Wide US Forest Service Layoffs Leave Safety Projects Delayed, Fire Crews Depleted

Biologists, trail builders, maintenance workers, foresters, mapping experts — these are all examples of positions that have been terminated in widespread layoffs affecting U.S. Forest Service employees.

A spokesperson with the U.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed to NPR and Oregon Public Broadcasting that 2,000 mostly probationary workers were fired in the Forest Service, though the union representing them estimates 3,400 are being laid off. Some workers were told low performance was the grounds for their dismissal despite receiving excellent performance reviews, according to documents seen by Reuters.

These layoffs, experts said, leave Californians at greater risk of fire on federal lands and will delay mitigation projects designed to protect communities.

Riva Duncan, a longtime Forest Service manager and fire chief who is now retired, said there was “no doubt” communities near federal lands would be less prepared going into the 2025 fire season.

The firing of thousands of federal workers is part of the Trump administration’s plan to dramatically scale back the size of the federal government. The orders were meant to exclude firefighters, but many of those Forest Service workers who were laid off were trained and qualified in wildland firefighting and would step in as backup firefighters on crews or engines when fires got intense and resources were stretched thin, providing surge capacity. If firefighting units — such as an engine or the elite ground crews known as hotshots — are not fully staffed, they can’t be assigned to a fire.

“They are instrumental in providing fire support to the crews,” said Duncan, who is now vice president of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, an advocacy group for federal firefighters. “But also, if their own forest or national park has fires any time of the year, that’s who’s there. So those are the people who help them out on their local units when there’s a fire or prescribed burn.”

In addition to the effect on fire response, Duncan said, mitigation work that is done ahead of fires will also be slowed. Projects like fire breaks, vegetation removal or prescribed burning can save lives and homes when a fire breaks out, but they must be done legally.

“The agencies have to go through the environmental analysis process dictated by law,” Duncan said. “And a lot of these folks are the ones doing that work — the archeologists, for example. And so they’re doing all that planning before a match hits the ground or a chipper starts chipping. We don’t know who’s going to be able to do that work [now].”

During the Los Angeles firestorm of early January, Elon Musk blamed the destruction of homes in part on the lack of fire breaks and brush clearing in messages posted on his social media platform X.

President Trump has said Musk is in charge of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE — the newly created initiative leading the push to do away with large swaths of the federal government — though White House court filings have said he is an advisor with no power to make decisions.

Forest Service biologist Ben Vizzachero was one of those professionals who helped get mitigation projects done, indirectly, who no longer has a job. He learned first via a phone call from his supervisor that his job would be cut as part of DOGE’s trimming effort.

“A big part of my work was making sure a project complied with the law,” said Vizzachero, who was recently hired at the Los Padres National Forest and was still in the agency’s one-year probationary period.

“Biology can be the bottleneck preventing projects from going forward,” Vizzachero said.

He had been working on several community wildfire protection plans designed to foresee and mitigate fire risk, including plans for Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Monterey. He handed that work over to a biologist on staff who still has their job but who already had a full plate of other projects. The result, he said, is that the plan will move slower.

Vizzachero said he was drawn to a career in public service because it’s a way to help people and the natural world. Personal stories from other federal workers have echoed this sentiment.

“Ultimately,” he said, “this is not about me. Our public lands, our forests, is what makes America great. Our [public lands] system has been a model across the world.”

The layoffs will leave communities and forests at greater risk of fire and will make it harder for the public to enjoy their own outdoors. Vizzachero noted that even the relatively low-paid workers who emptied trash cans and cleaned up campgrounds had been fired.

Another concern for the fire season is that hiring has been put on pause for permanent and seasonal positions, although the Forest Service signaled that seasonal hiring will be allowed.

Jackie Rappaport, a firefighter volunteering in Yosemite National Park, hoped to get hired into either a seasonal or permanent position.

“They got word today seasonal positions got approved, which is great,” Rappaport said, speaking on Thursday from the site of a pile burn in Foresta, north of El Portal. “But the [permanent positions] are still up in the air and nobody has any idea.”

Some of the applicants for seasonal positions might not be able to accept their positions, she noted, because they applied many months ago for these jobs and may have taken other ones.

“Even if they get every seasonal [position filled] here, there’s pretty large staffing issues,” she said, estimating there were a dozen permanent positions open.

“So the engines still can’t operate at the level they’re supposed to be able to because there’s no one filling those roles,” she said.

Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R–Richvale) did not respond to an inquiry about how the layoffs could affect safety in his district. LaMalfa represents an area of far Northern California that has been affected by some of the worst fires in the state, including the Camp Fire and the Dixie Fire.