• The federal job cuts will significantly impact how Oregonians and visitors work and play on public lands.
• With fewer people and limited resources, some worry public lands will be shut down.
• In the absence of rangers, others argue a “rewilding” of public lands could be beneficial.

Gina Porzio was preparing for her fourth season as a ranger on the Rogue River when she got the email.

“It just said my job had been rescinded,” she said, becoming one of the thousands of federal employees cut last week in an effort by the Trump administration to slash government spending. “It was a shock to all of us.”

Porzio has been a guide on Oregon’s most famous river since she was 16 years old and loved her job with the Bureau of Land Management keeping rafters and hikers safe.

“My job is helping the public — and it’s a little bit of everything,” said Porzio, who lives in Grants Pass. “We do medical evacuations when people are injured. We pull boats off the rocks when people are stuck. We work in wildfire and transport firefighters to places they can’t reach. We clear the Rogue River Trail so people can hike it, we clear garbage from campsites, check permits, clean toilets — it’s a million different things.”

In past years, the BLM’s Rogue River program had about eight to 10 employees to patrol the river and issue permits. Now, there’s just one person left, Porzio said, to manage one of the most popular rafting trips in the world.

“If nothing changes, it’s going to be the Wild West,” she said. “I don’t see how we could even have a river program with so few people.”

Porzio’s story is not unique. Federal job cuts across the state could have a major impact on how Oregonians and visitors work and play on public lands.  

Federal job cuts hit every part of Oregon’s outdoors

If there’s one word to describe this coming recreation season in Oregon it would be “uncertainty.”  

The federal government owns about 53% of Oregon’s land — more than 32 million acres — and much of its forest, mountains and desert is managed by the U.S. Forest Service, BLM and, to a much smaller extent, the National Park Service.

The number of people working at those agencies will be far smaller in 2025.

Even before President Trump took office, the Forest Service announced in autumn of 2024 that it was not hiring seasonal non-fire employees in 2025 as it had in the past.

“We understand that this will reverberate across all national forests,” said Kristin Carver, public affairs specialist for the Forest Service Pacific Northwest last October. “A few examples of their valuable work include helping in maintaining trails, campgrounds, and other recreational facilities among many other duties.”

In other words, it was already going to be a short-staffed year on public lands.

But this month, federal job cuts sliced even deeper, eliminating 2,000 jobs in the Forest Service, around 800 at BLM and another 1,000 at national parks. Even more employees took voluntary buy outs, but it’s not clear how many.

Trump administration says it’s ‘eliminating inefficiencies’

U.S. Department of Agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins said she “fully supports the President’s directive to improve government, eliminate inefficiencies, and strengthen USDA’s many services to the American people,” said a statement. The Forest Service is part of USDA.

“We have a solemn responsibility to be good stewards of the American people’s hard-earned taxpayer dollars and to ensure that every dollar spent goes to serve the people, not the bureaucracy,” she added.

The USDA said the decision to release 2,000 probationary and non-firefighting employees was unfortunate but that Rollins was committed to “preserving essential safety positions and will ensure that critical services remain uninterrupted.”

“To be clear, none of these individuals were operational firefighters,” the statement said. “Released employees were probationary in status, many of whom were compensated by temporary (Inflation Reduction Act) funding. It’s unfortunate that the Biden administration hired thousands of people with no plan in place to pay them long term.”

A probationary employee means the individual was a recent hire or long-serving employee who was moved or promoted into a new position.

Detroit district of the Willamette National Forest ‘is devastated’

Those in the field say the cuts go far deeper than “eliminating inefficiencies.”  

Local information is hard to come by, but at the 1.6 million-acre Willamette National Forest, east of Salem, at least 33 positions were cut and almost the entire recreation program was axed. The Willamette includes some of Oregon’s most popular backcountry and large swaths of forest still being restored from the 2020 Labor Day Fires.

Brady Kleihauer, a wilderness ranger for the Detroit district of Willamette National Forest, was one of those eliminated. He worked on a trail crew, wildfire crews and gathered data on wildlife and botany.

“The district is devastated,” Kleihauer said.

Umpqua National Forest, also popular for recreation and rebuilding from the 2020 wildfires, lost at least 16 employees.

It’s unclear how many employees were lost at other national forests across Oregon, but it’s been described as “significant” in numerous locations.

Ochoco National Forest, Crooked River National Grassland ‘had entire programs cut’

Given the lack of seasonal workers and cuts, current and former employees say it’s unclear whether campgrounds will open, trails will be cleared or permits will be issued for firewood, mushroom harvest, Christmas tree harvest and wilderness access.

“We had entire programs cut — our recreation and public service is completely gone,” said Isabella Isaksen, former public information officer for central Oregon’s Ochoco National Forest and the Crooked River National Grassland.

Isaksen said current employees are so short-staffed that it’s difficult to complete legal timber sales, finish grazing permits or craft any sort of recreation program. Other employees described a state of shock and a lack of direction from Washington D.C.

“(The people still working) continually tell me how concerned they are because the work they are being asked to do is not possible,” Isaksen said.  

