How DOGE Threatens the Forest Service and Public Lands
Forest service is in the crosshairs of Elon Musk's new push for efficiencies. So much for “Treelon”.
How many people were on Matt Ross’ trail team at the U.S. Forest Service? He doesn’t know the number off the top of his head, so he rattles off the names in his tight-knit circle of colleagues: Michael, Scotty, Mark … 19 people altogether. That includes himself as well as the seasonal workers — “the backbone of the workforce,” according to Ross. But when asked how many are left on the team after widespread terminations within federal lands agencies over President’s Day weekend, Ross doesn’t hesitate. The answer is one.
Ross worked as a wilderness manager for Washington’s Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, coordinating maintenance for over 600 miles of trails. Thirteen projects had been planned for 2025, among them fixing up what he calls the gnarliest section of the 2,650-mile-long Pacific Crest Trail. The work would have required Forest Service workers to helicopter into the Mica Lake area to clear trails by hand so horses could get through to provide stock support for volunteers to conduct repair work. But the abrupt culling of Ross’ team has sent two years of project planning down the drain.
Ross is one of the roughly 2,000 probationary workers at the U.S. Forest Service whose positions were terminated by DOGE, the ad hoc Department of Government Efficiency, on Valentine’s Day and President’s Day weekend. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service, confirmed the job loss numbers and defended the firings as a way to root out allegedly wasteful federal spending in the agency.
Adding to the swirl of changes, Forest Service chief Randy Moore announced on Wednesday that he would retire on March 3, after 45 years at the agency. “The past several weeks (have) been incredibly difficult,” Moore wrote in a letter to all agency employees. “If you are feeling uncertainty, frustration, or loss, you are not alone. These are real and valid emotions that I am feeling, too.”
“If you are feeling uncertainty, frustration, or loss, you are not alone. These are real and valid emotions that I am feeling, too.”
The loss of these key environmental stewards will be keenly felt across the West, home to most of the nation’s public lands managed by the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. Besides the personal blow of losing what many workers described as “a dream job,” the impacts will have a massive ripple effect on the health of public lands — and on people’s ability to enjoy them safely.
Forest Service employees generally tackle arduous, unglamorous work that, if done correctly, is invisible to most of those who benefit from it. Every winter, when visitor numbers dip along with the temperature, snowstorms and avalanches topple trees and wreck infrastructure. Come spring, agency personnel begin clearing trails and repairing structures to prepare for the summer crowds. In designated wilderness areas, where mechanized tools are prohibited, not even power drills or wheelbarrows are allowed. Licensed trail managers like Ross clear routes using crosscut saws, axes and occasionally an explosive or two.
This kind of backbreaking work forges camaraderie. Many described this inherent sense of community as another perk, on top of knowing that they’re working toward improving public access to the outdoors as mandated by The National Trails System Act of 1968. “This is a job I absolutely love,” Ross said. “It was stripped away from me by somebody who wasn’t even in our organization, let alone in the chain of command.”
Rundown outdoor spaces can threaten the safety of recreational users and even nearby communities. For example, trail managers typically dig new latrines before the existing ones overflow. Near Colchuck Lake in the Enchantments area of Washington, local Forest Service personnel fly out up to 10,000 pounds of excrement annually, according to one forestry technician, who was fired on Feb. 14. Otherwise, that human waste would contaminate the Wenatchee River, one of the main sources of drinking water for the nearby town of Leavenworth.
THE FOREST SERVICE STAFF targeted by DOGE also include the biologists and botanists who ensure that projects on public land comply with environmental regulations. These staff members conduct surveys of the landscape before signing off on logging, mining or other activities. The sudden hemorrhaging of agency employees means that many economically valuable projects will be delayed or halted altogether.
Many biologists were on the verge of carrying out environmental restoration initiatives when the ax fell. A project aimed at trout conservation in a tributary of Montana’s West Fork Bitterroot River can no longer move forward. Mariel Leslie, a fisheries biologist who was terminated Feb. 16, was planning to reintroduce beavers and put felled trees into the water to help restore trout habitat. The Trump administration’s pause on federal grants in January initially left the service’s partner organization, Trout Unlimited, scrambling for funding; then, the recent layoffs depleted the federal staff who would have overseen the project. Now, Leslie worries that the damage to the environment will only increase, with permanent consequences to some of the area’s iconic but imperiled wildlife. “In western Montana, we are heavily reliant on our recreational economy,” she said. “You can’t just go anywhere else and catch a westslope cutthroat.”
