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The other day, my boyfriend and I were in the front yard of South Lake Tahoe. We all met while working at the same US Forest Service station. We were on the fire service and he was on the trail crew. He waved slowly and asked him how things were, despite I know the answer.
“Yeah, you know, you’re just fired,” he confirmed.
Our friend worked at the station for over a decade longer than we had, but like the majority of federal trail workers, he was a seasonal employee for most of his career. He finally achieved a coveted and lasting position last year, part of the Forest Service’s efforts to stabilize the workforce under the Biden administration, but it is no longer there. Along with thousands of other federal employees who make public lands functioning and accessible, he was informed that his employment was deemed to be in the public interest any more.
Last month, Brooke Rollins, the newly created secretary of the agricultural sector, including the U.S. Forest Service, issued a statement thanking the agency’s firefighters for their service. “I’m committed,” she said. “To ensure that you have the tools and resources you need to carry out your mission safely and effectively.” On the same day, the Forest Service fired about 10% of its highly versatile workforce. Many were entitled to respond to fires and to the essential response to their prevention.
The termination was suspended last Wednesday, and the Personnel Committee investigated whether the department acted legally. As the fire progresses, it affects not only fires, but also all aspects of recreation on public lands, including roads, trails, toilets and campsite maintenance. Availability of guidance from the Rangers. Search and rescue capabilities. And those who live near public lands will be affected even if they do not use them. Rural areas are particularly vulnerable to both fires and economic flows of lost work.
What happens to our public lands can be felt in cities and suburbs as well. The most destructive wildfires, including those just wasted in parts of Southern California, are primarily fought at the interface between urban and public lands.
Additionally, Wildfire Smoke causes health problems in large cities such as LA, Bay Area, Chicago and New York City. The health of the basin we all drink depends on the management of forests and scope.
The forest department’s compilation attempt comes when everything we can should be done to enhance responsible land management. Climate change, fuel accumulation, and the ever-growing number of houses in vulnerable areas have become the main focus of agencies managing public lands. But restraint is a large part of how we were in this predicament in the first place.
For decades, the Forest Service has adhered to a full fire control policy to protect the harvest of precious wood. This disrupts the fire cycle that has been part of the American landscape for thousands of years, leading to a dangerous accumulation of fuels that can supply catastrophic fires. We understand that prescription, management and cultural fires are the best tools needed to survive the pyrocene era. However, due to threatened layoffs, the ability to use them faces dramatic reductions.
About an hour after we said goodbye and good luck to our friends, Elon Musk announced that he would explain what he had accomplished at work the previous week or ask a federal employee to be fired. Many of those who received subsequent emails to that effect probably spent weeks cutting trees and cutting brushes. This is especially bitter irony, considering the sight of a undoubtedly soft hand groping through the billionaire’s chrome-plated chainsaw. “This,” he declared, “The Chainsaw of the bureaucracy!”
But when the Trump administration is after efficiency, the elimination of thousands of employees willing to do multiple important jobs due to relatively low wages seems like an odd place to start. Federal land management agencies are generally a mysterious goal. The total budgets of the Forest Service, National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management accounted for around 0.2% of federal spending last year.
So, what are masks, Trump and Congress’ rights? Anyone who works in land management knows that these agencies are constantly underfunded and unsupported by Republicans, making them more and more effective as demands on them become increasingly urgent. Now this blood blood is accelerating and it will soon be time to go to your throat.
When these institutions are surprised, they hand over the land to private management – when they are extracted from wood, minerals, or oil, or to private ownership and development, they seem logical and even appealing. The Trump administration has been indicted towards this paradigm, appointing a former timber executive to lead the Forest Service and issued an executive order calling for an expansion of timber production (though timber production infrastructure cannot keep up with current biological supply).
Sustainable logging can be a valuable forest management tool, but research shows that when land is managed primarily for resource extraction, it is less resilient to wildfires. This is a myopic, profit-driven turn to an ultimately unsustainable land use model.
What do the public leave? Are there still places to hike, fish, hunt, dirt bike, and ski? Will the basin that maintains us be clean and healthy? Can a rancher graze livestock for $1.35 per person? Or will the new landlord set a new rate?
Public land is one of America’s greatest and most definitive resources. I hope that the unselected billionaires and his minions will not let them be in danger without fighting.
Zora Thomas is a former US Forest Service firefighter and is currently a freelance writer and EMT.
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