was fired from her position as a Noxious Weeds Technician in the forest last week. She had almost six years of federal employment under her belt, but switched agencies from the National Park Service to the Forest Service last spring. She had just filed the paperwork to transition out of her probationary period when she was fired on February 13.
“We do such a good job of taking care of our recreation areas and forests that it kind of goes unnoticed because it’s just assumed that this is the way things are,” Borges said. “In order for the public to truly understand what’s happened, it has to affect them and their lives. I hope trails are closed. I hope bathrooms are closed. I hope the public feels the pressure. There’s a double-edged sword here, though. My fear is that it’s just going to encourage privatization of these lands, because it will show that we mismanage them—which is untrue.”
Even during past budget cuts, the productivity of Forest Service employees has largely remained the same, as workers have taken on more duties and done more with less, says Borges. This time, however, things are going to be different. Both Borges and Fritchen, along with current Forest Service employees who spoke to MeatEater off-the-record, say it’s going to be impossible for work to get done this summer.
On top of that, wildland firefighting teams are going to feel the pinch as well. “Most of the fired probationary period employees were red-carded,” Borges said, meaning they’d undergone the Forest Service’s intensive training to become firefighters. “I’m a certified Type-II firefighter. I have my Red Card. I have my chainsaw certs. I’ve burned piles. I’ve gone out with fire when they’ve been understaffed. I help everywhere and anywhere, on top of my job—which is important in and of itself. It’s so insulting to hear that ‘firefighters are safe,’ since we all provide support.”
In terms of what can be done at the bureaucratic level to help these public land workers, options appear to be limited. A judge this week ruled against labor unions contesting what has widely been considered illegal firings under the guise of “poor performance,” and Congress has already passed up an opportunity to combat President Trump’s move.
On Thursday night, Feb 21, the Senate voted down an amendment introduced to Trump’s budget package by Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO), which would have reinstated fired federal employees at the Forest Service, National Park Service, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, & the Bureau of Land Management. All Republican senators except Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) voted against it, resulting in a 48-52 tally.
Still, MeatEater’s Director of Conservation, Ryan Callaghan says it’s not a waste of time to talk to your congresspeople. “It’s not an exaggeration to say that if you have a campground reservation this summer, those gates are going to be locked when you show up. There’s nobody left to do anything.”
The people who work on our public lands aren’t in it for the money. “The people who do this work are pretty selfless and hard workers,” Fritchen said. Their losses are going to be losses for everyone, this season and for many more to come on National Forest lands across the country.
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