A number of positions have been terminated in widespread layoffs affecting U.S. Forest Service employees, including biologists, trail builders, maintenance workers, foresters and mapping experts.
A spokesperson with the U.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed that 2,000 mostly probationary workers were fired in the Forest Service, though the union representing them estimates 3,400 are being laid off.
These layoffs, experts like Forest Service Managers say will leave Californians at greater risk of fire on federal lands and will delay mitigation projects designed to protect communities.
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.
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.
Duncan, who is now Vice President of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, an advocacy group for federal firefighters added: “They are instrumental in providing fire support to the crews.
“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.
She added: “The agencies have to go through the environmental analysis process dictated by law.
“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].”
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 Department of Government Efficiency’s trimming effort.
Vizzachero, who was recently hired at the Los Padres National Forest and was still in the agency’s one-year probationary period shared: “A big part of my work was making sure a project complied with the law.
“Biology can be the bottleneck preventing projects from going forward.”
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.
Widespread layoffs through a variety of roles in the U.S. Forest Service leave Californians at a greater risk to risk of fire on federal lands and will delay mitigation projects designed to protect communities.
