‘You should be pretty concerned’: DOGE cuts threaten Idaho recreation, fired workers say
Hayley Pines thought it was a bad sign when, at the start of the month, she received an email notifying her that her name had been included on a list of federal employees still in their probationary period.
Rumors had swirled that President Donald Trump’s administration, in concert with billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, planned to fire employees who were on probation. Probationary periods are typically around a year but can last longer, according to government website USAJobs.
On Feb. 13, Pines got a call from her friends and coworkers at the Sawtooth National Forest. They said a wave of job cuts was coming. The next day, Pines learned she was fired from her job as lead wilderness ranger.
“They heard it was going to happen, and they just wanted to tell me first before I read about it in The New York Times,” Pines, whose permanent position was seasonal, told the Idaho Statesman in a phone interview.
She and dozens of other Idaho workers were among thousands of probationary federal employees who lost their jobs in mass firings that impacted agencies from the U.S. Forest Service to the Department of Veterans Affairs and more, The Associated Press reported. Employees in Idaho and across the U.S. say their termination letters blamed their performance despite histories of satisfactory reviews.
Trump officials have lauded the cuts, which are part of Musk’s aggressive — and controversial — plans to drastically slash government spending. Critics call them a chaotic attack that will have lasting impacts on America.
In the days since the firings, Idaho residents have rallied in Boise, McCall, Stanley and elsewhere to protest the cuts and proclaim support for federal employees. Much of the support has been for national forests and public lands. Politico reported 3,400 people were fired from the U.S. Forest Service.
Fired employees say safety, education, trails will suffer
It’s not clear whether all Idaho forests were impacted by the firings and how many jobs were cut at those that were affected. The Statesman spoke with employees from the Sawtooth and Payette national forests who confirmed cuts at those offices. A union representative told BoiseDev positions were cut at the Boise National Forest, and KREM reported cuts at the Idaho Panhandle National Forest.
Spokespersons for the forests directed the Statesman to U.S. Department of Agriculture officials in Washington, D.C. A USDA spokesperson declined to clarify if jobs were cut at the Salmon-Challis, Nez Perce-Clearwater and Caribou-Targhee national forests.
Forty percent of Idaho’s 53 million acres is national forest land — a greater percentage than any other state. Former employees say there will now be fewer people maintaining trails, educating the public, enforcing fire bans, cleaning bathrooms and handling other duties on at least some of the state’s seven forests.
Pines led a crew that used pack mules and horses to clear backcountry trails during the summer in her permanent, seasonal position in the Sawtooth forest. She had spent 11 seasons with the Forest Service in Idaho, Wyoming and Montana.
“This wasn’t just a job for me,” Pines said in a phone interview. “It was not only my livelihood, but how I identified as a human, and I really took a lot of pride in my work.”
Pines said her crew spent up to a week in the backcountry clearing trails and removing trash — including human waste, which has increasingly become an issue as the Sawtooths’ popularity has skyrocketed in recent years. Pines said the mules packed out hundreds of pounds of garbage each season, and her crew helped educate recreators and enforce local regulations, like fire bans, while maintaining the 750 miles of trail they were responsible for.
Another Sawtooth National Forest employee who was fired spoke to the Statesman on condition of anonymity out of fear of repercussions. The former employee said the Sawtooth was already understaffed and some of the terminated positions were public-facing administrative jobs. That will affect people seeking information about camping, trails, fees and snow conditions, the former employee said. (USDA did not respond to questions about what specific positions were cut.)
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Bryce Spare, who was a backcountry and snow ranger on the Payette National Forest, was also laid off. He said numerous cuts on the Payette in addition to an existing freeze on hiring seasonal employees means there will be “basically no more trail maintenance” on some of the Payette ranger districts.
The former employees said they’re concerned for the future of the areas they worked to maintain. Pines said the aftermath of last year’s severe fire season in the Sawtooths is already a challenge. Without maintenance and land management, the results could be “devastating,” she said.
“Public lands are really important in the state of Idaho,” Spare said. “If you’re somebody that likes to recreate on them, that cares about being able to take your kid out and just be out in these really remote, beautiful places, then you should be pretty concerned right now.”
Historic site, farm conservation program lost workers
Other federal agencies also lost Idaho employees in the layoffs. A park ranger with Minidoka National Historic Site, a National Park Service-run former World War II Japanese incarceration camp in south-central Idaho, was fired, according to Robyn Achilles, director of the nonprofit Friends of Minidoka.
“The loss of this position is going to make staffing of the visitor center and providing public tours during the summer extremely challenging,” Achilles told the Statesman in a phone interview.
Idaho has only a small sliver of Yellowstone National Park but it’s home to a handful of National Park Service sites. Minidoka shares staff with Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve and Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument. It wasn’t immediately clear if the other sites also saw staff reductions.
Achilles said appropriately staffing the historical site allows one ranger to stay at the visitor center and another to lead tours that “tell the full story about this really important history, especially during this time when we need to ensure that people’s constitutional rights are protected.”
Ian Woodruff told the Statesman he was fired from his job with USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service at its Moscow field office, where he worked with private landowners to implement and fund conservation projects. Woodruff said his work included improving forest health, mitigating wildfire risk, improving water and soil quality and more.
He said in a phone interview that he arrived to “a scene of shock and sadness” at his office on Feb. 14. He had received an email sent the night before with the subject line “Notice of Termination.” The email had no body text and contained only an attached Word document that informed him he was terminated due to his performance, he said. Like the employees fired from Idaho national forests, Woodruff said he has held many seasonal government positions and even had a performance review in his NRCS position in which his performance was fully satisfactory.
He noted that the NRCS has bipartisan support, so it seemed unlikely that his office would be a target for cuts.
“I was doing work that, in a politically polarized environment, people agree that it’s good to help private landowners with conservation,” Woodruff said.
“I was working directly with the people. I feel like I was directly serving my community. It feels like, from my perspective, my job would have been the one that you want to keep.”
Job cuts will hurt Idaho, employees say
The fired employees said the loss of their jobs will hit Idaho in areas that state leaders say they prioritize. Gov. Brad Little did not respond to a request for comment on the job cuts, nor did any of Idaho’s congressional delegation.
Woodruff said the NRCS helped agriculture producers improve crop yields and address other issues, often while footing the bill. Without the program’s resources, farmers and ranchers will likely be on their own for solutions, he said.
“The NRCS is not a well-known agency, but we really serve the community, and we do really good work to benefit rural landowners and benefit the ecosystem and ecological services at large,” Woodruff said.
The fired Forest Service employees said the loss of forest positions will impact wildfire response — something Little has criticized the federal government for doing poorly.
Spare, the former Payette ranger, said many of the forest’s fired employees had “red card” qualifications that allowed them to pitch in on wildland firefighting. The anonymous former Sawtooth forest employee said the same was true of terminated workers at their national forest.
The Sawtooth employee said some now-fired employees worked “directly on the line for weeks at a time” last summer while others helped with fire evacuations or advised incoming firefighting crews of which resources to protect and where people may be hiking or camping.
While the job cuts have been touted as a cost savings, the fired employees said they could have negative economic impacts on the rural areas where forest employees live and work, as many plan to leave the area.
The employees said the savings from their salaries aren’t much — Pines noted her salary was paid from grants or commercial forest filming fees.
“We never did the work because the pay was great,” Pines said. “We just deeply cared for the resource and the idea of public land.”
This story was originally published February 20, 2025 at 4:00 AM.
