According to current and former federal employees, the Trump administration has already held office less than a month, but has already exposed the US to devastating wildfires. He says there is.
On Thursday, the administration fired 3,400 employees from the U.S. Forest Service, which manages around 109 million acres of land on the size of Texas. This lies on the freeze in funding that was also ordered by the administration that suspended work designed to remove vegetation national forests that can feed wildfires.
The work has become increasingly important as wildfires become more frequent and intense due to drought and other conditions related to climate change.
According to the current and former, a reduction in work, which amounts to about 10% of the agency's workforce, could potentially be latent in the Forest Service. Federal government employees, private companies and nonprofit organizations working to thin down forest lands.
“The forests were already in danger,” said the person who managed California's wildfire prevention project and spoke on the condition of anonymity in fear of retaliation. He said Congress gave more than $2 billion in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act until 2031 for forest management, including wildfire prevention.
The Trump administration has said staffing reductions and spending cuts will improve government efficiency. But some of these actions expose the country to more disasters and ultimately boost costs, experts say.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency quietly undermined rules designed to protect schools, libraries, fire departments and other public buildings from flooding. The U.S. Agency for Housing and Urban Development has lost staff managing disaster resilience grants that will help Americans rebuild after a catastrophe.
At the same time, the Trump administration has put a federal government effort to warm the planet and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from coal, oil and natural gas burning that creates wildfires, floods, hurricanes and other severe weather events. I'm working on rolling back.
For most of the past century, the Forest Service has been trying to protect the land by stopping forest fires. That approach did not take into consideration the occurrence of cleansing the vegetation. Now when the fire starts igniting, it gets big and hot. High temperatures and droughts driven by climate change mean dry vegetation from wildfires, or more fuel.
During the Biden administration, Congress invested in efforts to remove vegetation on federal land through a mix of thinned forests and intentional fires known as prescribed burns. However, the work is expensive and labor-intensive, and millions of acres need to be careful, so the Forest Service and other agencies were just beginning to address the need.
Even if the Trump administration resumes wildfire prevention efforts funded by the 2022 legislation, the windows for that work could have been closed in some areas, experts said. That's because forest management projects like prescribed burns can only occur safely for certain months where those fires are at a low risk of losing control.
Cuts at the Forest Service and other agencies have targeted employees who are still on probation and therefore have less protection against termination. But wholesale of probation employees meant that the reductions were not focused on poor performers as there could have been more strategic efforts.
“It's a dull tool,” said Laura McCarthy of Forester, New Mexico, who is responsible for managing the state's forests. She works closely with federal land management agencies such as the Forest Service on wildfire prevention projects.
In fact, firing new employees could mean that the Forest Service is losing people with the latest knowledge of forestry, McCarthy said. “Some of them may have reached a good modern skill set because they've just graduated,” she said. “That's the workforce that will help us achieve our administration's efficiency goals.”
In California, efforts to remove the Forest Service underbrush are currently suspended, according to people who manage the organisation that ran wildfire prevention projects in the state and spoke anonymously due to concerns of retaliation.
Given the way President Trump criticized the California president for not removing dry vegetation in forest areas, he says poor forest management helped the wildfires that devastated Los Angeles last month.
The Forest Service is not the only federal agency that has hampered wildfire efforts.
In the internal division where 1,000 employees were fired on Friday, managers will work on fire prevention projects following the Trump administration's freeze fund from the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Act and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. We were unable to hire a seasonal crew to.
Local managers are also rushing to understand how to pay permanent employees, the person said.
“We've had a staffing shortage for many years, so when those BIL and IRA funds arrived, it filled the open vacancy,” he asked to remain anonymous, fearing retaliation. The manager said. “But we were just told to stop moving forward with employment.”
The impact can be seen even in small ways. For example, a fire truck cannot be used to help combat wildfires, as six people have only one full-time employee.
“When you arrive in July and August and there are bushfires, how are you going to manage them?” the person said.
According to current and former employees, the impact of massive layoffs can last long.
Many of the interim employees fired this week were frontline workers, not behind a desk in Washington, but people working in the forest.
If the Forest Service tries to replenish positions to work on fire prevention, the nature of this week's shooting – suddenly, without the obvious logic, could be difficult to recruit.
“Who wants to return in their righteous minds?” said one person. “This will ripple over the years.”
