It’s been over a month since President Donald Trump began his nationwide federal hiring freeze and job-cut effort. Since then, the impact on the nation’s wildland firefighting force remains unclear.
A USDA spokesperson told Wildfire Today that the agency had laid off 2,000 probationary employees from the Forest Service, but claimed the layoffs were non-firefighters.
“To be clear, none of these individuals were operational firefighters,” the USDA statement said. “Released employees were probationary in status, many of whom were compensated by temporary IRA funding.”
Reporting from various news outlets, however, gives first-hand accounts of employees with wildland firefighter roles having their jobs cut, many of which had jobs at the USFS.
“Uncertainty is at an all-time high. Morale is at an all-time low,” a federal wildland firefighter told ProPublica.
Wildfire Today has a dedicated reader base of wildland firefighters, hotshots, and fire managers. We want to hear how these cuts have affected you, your colleagues, and your area’s firefighting force. In addition, many of the reports have been of cuts to related workers and programs, such as in land and forest management, public information activities, and new equipment purchases. These impact upon firefighting too.
Share your own experience with Wildfire Today in a comment below. Keep it short and succinct. Tell us what you are seeing so we can all get a better, wider view of what is going on.
Update – thanks for all the comments coming in. Your insights and honesty is much needed and welcomed. But just note that I am deleting any personal abuse, long articles cut-and-pasted into the comment, and comments just too obscure for anyone to understand. Keep it nice, keep it factual. We will follow up on some of the comments as best we can. David Bruce, editor, Wildfire Today.
What a colossal mess all of this is. That includes current and former employees. A colossal disaster is likely eminent in this country. Looks like more financial crisis issues are likely forthcoming, including a potential shutdown with no budget. Stay tuned as they say. D.C. is 💯 broken, imo.
Musk needs more money to replace his rockets that ‘unintentionally disassemble’ . Maybe when MAGA WUI property owners scream for firefighters to help them and no one comes , maybe they’ll realize their big mistake….
According to an article in the Idyllwild Towncrier Feb. 27, wildland firefighters are exempt from the hiring freeze. The USDA hired more than 1000 firefighters last week (end of February). Sad that the major news outlets are still printing articles about there being a freeze with ‘scary’ results instead of checking the current facts of the situation.
The article says USDA approved moving forward with attempting to fill 1000 positions. Not the same as actually hiring them. Given how hard it was to fill positions under normal circumstances, it’s hard to imagine many folks will want to work for the federal govt under an administration that is continually trashing its employees.
Wildland firefighters are supposed to be exempt but another thing that’s being shopped around is that the Forest Service is proposing to hire 1000 more firefighters. That hasn’t taken place yet let alone the raise that was going to happen. As someone else has mentioned, it takes some time once someone is hired to be trained. I’m sure you know this as your name is Fire Fighter Mom. Fire season is year round now. It’s not the same as it was 45 years ago when I first started loading tankers at the local airport. Firefighter training then wasn’t as intense as it is now. We weren’t trained in Urban Interface either. Congress needs to step up their game and our President needs to talk to experts and LISTEN to their concerns. He needs to stop threatening to take Federal Funds away because they haven’t “raked” the forest floors! Congress needs to address the health issues of Firefighters also. This I feel is not being addressed like it should be.
Incorrect. On a small forest in R4 13 redcarded wildland fire qualified employees were illegally terminated between 02/14/25 and 02/16/25 based on “poor performance” without basis and not-withstanding that all had at or above fully successful performance ratings. Good luck with training yourself and your neighbors for fire season 2025.
Weaver; I haven’t heard of anyone in R9 being fired without cause but it wouldn’t surprise me if it happened/happens given the climate of slash and burn in this current circus of an administration.
Claire Thompson, fired Valentine’s day, was a former trail leader fired after eight years fighting wildfires and maintaining trails for the U.S. Forest Service, never made over $22/hr.
I work for the BLM, and although we still have piles to burn our purchase cards were lowered to a dollar so we can’t even buy slash fuel.
In this day and age, I don’t believe that it’s a good thing to lay anyone off. Even though they aren’t operational firefighters. Everyone in the agency is just part of a machine that helps make it work.
I wonder if the DOGE ‘experts’ are aware that many non primary firefighters whose jobs are likely being eliminated, traditionally provide considerable support to firefighting efforts. Employees in various departments like wildlife, timber, biological science, recreation, etc., are generally cross trained in various support jobs, maybe even joining an engine crew, and are a critical part of any fire management team . Federal teams continue to offer important support at many levels during natural disasters and human caused tragedies like the 9/11 attacks and the Columbia space shuttle loss. Who is going to do the work when these trained employees are gone?