The USDA took pains to assure the public that the Forest Service’s firefighting capabilities will not be impacted, insisting that the downsizing largely spared operational firefighters. But the department stayed quiet on other key functions of the Forest Service. “Hiring freeze exemptions exist for critical health and safety positions,” USDA spokesperson Audra Weeks said via email, referring to the firefighting workforce. “(USDA) Secretary (Brooke) Rollins fully supports the President’s directive to improve government, eliminate inefficiencies, and strengthen USDA’s many services to the American people.”
“In western Montana, we are heavily reliant on our recreational economy.”
Nevertheless, overall wildland firefighting capacity will suffer. Field workers who are not on the front lines help with firefighting efforts by providing logistical support during conflagrations. They’re often the ones who spot new blazes — and put them out. “Every crew in the Forest Service, if you’re in the field, you have with you a shovel and some firefighting tools, in case you have to respond to something,” said Lukas Speckhardt, who, until Feb. 14, was a timber forestry technician in Cle Elum, Washington. “There’s a lot more than just the fire crew.”
Speckhardt, a member of the National Federation of Federal Employees union, is involved in the Central Washington Initiative, a 10-year strategy to strengthen wildfire resilience in communities surrounded by national forest. While he doesn’t speak for the union, he did describe his role in an interview with High Country News. His team built fuel breaks and strategically marked fire-risk species, such as grand fir, for logging. Now, with three out of four field-going personnel including himself gone, forest-embedded settlements such as Roslyn and Liberty are at increased risk. Even though they may still have support in the event of a wildfire, thanks to the emergency fire crew, they no longer have the long-term federal assistance needed to prevent catastrophic blazes.
WITH MANY ONGOING OR SCHEDULED projects now impeded, who will fill in for the employees that Trump and DOGE have forced into leaving? Contract workers usually use motorized tools, so they rarely work in wilderness locations. Volunteer groups might not have the certifications for dangerous tasks, plus they rely on Forest Service workers for support. In addition, they’re voluntary by nature, while agency staffers can be counted on to do hard labor outdoors on demand, regardless of the weather. “There is absolutely no way, with my position being eliminated, for somebody else to step into that role,” Ross said.
“There is absolutely no way, with my position being eliminated, for somebody else to step into that role.”
Dismissed Forest Service workers are not simply accepting their fate. Many are speaking out publicly and fighting to get back to work. Soon after Trump and DOGE announced the cuts, labor unions representing several agencies, including the Forest Service, promptly filed lawsuits in federal court against what they called “illegal” terminations. A judge has denied one of the suits; in another legal challenge, a judge in California ruled in favor of the unions that the mass firings were unlawful.
The public outcry against the job cuts also seems to have had some effect. The Trump administration walked back some Forest Service firings by allowing some managers to rehire a handful of terminated employees. After dismissing 1,000 probationary employees from the National Park Service, the Department of Interior sent a memo to the agency that it could employ 7,700 seasonal workers for national park upkeep. While Park Service advocates welcomed this U-turn, according to the Associated Press, they’re skeptical whether the damage can be repaired fully or quickly enough, given that some of the permanent staff that were let go would have been in charge of hiring.
Overall, fired workers dispute that the federal purge would save the government money in the long run anyway, citing the irreversible impacts the firings would have on public lands. Moreover, some workers, including Ross, say their paychecks actually came out of recreation fees or state money rather than federal dollars. For all the gritty work they do, most entry-to-mid level technical Forest Service workers earn a paltry average of $20 an hour or less. “None of us do it for the money,” said Victoria Winch, a laid-off trail maintenance worker in Montana’s Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex. “We’re the best deal out there.”
Now that she’s out of a job, Winch has fleetingly entertained thoughts of starting her own trail company, providing — at a much higher fee — the same services she’s gladly offered for the last eight years. But she hasn’t been able to muster the necessary enthusiasm; money was never the reason why she chose this life of labor, toiling in remote corners of “America the Beautiful.” Still, she insisted that she wasn’t done yet. “I am in this for the long haul,” she said. “Elon Musk can pry my job from my cold dead fingers, and I will never give this up, as long as I have the option to keep doing it.”
This article first appeared on High Country News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
