Sidney Noble clocked out from his job as a botanist for the Payette National Forest last Friday afternoon after surviving the first wave of federally mandated workforce cuts. By Sunday night, he too had been fired.
Noble is among thousands of Forest Service employees who have been fired over the last week under federal workforce cuts initiated by President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) order on Jan. 20.
“Based on the rhetoric and the executive orders starting the first week (of Trump’s presidency), I kind of grieved for my job then,” said Noble, a McCall resident. “It’s a purge right now.”
The exact number of employees fired on the Payette and Boise national forests is currently unknown, but is estimated at more than 50 workers, according to representatives for the National Federation of Federal Employees, a union representing more than 100,000 federal workers.
“We’re talking close to 50 in the Payette National Forest,” said Brad LaPlante, a union representative who also works as a silviculture technician in the Council Ranger District.
LaPlante and other union representatives have been trying to get an exact number of terminations, but said Forest Service officials have been “unwilling to provide us with an accurate list of terminated employees.”
“We are currently working on making our own list by walking around each office to see who was and wasn’t fired,” said Süki Wilder of the Boise National Forest, who also serves as a union representative.
LaPlante, Wilder and every other employee who agreed to speak with Valley Lookout for this story emphasized that they were speaking as an individual and not on behalf of the agency.
Requests for the number of terminations by Valley Lookout to local forest service public information officers have been re-routed to U.S. Department of Agriculture officials in Washington D.C., who provided a statement.
“Secretary (Brooke) Rollins fully supports President Trump’s directive to optimize government operations, eliminate inefficiencies, and strengthen USDA’s ability to better serve American farmers, ranchers, loggers and the agriculture community,” the statement said. “We have a solemn responsibility to be good stewards of Americans’ hard-earned taxpayer dollars and to ensure that every dollar is being spent as effectively as possible to serve the people, not the bureaucracy.”
The statement said the USDA let go employees in the probationary period of their employment.
“We are confident that talented individuals who have been affected by this change will have many opportunities to contribute to our economy and society in countless ways outside of government.”
‘The projects are still there to be worked’
The firings have left vacancies across the Payette and Boise forests that employees who have not been fired claim will be difficult, if not impossible, to fill.
“A lot of these employees that were fired, the projects are still there to be worked,” LaPlante said. “Now we don’t have the people to work them.”
Those projects include work related to wildfire risk mitigation, timber harvest preparations, environmental reviews, and maintenance of bridges, roads, campgrounds, and signage.
“Two of our technicians got fired this weekend,” said Rafal Klecha, a civil engineer with the Payette. “That’s already a big hit to our workforce and being able to keep roads drivable and keep bridges safe.”
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In the New Meadows Ranger District, Shannon Kane was fired on Sunday night from her job as a planner tasked with administering National Environmental Policy Act reviews of the district’s projects.
“Anything that we do—timber projects, range, prescribed fire—every single thing that the Forest Service does are federal actions that go through NEPA,” Kane said.
Trail maintenance
Meanwhile, trail maintenance crews have been gutted by the firings.
Adam Larson, a permanent seasonal employee who leads maintenance on about 600 miles of trail across the McCall and New Meadows ranger districts, is the last employee standing from his crew.
Two of Larson’s trail crew employees were fired last week, along with a backcountry ranger and two staff members who maintain campgrounds, vault toilets, and other recreation facilities.
“It’s hard to overstate how much work won’t get done,” he said.
The situation is similar for Caelan Parker, a trail crew foreman in the Krassel Ranger District, which has seen its recreation staff whittled down to four people.
“Before these cuts, we had 15 to 20 people,” Parker said.
Daniel Kennedy remains employed by the Payette as a botanist, but suspects he also would have been fired had his probationary period not just ended in September.
“I graduated with a handful of other botanists that went on to do forest service work, and all of them have been fired,” he said. “I’m the only one in my graduating class that’s still working for the federal government.”
Increased wildfire risk
As a botanist, one of Kennedy’s chief responsibilities is clearing timber harvests and determining forest stands that need thinning to reduce wildfire risk.
“If you don’t have people to maintain the forest properly, then we’re putting American lives at risk,” Kennedy said. “There’s not really any other way to put it.”
Danica Bornropp, a timber sale administrator in the New Meadows Ranger District, said the firing of her timber harvest inspector and prep forester will jeopardize the success of the district’s timber sales, including several currently in progress.
“The work that we’re going to complete is going to be not as clean as it would normally be,” Bornropp said. “We improve timber stands. A lot of it sometimes is we’re doing almost defensible logging. We’re logging areas in terms of fire protection.”
While it is unclear if the firings have included wildland firefighters, most of the fired employees hold “red cards” that certify them to fight wildfire when needed.
“We’re all firefighters, even if we don’t have that job code,” Kane said.
Personal lives uprooted
The firings have also uprooted personal lives. Klecha and Kane recently got engaged and are planning a wedding, but those plans may now be on hold after Kane was fired on Sunday night at 6:30 p.m.
“We’ve been talking about a wedding and now it’s like ‘is a wedding still on the table with the financial situation being the way it is?’” Klecha said. “If I lost my job, we probably have to move back home and probably live with our parents while we figure it out.”
Bryce Spare moved from the east coast to McCall last May, but is unsure what is next for him after he was fired from his job as a backcountry ranger for the Payette.
“We’re all trying to live in a very expensive place on what was very little and is now zero money,” Spare said.
Wilder, the union representative with the Boise forest, said he and other union representatives have been inundated with calls from worried employees over the last week.
“We have been working around the clock to respond to their requests and provide answers,” he said. “It has been incredibly stressful but we are doing everything we possibly can to help.”
The Forest Service is Adams County’s largest employer and among the top three largest employers in Valley County, according to Idaho Department of Labor data.
Employment in Valley County ranges from 250 to 499 employees, while employment in Adams County ranges from 100 to 249 employees.
Lawsuit questions legality of firings
The workforce cuts have targeted probationary employees, which encompass new hires as well as experienced Forest Service personnel who recently moved positions within the agency. Nationwide, the Forest Service employs about 6,000 probationary employees.
Each of the fired employees received a form letter explaining the firings as “based on your performance,” despite what supervisors say are often immaculate evaluation records.
“None of the ones that I have seen have any performance deficiencies,” said Matthew Brossard, a national business representative with the union. “How can you fire somebody for a performance-related issue when there’s no documented issue from the employee supervisors?”
The legality of the firings is being questioned in U.S. District Court after the federation, alongside other unions, filed a lawsuit last Friday that says the firings “violate separation of power principles” under which the government’s three branches operate.
“While the president is responsible for the enforcement of federal laws, Congress alone has the power of the purse with which to fund or defund agencies and their activities,” the lawsuit said.