I was doing the Online Training so that I could Volunteer over my local park and possible deploy if there ever was a fire. I was pretty excited about it. So when I finished I emailed the desk lady my certificates and was told I cannot go do the Pack Test or the Medical due to the freeze in funding. Now I’m sitting in limbo waiting for the freeze to end.
I’m a recent retiree so I just dodged this attack on government employees at a personal level. I support all my federal colleagues, and I’m horrified since I know the agencies were not robustly staffed to begin with, and it takes us so long to get folks on board. Many of the folks I recently hired were veterans and now I’m sorry their service was so disrespected. Back to the fire world though, I’m on two teams and believe some ADs will be supported.
I hope so because my dispatch office in central OR probably hosts a couple hundred ADs. If the number of ADs is reduced significantly, we will have to reduce the number of teams that can be fielded. We’ve been doing that already over the last couple years. Last year I spent 30 days on fires and spent a lot of that time trying to recruit and train the next generations of federal collateral employees. Career fire employees cannot also staff teams. I see a future in the near term of contract IMTs. We already have contract engines, crews, heavy equipment, camp crews, etc – there is nowhere else to go. And the issues with retaining career employees in fire is already gutting our ability to fight fire agressively. One our fires last summer in OR, we had crews in camp because we had limited middle management (TFLD, STCR, DIVS, etc) to supervise and direct them. Fires are getting worse and more frequent and we need to look at the whole picture – full time fire folks, support roles (agency roles such as contracting, admin, HR) and team recognition.
$36 trillion dollars in debt and over $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities. Either cuts are made now, or our country goes bankrupt with no federal funding for anything. Jeff H.
There are better places and ways to make cuts than what is happening.
Good point, but I think your looking in the wrong place there bud. In 2019 expenditures on federal employees were ~219 billion of a 4.5 trillion dollar budget. This number has stayed relatively static while the budget has increased. Next, let’s look at contractors, who in the same year cost the government about 600 billion. So, if you really want to save the government money, why not shift the money from contractors to less expensive career civil servants? OR why not examine the DOD budget, which was almost 700 billion that same year. A government agency that routinely fails audits and likes to spend money on absolute nonsense must be a better target for your fiscal responsibility.
Let’s even do a little thought experiment. Let’s say we cut all federal employees. So, 291 billion dollars less in the budget (yay). How much of 36 trillion is that? Less than one percent. Who are we cutting? Firefighters, medical workers, social security employees, some MILITARY employees. So, for less than one percent of the problem we get massive direct and indirect costs and we would have to maintain that, not grow the deficit any larger, and in 123 years we wouldn’t have any more debt. Sounds great.
Look dude, your emphasis on fiscal responsibility is not misplaced. Our ballooning deficit and irresponsible (at times) spending is a problem. The place to cut it, however, is NOT federal employees, of which there are too few, doing too much, for typically low pay when compared to private folks in similar roles, who are providing essential services to the American people. Do us all a favor please. Read a book. Stop watching Fox news. Educate yourself. Stop looking at the world in a myopic and uneducated way because your view here is complicit to acts that will hurt the American people and will likely shrink our economy.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk. Go outside.
Spot on, dude.
Have you seen Trump’s tax plan? It taxes anyone making under $360,000 MORE and cuts taxes for the rich, raising the federal debt by $4 trillion. Maybe we should tax the rich instead of firing trained professionals saving lives that make $20/hr. Tesla paid $0 in taxes in 2024 maybe we can start there.
I’m on the trails crew with the Forest Service in R6. All of us trails has our red cards every season to help out on engines on top of our 40 hour work week. Same with our Natural Resources and Dev Rec department. Our steepest trails we work on are 1,000 ft gain over a mile! Our unit is small but we help out when we can between departments. We pause our work to fight fire that are local and threaten structures. Most if not all our non-fire seasonal employees have been terminated last fall due to budget or last Valentine’s day.
Thanks Jules for identifying yourself. I lead trails in the Region, too. I surrendered my position at the end of November because the agency discontinued seasonals (.i.e., crews). “Nonfire” suffered a generational loss, in a matter of months.
