By Suzanne Cable
The U.S. Forest Service is headed for obsolescence due to recent personnel reductions, proposed budget cuts, and re-organization plans. The ability of the Forest Service to meet its legislatively mandated multiple-use mission to the American public is being systematically dismantled.
I, and many Americans, welcome thoughtful strategic reform of federal agencies, but what we have seen occur over the last several months to the Forest Service is nothing like that. We’ve seen an agency systematically and deliberately dismantled by indiscriminate firings, forced retirements, and coerced resignations. And the chaos is not over with a reduction in force and drastic structural reorganization planned and looming in the future, but currently on hold by a federal judge and awaiting a ruling by the supreme court.
The large number of personnel leaving the federal government has been widely reported in the news media. What has not been daylighted, however, and specifically in the case of the Forest Service, is that since firefighter and law enforcement positions were not eligible for the various incentives offered to encourage employees to leave, nearly all the employee reductions have come from the far-less-than 50 percent of the remaining agency workforce. That includes personnel that serve as wilderness managers, recreation specialists, fisheries and wildlife biologists, botanists, archeologists, research scientists, and the many varieties of forestry technicians doing work on the ground.
The short-term impact of personnel reductions will be seen this summer when all remaining employees and resources are devoted to responding to wildland fire upon reaching national preparedness level 3 (we’re currently at level 2). This is after thousands of qualified call-as-needed firefighters and fire operations support personnel have lost their jobs. This will come at the expense of the many other mission-critical responsibilities of those remaining employees.
We’ll also see the impact when recreational access, information and education, and infrastructure maintenance is reduced or absent while summer public visitation to national forests surges. Not unlike 2020 in the first year of the COVID pandemic, agency personnel are again directed by their leadership to keep open all recreational access and facilities regardless of whether they can safely and responsibly operate those sites and facilities to established standards. Instead, we will see unmitigated damage to nature from unchecked visitation to sensitive landscapes due to unmanaged recreation. We’ll see impacts to wilderness character, water quality, wildlife, and vegetation that in the most fragile and heavily used areas will never recover.
An especially acute example of reduced staffing with the potential for irreparable damage is on the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness in Washington state. The cherished Enchantments area of the Alpine Lakes is one of the busiest wildland destinations in Washington state for outdoor recreation with more than 100,000 people hiking there each year. There are usually 10 to 12 wilderness rangers on rotational patrols that care for the Enchantments each summer. Due to staffing reductions, the Wenatchee River Ranger District has one wilderness ranger on duty this summer to patrol not only the Enchantments, but also the other 150,000-plus acres of designated Wilderness on the district. Additionally, the district now has one trail crew leader and no trail crew.
This is a situation that will result in not only irreparable damage to wilderness character and natural resources, but will lead to unsafe and unsanitary conditions for visitors as unmitigated human waste, trash, parking congestion, and search and rescue operations are widespread. This is an entirely self-made crisis by the current administration due to implementing a poorly planned and executed deliberately destructive take down of the ability of the Forest Service to deliver services to the American public.
The gutting of the Forest Service is just one example of a national crisis that will take years or decades to recover from once we, as a society, choose to stop the damage to our federal system of governance. We must individually and collectively speak out to all our elected officials and demand a stop to the out-of-control damage being done. We need to begin to rebuild a federal government that we can rely on to deliver critical services to the American public, including the Forest Service, and protect our wild landscapes from destruction.
Suzanne Cable retired in January 2024 after a 30-year career with the Forest Service. She finished her career as the forest-wide program manager for Recreation, Trails, and Wilderness on the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest. Suzanne continues her advocacy for wilderness stewardship in central Washington, including volunteering for local conservation organizations. She has recently joined the Board of Directors of Wilderness Watch.
1,039 Comments
Please protect our forests!
The Forest Service has had many problems for many years. Destroying the Service won’t solve the problems.
Forests are the lung of the planet. They must be protected as well as the jobs of those that take care of them
Protect our forests.
Allowing gutting the Forest Service in the manor that it was done iresponsible and reckless. By doing so will place the public and forest land in jeopardy. AT least have a backbone and stand up to this man and his assaults to the U.S. Forest Service and all other goverment services that have been dismantled.
Leave it alone
We have an obligation to provide healthy natural environments for all life to thrive and grow. Protecting them is the best investment for human life to prosper in a livable planet. It’s now or never.
Our forests are the future. Please preserve what we still have.
I cannot comprehend what our beautiful AMERICAN FORESTS AND PARKS WILL LOOK LIKE IN A YEAR. What a terrible terrible decision to destroy our incredible parks, wildlife, and delicate environment. The president has failed our country miserably with his big, expensive, filthy bill.
I, and many Americans, welcome thoughtful strategic reform of federal agencies, but what we have seen occur over the last several months to the Forest Service is nothing like that. We’ve seen an agency systematically and deliberately dismantled by indiscriminate firings, forced retirements, and coerced resignations.
