“These people have done absolutely nothing wrong,” Colorado Senator Michael Bennet said on the Senate floor in Washington, D.C., days after President Donald Trump issued yet another executive order, this time calling for “large-scale reductions in force” at federal government agencies.
At least 2,000 Forest Service staff were fired during the cull that followed – that’s the figure cited by the USDA, though the union representing the workers says it’s more like 3,400, according to Fire and Safety Journal Americas.
Among them were roughly 150 employees in Colorado who help manage more than 24 million acres of public lands, including the 1.1 million-acre Pike National Forest, which lies just west of Manitou and Colorado Springs.
The cuts are part of a wider Trump administration plan to drastically cut government spending, overseen by DOGE, the governmental efficiency initiative headed by Elon Musk
They were fired in the midst of a historic drought in the West and fire seasons that last year-round, Bennet said, speaking to what appeared to be a fairly empty chamber.
Firefighters were excluded from the mass firings, but the people who were laid off were key to preventing blazes and making the work of wildland firefighters easier. They “maintained trails, removed combustible debris from forests, supported firefighters and secured funds for wildfire mitigation,” the Associated Press wrote. They “protected sacred sites, cleared trails, cleaned campgrounds and bathrooms, educated visitors and managed wildlife. They also provided safety, including search and rescue and emergency medical treatment,” Cassidy Randall wrote in the Guardian.
The Forest Service was already understaffed and underfunded, Kurt Schroeder – who served for 26 years as Park Operations and Development Manager for Colorado Springs before retiring in 2022 – told the Colorado Springs City Council on Feb. 11.
“What happens when that lightning strike hits that tree out there, or that unattended ember from a campfire blows around – and there will be a lot of those because among the people who got these letters were the rangers,” he said.
“We don’t have to look to L.A. to understand the consequences of a wildfire on our community. We’ve got our own Waldo Canyon and Black Forest fires. In 2002, there was the Hayman fire that burned over 138,000 acres. In 1854, a fire that started on what is now Fort Carson burned up Cheyenne Mountain all the way to Wilkerson Pass. My concern is: Who do we call?” he said.
Most of the fired workers were probationary – which doesn’t necessarily mean they were new to their career field. In federal government jobs, a promotion or change in department means going back to probationary status, even if a worker has been on the job or in the career field for decades.
Few government workers were willing to speak publicly about losing their jobs or, for the lucky ones, still hanging on to work. Some said on social media that they had been warned not to speak to the media, although one laid-off worker said, “What are they going to do? Fire me again?”
The Pikes Peak Bulletin contacted the Forest Service in Colorado Springs for this story and was referred to a regional office of the Department of Agriculture, the parent agency of the Forest Service.
After several days, the USDA responded with a statement, saying Secretary Brooke Rollins “fully supports the President’s directive to improve government, eliminate inefficiencies,” and takes seriously its “responsibility to be good stewards of the American people’s hard-earned taxpayer dollars and to ensure that every dollar spent goes to serve the people, not the bureaucracy.”
“As part of this effort, USDA has made the difficult decision to release about 2,000 probationary, non-firefighting employees from the Forest Service. To be clear, none of these individuals were operational firefighters.” Many of the fired workers were “compensated by temporary [Inflation Reduction Act] funding,” the statement said.
Then, it blamed the layoffs on the previous administration of President Joe Biden, saying it had “hired thousands of people with no plan in place to pay them long term.”
It is actually Congress that appropriates funding for federal agencies, not presidents – though Vice President Kamala Harris did cast the tie-breaking vote that passed the IRA through Congress.
The IRA was intended to slow inflation and provide billions in funding toward clean energy and climate-related projects, including wildfire mitigation – the USDA was appropriated $1.8 billion from the IRA to reduce the risk of wildfire to neighborhoods, infrastructure and watersheds on top of a $1.4 billion appropriated in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for wildfire risk reduction, according to the USDA website.
We don’t have to look to L.A. to understand the consequences of a wildfire. – Kurt Schroeder
The IRA has been criticized, especially by Republicans and particularly for uncapped subsidies – the House Committee on Ways and Means called it “green corporate welfare” in 2023.
‘I’m just at a loss’: Veterans, suicide crisis line workers axed by Doge
It wasn’t just the Forest Service that was affected by the firing spree. More than 2% of the probationary workforce at the Department of Veterans Affairs lost their jobs, too, with officials saying they were not in mission-critical positions, Military.com reported.
Among the workers caught up in the VA layoffs were those who work on the suicide crisis line, Military.com reported.
Roughly 90,000 veterans live in Colorado Springs, making up nearly 17% of the city’s population.
One veteran lamented on social media that they were “just at a loss” after being canned.
“I worked hard. I joined the military. I got an education. I got a dream job helping people and doing what I love,” the disabled veteran wrote. “I lived a quiet and modest life. Then, I got fired last week. I’m just at a loss. What’s the point of the social contract if someone I never met and has more wealth than I could possibly imagine can just take that away from me?
“I stand to lose everything. It seems like our country’s leadership is just laughing and golfing.”