I don’t know whether the firefighters realize what will be asked from them. Before, they served as the trainers, the certifiers. Do any of them expect that may be asked to work duties for Recreation, Administration, and LEO? I would like to hear from them.
If you fire every single federal civilian employee, all two something million of them, it will only cut total federal spending by 6 to 8%. So why all the stress and trauma for such small gains?
I don’t think anyone is against a smart, thoughtful trimming of waste in the federal agencies, but what is happening now is not an intelligent trimming of waste, it is a shotgun to kill a fly approach.
I’m so grateful to be a retired USFS FFTR and feel very deeply for those still in service that are having to go through this extremely stressful and completely unnecessary action against them.
The long term damage being done by the loss of legacy knowledge will take many years to gain back.
I’m not sure what one can do about what is going on. An entire branch of our federal government has abdicated their authority to monitor and guard rail the abuse of power by another branch. I believe it will take a massive and continual bombardment of emails, letters and vocal town hall attendance to those legislators who have handed over the keys of our government to an insecure egomaniac and his rich court jester.
Let’s support our federal employee’s as best we can against this onslaught.
Bingo. This fire everyone just wreaks the government. Raise the Medicare CAP on billionaires and go back to IKE tax rates. Done.
Stop making sense! lol
Boys and Girls….It is time for all of us to cut. Don’t expect everyone else to be affected…..Get a backbone and get off the taxpayer teat
Ron Berdahl
Tell that to the billionaires.
Come on can’t you see the obvious? Yeah sure we’ve got professional firefighters, Engine crew, hot shots, and jumpers and helicopter people, but the the U.S. Forest Service was built on the fact that everybody was supposed to respond to wildfires if they could do that. As it grew, we developed a logistics method of moving more people than some countries can do and quickly. But many of the seasonals and the temporary people that were cut had auxiliary jobs as firefighters they were trained, they had red cards and yet these cuts have eliminated so many of those people so they have reduced the effective fighting of firefighting force by a significant Amount!
I’m on the trail crew for the Forest Service in the PNW. All of us has our red cards and worked engines on top of our 40 hours on trails. Our steepest trails we work on are 1,000ft gain per mile. Same with our Natural Resources folks. We pause our work to fight fire that were local and threatening structures. Due to last fall budget issues and this recent terminations, most if not all non-fire seasonal employees are gone.
I would like to point out that the disgraceful flying of the American flag on El Capitan was not an official NPS action, but merely some disgruntled folks excercising their first amendment rights.
I think all of our USFS office should fly the flag upside down. DISTRESS. We are all in that position now.
I’m not primary fire, I’m in natural resources and was in R8 filling out a crew for a prescribed fire assignment when I was illegally terminated and told if I was quick, I could probably make travel arrangements home before HR cut me off. Through some excellent advocacy from the union and parties that wish to remain unnamed, it was at least “rescinded” until I made it home.
Dug through the last few years of E&L statements, and it turns out I’m spending a solid 40%+ of my hours every year on fire assignments. Crossing my fingers that the AD program will remain intact. There’s certainly going to be some shortages in expertise and personnel this summer.
A lot of AD’s are already on Medicare. Plus, many forests in the past 10 years have stopped sponsoring AD’s depending which region
In the training realm we have had a huge number of drops due to funding and travel restrictions. Further freezes on credit cards, eliminating our use of ADs, and the general uncertainty is also affecting our ability to get appropriate support staff for our training deliveries. As an NTE myself I’m in a constant state of anxiety on whether or not my position will be eliminated.
The credit level for travel cards was just reduced to $1.00 (DOI, I don’t know about USDA FS). There will be an extra level of approval to get it increased for planned travel, process to be determined. How will this will work for emergency travel? Who knows.
Most of our awesome probationary employees will be rehired. Update resumes and wait for your turn.
And so why fire in the first place, then, Frank? How much is it costing the taxpayers to fire and then rehire people? So much for efficiency. Not to mention the stress and anxiety this caused to those illegally fired and their families. Those who had to leave their government housing.
Agreed. Took 8 months to hire me, 8 seconds to fire me.
Agree 100% with Riva!
Agree too.
Basically, in addition to the hiring freeze, they have now put restrictions on the AD program. All single resource and team assignments need to go through the respective state office. A limited number of ADs will be allowed to go out. This will cripple the entire fire fighting community…..on top of no seasonals , on top of layoffs, teams will be affected….most pre-season meetings have already been cancelled nationwide.
The nation is screwed when fire season begins in earnest