I agree with the Wilderness Watch statement re: the irreparable harm that could come if our Forest Service is not well-funded.
Protect our forests. Protect America’s beautiful nature. Protect our wild places.
Stop destroying Mother Nature!
I have personally witnessed the important work that the US Forest Service does in preserving and stewarding our public lands and wild place here in South Dakota. The Forest Service is especially important to states like South Dakota, where places like Black Hills National Forest are major tourist attractions and help boost our otherwise fragile state economy.
Lumber companies will be harmed too by their own over harvest of trees!
Do the right thing for all of us.
Listen to the science, we need our forest for the health of the planet and the health of people who visit to recharge our spirit and experience the beauty our Earth gives us. We need the years of experience employees of the forest service have that cannot be easily replaced once lost. Americans want our forests and wild places protected and preserved.
Its absolutely INSANE!! Decisions regarding what it takes to sustain/manage wilderness areas, are being made by people who have never used our natural parks, forests or wildernesses!! As a result, they have no understanding of the complexity AND PEOPLE POWER required to simply sustain the status quo. They should be reducing the number of office staff and keeping the staff actually DOING the work.
Dont do it, save our forests for the future!
The environment is our most important resource we have left on this planet that and we have been very effectively destroying it during the last 100 years. We need the forest service personnel to protect it. Its not brain science.
Protect the Forest Service. Protect our few wild places, biodiversity and our quality of life for this and for future generations1
I, and many Americans, welcome thoughtful strategic reform of federal agencies, but what we have seen occur over the last several months to the Forest Service is nothing like that. We’ve seen an agency systematically and deliberately dismantled by indiscriminate firings, forced retirements, and coerced resignations. I agree with the Wilderness Watch statement re: the irreparable harm that could come if our Forest Service is not well-funded. The chaos is not over with a reduction in force and drastic structural reorganization planned and looming in the future, but currently on hold by a federal judge and awaiting a ruling by the supreme court.
The large number of personnel leaving the federal government has been widely reported in the news media. What has not been daylighted, however, and specifically in the case of the Forest Service, is that since firefighter and law enforcement positions were not eligible for the various incentives offered to encourage employees to leave, nearly all the employee reductions have come from the far-less-than 50 percent of the remaining agency workforce. That includes personnel that serve as wilderness managers, recreation specialists, fisheries and wildlife biologists, botanists, archeologists, research scientists, and the many varieties of forestry technicians doing work on the ground.
The short-term impact of personnel reductions will be seen this summer when all remaining employees and resources are devoted to responding to wildland fire upon reaching national preparedness level 3 (we’re currently at level 2). This is after thousands of qualified call-as-needed firefighters and fire operations support personnel have lost their jobs. This will come at the expense of the many other mission-critical responsibilities of those remaining employees.
Leave the wilderness wild!!!
Our public land in the form of parks, preserves, and other forms of protection: Cannot be rebuilt, cannot be regrown, cannot be repaired: These are the legacy for all future generations of USA citizens and residents. Rather than destroy these and fire the staff protecting these, raise admission prices and hire more staff! Your children and grandchildren will curse your name and memory if you continue to destroy; and will bless your name and memory and speak well of you if you preserve and build better protections for all public lands!
Public lands are suppose to belong to the people of this country. The current administration does not care about the people, our environment, our health, or protecting our wild places. These places have already been protected and they should continue to be so that we and future generations can enjoy our lands. Firing park staff and opening these places to destructive mining, logging, road building and gas leasing will harm our wild places and cause damage that can’t be undone.
We need foresters from the Forest Service and other facilities as they are literally the “guardians of the wilderness areas”.
I demand and expect a federal government to provide funding and policy to protect our natural treasures, not destroy them. If every acre of US National Forests had a dollar sign attached to it, they would be well beyond any corporate profits. Reduced or lack of funding will negatively impact air and water quality, as well as fire prevention – all hazards to populations of many species, including human.
Measures must be taken to protect our forests and environment.
Please bring back the Forest Park Rangers recently dismissed. Safety depends on their presence,
Stop gutting the U.S. Forest Service. Healthy forests mean a healthy environment. Get with it and stop the mindless cuts.
I say close all the trails that you can’t safely maintain. Lock access roads. Ban RVs. Ban SUVs. Ban open fires. Ban one-use plastics of all kinds, including wrappers. Ban weddings. Inspect all incoming vehicles for electric and gas tools and either turn the vehicles back or confiscate the tools to be picked up when the vehicle leaves the park. Confine visitors to as little of the park as you can safely take care of. Patrol the closed areas of the parks by drone, and arrest and fine anyone in them.
Cruel
This is a dangerous one-chainsaw-fits-all approach to natural resources that the government has a responsibility to protect. Like so many of these thoughtless actions, it inflicts damage that may never be repaired. We need the Forest Service, at full strength.
