States Brace for Fallout from Forest Service Layoffs

The Trump Administration has cut 10 percent of the Forest Service’s employees (over 3,000 people), an agency that manages 193 million acres of national forests and grasslands. And thousands more layoffs at the agency are expected to come, with predictions that USFS could lose as much as half of its workforce.

Although the timing of the cuts aligns with the Administration’s broader effort to shrink the Federal government and drastically reduce spending, they also seem to undermine the President’s March Executive Order and USDA Secretarial Memo to increase timber production (at least with respect to federal efforts). The cuts also come as the White House is considering another executive order to create a new agency for wildfire response, while also separately considering a massive reorganization of the Forest Service.

Despite promises that wildland firefighters will not be let go, observers are skeptical. Roughly 75 percent of USFS staff are trained in wildland firefighting, meaning there will likely be fewer workers around the country to perform mitigation work to clear brush and thin trees to reduce the risk of wildfires.

With critical fire prevention work at risk of slowing to a halt, states and cities are considering drastic actions to moderate the threat of what could end up being more fire-prone national lands, which could quickly spill over onto state and private lands. In response, states are scrambling to ramp up preparation and provide resources for what could be another devastating fire season. But many western states with millions of acres of Federal land likely won’t be able to bear the burden on their own.

The growing fear of catastrophic wildfires underscores the need for more- not less – federal investment in mitigation activities and workforce training to prevent wildfires. What’s more, local collaboratives and nonprofits that support forest management are being crippled by the federal funding freeze and possibly face having their tax-exempt status revoked – further straining critical resources needed to properly manage forests to prevent wildfire. At least in the short term, the notion that the private sector contracting efforts can fill these gaps is at best ill-informed and at worst, arrogant.

The Forest Service isn’t perfect; there’s a long line of people who’ve worked at or with the agency with complaints and suggestions for improvement. But haphazardly dismantling the agency while simultaneously trying to expand timber production and potentially set up a separate entity to fight wildfires just ahead of fire season is a recipe for disaster.