The Shutdown Is Pushing Forest Service Staff to the Breaking Point

The hiking trails most Forest Service rangers work on feel far removed from the politics that play out in Washington, D.C. But they’re now a high-stakes political arena in the second Trump administration, as it has sought to downsize and decentralize the agency.

Waves of budget cuts, layoffs and buyouts in the last year have decimated the U.S. Forest Service, but the shutdown is testing its staff on a whole new level. The forests, along with national parks, remain open to the public, meaning recreational employees and visitor center staff are still cleaning bathrooms, answering phone calls, and handing out maps. Four weeks into a government shutdown, those that are left are still working – and many have yet to see a paycheck.

Many of the people most familiar with the workings of the agency are warning that this shutdown may push its workers past their wherewithal.

“A lot of these places where people work for the Forest Service are not very affordable on a government salary,” Matthew Brossard, a California-based representative for the Forest Service union. “So they have to live an hour-plus drive from where they work. Now you’re talking gas, vehicle maintenance, rent, food, all these normal expenses that they can’t make because they’re being told they have to work without pay.”

“Everything’s going out, but nothing’s coming in,” Brossard said. “The people that are out cleaning the restrooms and everything, they don’t make a lot of money. You’re telling them they have to come to work every single day and not get a paycheck.”

Sources told NOTUS that as of this week, some employees who were previously exempted and working with pay have now been shifted to an excepted classification, meaning they are now also working without pay.

Even before the shutdown, the Forest Service workforce was down by about 15% after thousands of employees took buyouts or were laid off earlier in the year.

Still, the work has to continue to meet seasonal deadlines. The agency, housed under the Department of Agriculture, is responsible for approximately 193 million acres of forest in the country. As the weather cools and rainfall begins, foresters in Montana are starting prescribed burns. In California, where fire season can last all year, crews are standing ready to respond when a red flag warning means fires might still crop up. In Oregon, increased logging and timber sales directed by a March executive order are chugging along.

“I don’t want people to stop working because that means people get hurt,” a former Oregon-based employee said of the shutdown. “The other side of that is it is bitterly unfair and unjust to continue to put the workers in the position that they’re in, and really having people not being hurt falling on their plate, to hold the line.”

Jeff Parker, CEO of nonprofit Northwest Youth Corps, works closely with the Forest Service in Washington, Oregon and Idaho by coordinating corps of young people every season to work alongside the Forest Service, filling in gaps in the federal workforce. In a typical year, his teams camp for weeks at a time in the backcountry, taking direction from Forest Service experts about what needs to be done. They clear out acres of invasive plants, clean up campgrounds, redirect water off of trails so they don’t erode, and remove fallen trees.

Parker said during the shutdown, on top of gaping holes in the Forest Service from employees leaving, many staff members have been redirected to the administration’s two main forest priorities: wildfire management and timber production. But that means tasks going undone elsewhere.

“There’s a lot of work that’s not getting done,” Parker said. “For example, work that we would normally do around the recreation stuff, the trails, the campgrounds, we’re not getting that work done, the invasive weeds, unless there’s a wildfire component to it, which sometimes there is, but mostly not. That’s not getting done.”

“What would normally be happening is we would be doing a ton of grants and agreements work to prepare for 2026, and there are not enough people to do it right now,” Parker said. “There’s nobody to do it during the shutdown.”

Current staffing shortages could have a knock-on effect for next year. Jason Robertson, a former regional director in Colorado, said this time of year is usually when forests prepare to hire seasonal workers and contractors for the following spring, but he expects those processes to be delayed, or stalled entirely, with fewer staff on the job.

“So what’s going to happen between now and next April, when you need boots on the ground, actually working out in the field?” Robertson said. “I really don’t know.”

The U.S. Forest Service and USDA did not respond to a request for comment.

When it comes to federally-owned land, many Americans think first of the national parks, managed by the Interior Department, which get almost double the number of visitors as the forest system does, according to 2022 data published by the Forest Service. But the forest system contains much more land, and it’s designated as “multiple use” land under the law, meaning it’s used for timber production, grazing, wildlife and fish habitation, and more alongside recreation.

Senators from western states, where most of the federally-owned forest land is located, told NOTUS they hadn’t heard of any serious effects of the shutdown on the forests yet. That doesn’t mean it won’t get to that point.

“I haven’t heard anything that rises to the level of emergency,” said Colorado Sen. John Hickenlooper, where 11.3 million acres of federal forests are. “But that’s not to say that bad things aren’t happening.”

National parks have also received national attention during the government shutdown, as they’re one of the more tangible effects of a shutdown’s early days.

Republican Sen. John Curtis said he’s heard “probably more concerns” about the national parks in his state of Utah than its 8.2 million acres of forests during the shutdown, but that the shutdown “impacts all of it.”

“So, let’s end the shutdown,” Curtis added.

On the ground in the forests, the shutdown is just the latest crunch on a system that was already decimated since February.

On top of the field work that’s missing, the Department of Agriculture, which houses the Forest Service, is starting a massive reorganization over the next year. While that’s ongoing, as USFS announced to staff and Hill offices in October, it will consolidate the regional managers across its nine regions, creating wider realms of jurisdiction for fewer regional chiefs.

As President Donald Trump swept into office and began downsizing the federal government, the Forest Service workforce only got smaller. Around 3,400 Forest Service employees were fired in February, which some now call “the Valentine’s Day Massacre.” Some were quickly rehired, but morale has taken a hit. Some 3,500 employees took the second round of the government-wide deferred resignation program in April.

The former employee based in Oregon who asked not to be named as she is still looking for a job told NOTUS that even before Trump’s downsizing, the USFS was severely understaffed. Congress cut its budget in 2024, and many temporary workers who spend summers working on trail crews and in other roles were told their jobs wouldn’t exist the next year.

“People were already doing multiple jobs,” the former employee said. “People were already critically underpaid for the job they were doing. People were already being asked more than what people should be asked to do. And then when the Trump administration came in, it made everything look like, I don’t know, a tea party.”

Several employees who left cited morale and a change in the spirit of the work as their reasoning – or a new fear of job loss down the line.

“I just said, you know, ‘I’m going to take the DRP 2.0 because it’s no way to live,’” said Gregg Bafundo, a former park ranger. “It was heartbreaking. It still is heartbreaking. My uniforms are still hanging in the closet with this hope that, you know, maybe I’ll go back.”

“There were many times when I was doing something in the woods where I thought to myself, this might be it,” Bafundo said. “I might burn up here. I might fall off a cliff to go protect a stranger. And now my coworkers are thinking, is it worth it? And I don’t think we ever questioned that before.”