‘Public lands will suffer’: Idaho, home to seven national forests, loses integral forest service employees across the state to Trump terminations

Patrick Shea is worried about Idaho’s public lands. He’s concerned about the inconvenience of overgrown trails and dirty bathrooms, and the dangers and destruction of unchecked wildfires and floods.

Since he was 15 years old, Shea said he has been dedicated to the Northwest’s parks and lands – he spent time in Yellowstone, then in Idaho and Montana building trails. He worked in wilderness advocacy. And, when he turned 20, he landed his dream job with the U.S. Forest Service.

He became trained in swift-water rescue, certified as a wilderness first responder and qualified as a “type 2” firefighter for the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest, according to documents he shared with The Spokesman-Review. He also cleaned the public toilets, kept trails open and communicated with trail users and backpackers, even calling in fires.

Three years later, he received a letter via email along with thousands of other Forest Service employees that they were fired for poor performance. His time as a river ranger in the Hells Canyon National Recreation Area in Riggins, Idaho, was over.

Federal unions are arguing the firings by the Trump administration are illegal because Congress never approved the cuts.

Shea, a member of the The National Federation of Federal Employees, isn’t as concerned about himself as he is about the future of Idaho’s national forests. His job site lost 40% of its staff.

All he can feel is anger.

“The impact of this gross reduction in force will devastate … national forests for years to come,” Shea said in an interview Tuesday.

So what will happen to Hells Canyon, or the rest of similar recreation areas?

“The toilets are going to be clogged,” Shea warned. “Toilet paper will not be stocked. Trails will be closed. Water samples will not be collected at campgrounds to make sure they’re tested and safe from certain bacteria. We call in fires when we see them – fires will not be called in.”

About 48 miles south of Riggins sits the town of McCall, a tourist destination for skiers and outdoorsmen. It’s where backcountry ranger and fill-in firefighter for the Payette National Forest Bryce Spare received the same termination letter Friday.

Like Shea, Spare was told he was fired for poor performance, even though nothing about his performance reviews indicated he was falling behind in any way.

Spare and other Forest Service workers in the Payette copied their most recent performance evaluations on the email and sent the termination letter back to where it came from.

They got no response.

“Not surprising,” Spare said.

Since the letters went out, Spare estimates roughly 45 employees were terminated throughout the Payette National Forest, which spans 12% of the national forest land in Idaho.

In the recreation sector of the forest, five people kept their jobs after the nationwide cuts. But to maintain over 1,600 miles of trails across the Payette, Spare said, there must be at least 20 employees.

Only one person remains from the recreation department in McCall and New Meadows District, Spare said.

“It’s all of the local popular trails around McCall, down to the river and that whole area going to Council. That whole area has one person now,” he added. “We can’t do trail work with one person.”

Spare warns there will no longer be people to fix signs, warn the public about weather or closure areas, no one to clean the bathrooms and no one to support frontline firefighters during a wildfire. Few trails will be cleared, and campgrounds may not even open during the summer because there will be no one to open them, he said.

And when the fire bell rings, already overworked employees will have to push themselves even harder.

“Almost all the employees fired so far are red-carded – that means although we weren’t full-time fire, we have helped and assisted in fire assignments,” Spare said. “There is so much more of a need now. It will have an impact on how the forest is able to respond to fires.”

In Stanley, Idaho, a small tourist town a four-hour drive from McCall, sits the ranger station for the famed Sawtooth National Recreation Area. When people call for information, it’s Clare Vergobbi who answers the phone, and she also swears in junior rangers and guides tourists as the area’s administrative support assistant.

The Sawtooth had 37 employees, Vergobbi said. After Friday, nearly half of them have been fired.

We have “756,000 acres and over a million visitors a year,” Vergobbi sighed, “and we no longer have a visitor program. Our offices will be closed.”

Vergobbi was hired 10 months ago, which means she is a probationary employee. She was on the administration’s chopping block, too.

“In all of my performance evaluations, there is not a single thing that has ever given me any sort of below satisfactory or exemplary performance. Usually, when you fire someone based on performance you have to provide that evidence,” she said.

“There is no precedent for the way we were all fired.”

Vergobbi spent most of her life visiting the national forest in Stanley. She has watched tourism increase over the years, along with people’s general appreciation for the landscape. It’s why she knows, firsthand, how much effort goes into maintaining the land and amenities.