Isaksen, a U.S. Army veteran and U.S. Olympian, also echoed the fear that the cuts would leave the Forest Service unprepared for wildfire season.

“Our 2024 fire season was the worst in central Oregon history,” she said. “And while fire might not have been a primary duty, all of us worked on fire in some capacity. We wrapped buildings, helped create defensible space around critical infrastructure and felled hazard trees. Some of us fought on the line. We were already understaffed last year, so we’re very concerned about this year.”

Terminations that cite performence ‘wrong’

The abrupt terminations also struck a raw nerve because they were conducted under false pretenses.  

Megan Hanson was a biological science technician in soils for Deschutes National Forest, working to ensure the long-term health of the forest and ecosystem. When the pandemic hit, she moved into environmental sciences and thought she was launching a new career with the Forest Service.

Then came the email. It stated, along with others, that “the agency finds, based on your performance, that you have not demonstrated that your further employment at the Agency would be in the public interest,” the letter said.

“It’s wrong,” she said. “Our deputy district ranger wrote that we had excellent performance.”

“I thought my job was secure and was told to expect to come back to work,” Hanson said. “I feel betrayed, not by the Forest Service, but by the current administration.”  

What will federal job cuts on public lands in Oregon mean on the ground?

Unless something changes, there will be far fewer people and resources working in Oregon’s public lands this summer. And there aren’t a lot of clear answers about what that will actually mean on the ground.   

In other states, the impact of the job losses is already becoming apparent — multiple national parks have scaled back on days and hours when they’re open. Whether that happens at Oregon’s Crater Lake National Park or the Oregon Caves National Monument and Preserve remains to be seen.

Much of Oregon’s outdoors is somewhat less developed, a mixture of campgrounds and trails on national forest land.

Private concessionaires do run many campgrounds and facilities, and nonprofits have taken up much of the work in maintaining trails. Volunteers also are likely to take a greater role. But the agencies still fund, train, and establish contracts with those groups.  

The Siskiyou Mountain Club, which manages a vast network of trails in southern Oregon and northern California, had a $320,000 agreement for work in California’s Marble Mountain Wilderness canceled. They lost another $50,000 for work on the Pacific Crest Trail.

With few people and limited resources, some worry public lands will be shut down.

“My fear is that they just close the gates,” said Andy Stahl, executive director for Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics. “The Forest Service has shown that when they think a place is too dangerous, they just close it. They could cite liability concerns, decide they don’t have the resources and just lock it up.”  

A case for less management of public lands

In the absence of rangers, Oregon’s public lands could simply become a more Wild West experience. If there are no rangers to enforce permit systems for wilderness areas and rivers, do they still exist?

Stahl said a lighter touch to management might not be the end of the world.

“Sixty years ago these types of jobs didn’t exist and people just floated down rivers or hiked trails full of deadfall at their own risk,” Stahl said. “What we’ve created in recent years is really a nanny state. People talk a lot about rewilding. Well, rewilding doesn’t take a lot of employees. You just kind of walk away. I still remember a time when the Forest Service barely paid attention to recreation. They were only really concerned with logging.”

Isaksen said the Wild West on Oregon’s public lands may not work well for the land and wildlife. The record number of people visiting the outdoors has already brought trash, chaos and overflowing parking to popular locations across the West.

“There has been such an increase in recreation use, especially in places like the Deschutes National Forest, that if there’s no stewardship things will very quickly and dramatically degrade,” Isaksen said. “If we want to look at history, the Wild West also meant the near extinction of wildlife and major forest degradation.”

Overall, Stahl noted this could be a major inflection point for public lands. At the agencies, there is no clear idea yet of how this summer is actually going to work.

Members of Oregon’s congressional delegation denounce cuts

Oregon Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley issued statements denouncing the cuts.

Merkley said in a statement that staffing shortages at beloved outdoor destinations “bring threats of shuttered visitor centers, dangerously slow emergency response times, dirty facilities, and even park closures.”

“More must be done to protect a full set of seasonal positions and permanent employees who are essential to maintaining and preserving our public lands for folks to enjoy for generations,” Merkley said.

Wyden added: “After a year when Oregon experienced a record amount of acreage burned in wildfires, it’s asinine for Donald Trump and Elon Musk to slash the capacity to prepare for those blazes and to battle these infernos in our state and throughout the West,” Wyden said. Add

“Cutting jobs and freezing the hiring of seasonal firefighters after Congress approved those public lands investments is unconstitutional and puts lives and livelihoods in Oregon at unconscionable risk,”Wyden said.

In a series of sometimes raucous town hall meetings, U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz, Oregon’s lone Congressional Republican, said he supported the cuts, according to reporting from the La Grande Observer. “I’m perfectly happy with our president doing his best to exercise his legal power,” Bentz said at the town hall.

Zach Urness has been an outdoors reporter in Oregon for 18 years and is host of the Explore Oregon Podcast. He can be reached at zurness@StatesmanJournal.com or (503) 399-6801. Find him on X at @ZachsORoutdoors and BlueSky at oregonoutdoors.bsky.social