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The White House and DOGE have sought to eliminate thousands of jobs from the Forest Service. The wildland firefighting force is one of many targets within the agency.

President Donald Trump’s executive orders shrinking the federal workforce make a notable exception for public safety staff, including those who fight wildland fires. But ongoing cuts, funding freezes, and hiring pauses have weakened the nation’s already strained firefighting force by hitting support staff who play crucial roles in preventing and battling blazes.

Most notably, about 700 Forest Service employees terminated in mid-February’s “Valentine’s Day massacre” are red-card-carrying staffers, an agency spokesperson confirmed to ProPublica. These workers hold other full-time jobs in the agency, but they’ve been trained to aid firefighting crews, such as by providing logistical support during blazes. They also assist with prescribed burns, which reduce flammable vegetation and prevent bigger fires, but the burns can only move forward if there’s a certain number of staff available to contain them. (Non-firefighting employees without a red card cannot perform such tasks.)

Red-card-carrying employees are the “backbone” of the firefighting force, and their loss will have “a significant impact,” said Frank Beum, a board member of the National Association of Forest Service Retirees who spent more than four decades with the agency and ran the Rocky Mountain Region. “There are not enough primary firefighters to do the full job that needs to be done when we have a high fire season.”

ProPublica spoke to employees across the Forest Service, which manages an area of land nearly twice the size of California, including staff working in firefighting, facilities, timber sales, and other roles, to learn how sweeping personnel changes are affecting the agency’s ability to function. The employees said cuts, which have hit the agency’s recreation, wildlife, IT, and other divisions, show the Trump administration is shifting the agency’s focus away from environmental stewardship and toward industry and firefighting.

But notwithstanding Trump’s stated guardrails, the cuts have affected the Forest Service’s more than 10,000-person-strong firefighting force. Hiring has slowed as there are fewer employees to get new workers up to speed, and people are confused about which job titles can be hired. Other cuts have led to the cancellation of some training programs and prescribed burns.

“It’s all really muddled in chaos, which is sort of the point,” one Forest Service employee told ProPublica.

“This agency is no longer serving its mission,” another added.

The employees asked not to be named for fear of retribution.

The Forest Service did not respond to questions about the impact of cuts other than to clarify the number of terminated employees. The Forest Service spokesperson said about 2,000 probationary employees — typically new staff and those who were recently promoted, groups that have fewer workplace protections — were fired in February. Others with knowledge of the terminations, including a representative of a federal union and a Senate staffer, said the original number of terminated employees was 3,400, but that decreased, likely as workers were brought back in divisions such as timber sales.

The White House and a representative from the Department of Government Efficiency did not respond to requests for comment.

In early March, an independent federal board that reviews employees’ complaints compelled the Department of Agriculture, the Forest Service’s parent department, to reinstate more than 5,700 terminated probationary employees for 45 days. During their first weeks back on the payroll, many, including Forest Service personnel, were put on paid administrative leave and given no work.

The administration and DOGE continue working toward layoffs amid court challenges to their moves. Word circulated throughout the Forest Service in March that departmental leadership had compiled lists containing the names of thousands of additional Forest Service employees who could be soon laid off, according to some workers.

Additionally, understaffing in the agency’s information technology unit is threatening firefighting operations, according to an agency employee. In December, the branch chief overseeing IT for the agency’s fire and aviation division left the job. The Department of Agriculture posted the job opening, describing the division as providing “support to the interagency wildland fire community’s technical

needs.” This includes overseeing software that firefighting crews use to request equipment — everything from fire-resistant clothing to hoses — from the agency’s warehouses so first responders have uninterrupted access to lifesaving equipment.

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Photo illustration by Emily Scherer. Source images: Forest Service, Department of Agriculture.

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