“A good chunk of our rec programs were killed. People who fix waterlines, clean campgrounds and clear the roads when there’s a mudslide to keep access on the forest, gone,” she said. “Our entire ranger program was terminated, weed monitoring … people working with ranchers for grazing and animal management on the forest.”

Even most employees monitoring stream and water quality for salmon are gone, she said, which “decimates what we are able to do.”

Like her counterparts in other areas of Idaho, Vergobbi stressed what could happen when another wildfire breaks out – almost all of the employees have, at some point, been pulled into responding to a wildfire, even if they aren’t full-time firefighters.

“All of us are at a loss right now,” she said. “There will be issues with access to trails and roads.

“There’s going to be trees down and washouts. There will be things that cannot be fixed.”

Brad Smith, conservation director for the Idaho Conservation League, said Tuesday that he’d heard that Idaho Panhandle National Forest staff were ordered to fire seasonal employees, but he didn’t know how many people had been let go.

He said the firings raise a number of important questions for the Panhandle, which stretches from the St. Joe River north to the Canadian border.

“Are the campgrounds going to be open, are the trails going to get cleared, are the outhouses going to get pumped?” Smith said. “If there’s no staff to operate and maintain those facilities, it’s going to impact the visitor experience.

“There could be real serious public impacts with these arbitrary firings that will impact Idahoans and Americans in real ways.”

Idaho Republicans, previously vocal in their support of President Donald Trump before and after the election, appear largely silent on his sweeping mass firings across their state.

The Idaho GOP declined to comment, a spokesperson told The Spokesman-Review Tuesday.

Gov. Brad Little’s office also did not respond to a request for comment, although the Idaho leader posted on X Tuesday evening about signing a border security bill, in which he praised Trump to “Make America Safe Again.”

A spokesperson for Idaho U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo said via email that his office has not received any further information on the firings, other than what has been reported in the media.

Communication officers around the Idaho Panhandle have directed all inquiries to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, but the department has continually declined to confirm any number of firings across the nation or by state.

With no response and few answers, large gatherings in the towns of McCall and Stanley arose Monday to protest Trump and the firings and layoffs of federal workers.

“It truly obliterated a community, a substantial part of my life, almost overnight. It was the demolition of people who have been working their way up in life, people who you want to have in government because they care,” Shea said. “They care about goals and aspirations and have their beliefs about public lands. And they were all terminated on Friday for cheap politics.”

Idaho Democratic Chair Lauren Necochea, a former state representative, released a statement Tuesday calling the firings affecting Idahoans “reckless” and “disastrous.”

“Today, it’s the Forest Service workers who clear the trails, clean campgrounds, mitigate wildfires and conduct avalanche prevention. Their terminations are a cruel attack on public servants and an unconstitutional power grab. Idaho Democrats refuse to stay silent while your livelihoods, safety and quality of life are on the line,” the statement said.

Necochea then invited Republican leaders to join in speaking out about the terminations, but added, “We won’t hold our breath.”

Spare, who is transgender, says the firings in combination with Trump’s mission to exclude trans people from government recognition feels like “decades of progress” are coming undone. Things seemed to be getting better in terms of equality before being ripped away after Jan. 20, he added.

“Those orders created a toxic work environment for me. Like, how am I supposed to go to work in a place that is saying I don’t exist? I don’t think I’m alone in that,” Spare said. “I planned to stick it out, because I care about this job.”

In Shea’s mind, he sees this as a time of solidarity. It’s something the country could use right now, he added.

But everyone seems to just be “guessing” about what to do – some are staying in the place they work to see if they can get their job back, while others are planning to leave.

Shea and Spare are in agreement about one thing: National forests will face an unstable and uncertain future.

Spare believes this is the first step to purposefully dismantling the national forests, perhaps selling them to the highest bidders.

“I’m concerned for our public lands,” he said.

“It’s going to be the remaining few to bear the brunt of the work,” Shea added Tuesday. “Public lands will suffer because of this.”

Reporters Michael Wright and Orion Donovan Smith contributed to this story.

Editor’s note: This article was changed on Feb. 19, 2025 to correct the title of Idaho Democratic Chair Lauren Necochea. She is a former state representative.