The environment is all humans have left to survive. It must be protected if humans are to survive.
The vast majority of Americans don’t want a reduction of personnel or services in the Forest Service. It’s just another unthinking act of the inept administration. This will come back to haunt them, but it will be too late for wild places. I urge this present reduction to be reversed. We had a good agency before. Let it continue to serve the people.
Thank you for this vital update about the devastating Trump destruction of the Forest Service. There are so many destructive things he is doing throughout our federal infrastructure – why does he hate America so?!!! – that it is hard to keep track of it all. I am so glad you are keeping an inventory of the damage at the Forest Service because we will be building it all back soon and this inventory will be invaluable! Thank you!!!!
Wild places keep us sane and give us a chance to connect to our world. They need to exist so we can understand what the world is really like beyond our manmade constructions.
Gutting the Forest Service will cause irreparable damage to wilderness!
You make a difference in conveying the need to protect our wildlife and the wilderness they in.
Please save all nature!
Our Wild Lands represent our spiritual roots as human beings. The Nation’s Native populations protected and honored the power of forests and places with natural spiritual impact for eons. In the past couple hundreds of years, European colonists driven by ignorance and greed destroyed most of the natural resources. Forests, deserts, plains and “sacred scenery” are left only in remote areas. Technology now empowers economic exploitation of even the cherished locations of these treasures. These natural treasures must be protected from greed so our descendants can feel their honest power.
Stop the out-of-control damage being done to our country now.
Gutting of the Forest Service will cause irreparable damage to wilderness character and take years or decades to recover if ever.
Our National Forests are an irreplaceable treasure. The Forest Service has always managed them well. The haphazard cuts to the Forest Service are inexcusable.
I don’t have children but I still want to leave everyone else’s kids a better world. Don’t Republicans want their children to be able to enjoy the great outdoors? How can they want to ruin it all for their own children and grandchildren? Can they all really be that selfish? Yup, they can.
We need forests for animals and the environment to survive.
We should not be destroying these places, considering other species depend on a safe place to live and thrive!!
There are better ways to put tax dollars to use.
The gutting of the Forest Service will result in irreparable damage in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness in Washington state. The cherished Enchantments area of the Alpine Lakes is one of the busiest wildland destinations in Washington state for outdoor recreation with more than 100,000 people hiking there each year. We need to begin to rebuild a federal government that we can rely on to deliver critical services to the American public, including the Forest Service, and protect our wild landscapes from destruction.
Keep the Forest safe
The health of our citizens, and especiallly young adult, is at risk with the servere reduction in Forest Service personnel. Getting outside into our beautiful world helps strengthen mental and physical health. Additionally, our previous FS staff couldn’t keep up with essentials like monitoring backcountry camping for cleanliness and safety; cutting more staff only makes this situation more difficult. While the “leadership” in this country spends its time in penthouses and luxury hotels, the citizens of the country LOVE THE LAND. Please protect it by bringing back staff.
MOTHER EARTH IS NOT BEING CARED FOR SO IT WILL STOP HELPING US FOR ENERGY, BEAUTY , HEALTH , FOOD , AND ALL ANIMALS WILL SUFFER ALSO. WE ARE KILLING OURSELVES BY JUST HELPING THE RICH WITH TRUMP AT THE HEAD.
Gutting the protections of our Forest Service serves no good purpose but opens the door for misuse and exploitation of our forest resources. The resultant damage may be tragically extensive and, perhaps, irreversible.
Stop the gutting of The Forest Service. The forest needs all of the help it can get to ensure the survival of all life on Earth- plant, animal & human.
Our forests need protection. Professionals on the ground, scientists, educators, and leaders to name a few are being fired or asked to retire or resign. Destruction of public lands destroys wildlife, flora and fauna which can never be replaced; moreover millions of people who enjoy them will lose.
Damaged nature will take years or decades to recover. Protect our land now we protect our future.
This is disgusting. I remember reading about the damage done to national parks during covid. We’ve needed more money and better management for at least 20 years. This shows extreme disrespect for the American people (and their public land). What about wildfires and the communities nearby? If there aren’t enough fire fighters, will it just be too bad for the people in the fire’s path?
FOR THE HEALTH, WELL-BEING AND HAPPINESS OF ALL CURRENT AND FUTURE GENRATIONS, so true and desparately needed to SAVE OUR FORESTS AND THE ANIMALS THAT LIVE THERE.
Stop taking away from the people our beautiful places and our wonderful forests! They are precious and we want them and need the forest service to maintain them!
Please do not gut the Forest Service.
We need wild places, and my taxpayer dollars $$$$ should not be spent to build roads and other infrastructure.
Preserving forests and wild area is critical for sustainable human life. It is well worth the government dollars we spend.
Drastic gutting of the federal government is not the way to make good changes.