Taking Action for Public Lands
Following the mass layoffs in our nation's land management agencies, we offer our take on how to best respond
Feb 21, 2025
I live in a small town surrounded by Forest Service land, about an hour north of Yellowstone National Park. Just about everybody here treasures our landscape and wildlife. Many are employed directly by land management agencies, or by nonprofits, guiding companies, and other adjacent businesses.
Last Thursday, when I started hearing whispers about mass layoffs at the U.S. Forest Service, it felt like a gut punch to the economy and lifeblood of where I live. My town is like lots of others across the West. Public lands aren’t just part of life here. They define it.
The Trump Administration’s DOGE cuts to land management agencies late last week began at a furious pace. To date, here’s what’s gone down: At least 3,400 people have been fired from the Forest Service. Another 1,000 employees lost jobs at the National Park Service. Hundreds more are in the same boat at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Geological Survey, which focuses on science and monitoring, often on public lands.
Firefighters and law enforcement officers are purportedly exempt from these actions. The layoffs, in general, are “probationary” workers. This carries a connotation that these workers have done something bad—and this may be part of the DOGE team’s strategy. But the reality is that probationary status simply means people within the first year, or sometimes, two, of their position. Often, these are individuals who’ve pursued a dream of serving public lands for a decade or more. They’ve hustled to work seasonal positions before finally getting their dream gig—only to have that dream stripped away. Probationary workers also include senior, experienced employees who have simply been promoted from one position to another. These positions run the gamut from trail workers to scientists to park rangers to administrative and management roles.
While the friends, families, and communities of these workers can already feel the acute pain of these cuts, the rest of the country will see the staggering impacts of these layoffs in the months to come. We’ll see less readiness to combat fires that threaten communities and infrastructure. We’ll see trails made impassable with dead and down trees. Trash will proliferate in campgrounds and along popular hiking areas. Pit toilets will fill. There are already tens of billions of dollars in work that needs to be done to improve the landscape and infrastructure on public land. That backlog will grow dramatically. The areas we love will suffer along with the people who steward those landscapes. Some organizations theorize, perhaps cynically—or perhaps not—that this is a strategic assault meant to devalue public lands and make an easy case for privatizing them down the road.
Government workers at these agencies are forbidden from talking to the press. Official communications offer little or no comment. People on the inside tell me the consequences on employee morale are dire. No one knows who’s next. There have been onslaughts of emails encouraging employees to resign. Directives from up high encourage turning in bad behavior, whether that means dissent or voicing support for DEI initiatives. Employees (who for now will remain anonymous for the sake of preserving their livelihoods) told me they don’t know if they can handle the stress, uncertainty, and anger for another month, much less another four years.
“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” Trump’s new director of the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought said in a 2023 speech. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work.” That strategy, it seems, is effective. These aren’t bureaucrats, but they are traumatized. These layoffs are hitting ordinary folks who’ve devoted their careers to serving the landscapes and ecosystems that make this country great.
The changes are broader than the layoffs, too. “Science is dead,” one current employee told me. Webinars and presentations are canceled minutes before they’re scheduled to occur. Attacks on benchmark environmental laws, like the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act, are moving along at lightspeed. Impactful policies, including a recent change to policy that extends federal compensation to wildland firefighters who suffer from breast, uterine, or ovarian cancers, face pauses or outright reversal due to the administration’s quest to overturn former president Biden’s “woke agenda.”
Organizations and groups that partner with land management agencies are also feeling the hurt. Contracts are getting canceled. Tens of billions of dollars from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act remain frozen at the time of writing. The future of entire organizations is up in the air.
The pace of change is so fast that by the time you’re reading this, there may have been a new attack on public lands. In the days or weeks to come, for example, many expect a large-scale announcement of reductions in national monuments. Just last night, I heard rumors of another round of mass layoffs in the works.
We’ll dig more into the human stories of all this as it continues to unfold. But for now, we want to focus on what’s most immediate: what we can do about it.
Call and Write Your Federal Representatives
Public lands are not partisan. In fact, according to recent polling data, most voters in eight western states oppose funding cuts for federal public lands agencies. The vast majority of voters in many of those states voted for Donald Trump. Doesn’t matter who you voted for—you might not agree with all of their policies. Sometimes a real-live human might pick up the phone and take a message. Other times, you’ll just get a voicemail. Either if it doesn’t seem like it, politicians do listen. You are their constituents.
Don’t know who your legislators are or how to find their contact? No need to be embarrassed. Visit Congress.gov’s portal and fill in your address or zip code. Your legislators will pop up, along with their emails and phone numbers. The organization 5 Calls also makes this easy and time-efficient. They even have a pre-written template that can help serve as inspiration for what you say when you make your calls. Some groups like Outdoor Alliance have also created forms that make it easy to submit messages. Listening to politicians over the years, I’ve learned that these pre-written messages can be effective, but more than individual voices, they tend to get lumped together and overlooked.
My advice: Make your own calls and craft your own emails. Stay civil, be specific, keep it concise, and make clear demands. Call and do it often. Encourage your friends to do the same.
Organize and Mobilize
Already, rallies and protests are popping up in areas feeling the impact of these assaults on public lands. Attend rallies. Help organize them and spread the word. Share your own stories. Make signs with friends. An unfortunate bright side of all this is that the most egregious acts and terrible times can inspire unity and collective action.
However, not all organizing needs to come in the form of protests. Creating informal networks of land stewards who help maintain popular trails and other recreation areas is more important than ever. Even creating “conditions reports” over social media or email can go a long way. This is a time when we can take more ownership of our public lands than ever.
Connect and Communicate
Check in with your friends who work for the agencies or have been laid off. Let them know you care. Get a drink or a coffee or just go for a ski or a hike; listen to what they’re going through.
Reach out to local nonprofits to find out if budget freezes and contract cancellations have hit their operations. Ask about volunteer opportunities.
Connect with bigger organizations or more local groups who advocate for public land. Find out what they’re doing to advocate for change. The groups below are a starting point but are just scratching the surface of organizations where to dig. Specific national parks and national forests also often have nonprofits that rally on their behalf.
get educated
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Threats to Public Lands
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Multiple Use on Public Lands
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Public Lands Types
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The Outdoor Recreation Economy
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How We Fund Our Public Lands
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Easements, Explained
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