I did hear from a few people that I work with as a volunteer. Their seasonal wilderness rangers are not getting hired this year, and they lost their only intern. That leaves one wilderness ranger for the entire forest.
Meanwhile, all funds have been frozen, so the contracts to clear and burn high fuel areas of the forest are all cancelled. No pire prevention this year.
And the snowpack is lower than usual. We've had a lot of precipitation in Northern California, but it's been warmer and wetter than usual, so the snowpack isn't as thick as usual. That means an early snowmelt, and a long fire season.
I may be able to add some additional clarity as there are several separate and distinct actions happening that will affect NPS and USFS recreation crews.
USFS has acted on two separate decisions, made at different times:
1. September 2024. The Chief of the
USFS issues the directive that for summer season 2025, NO TEMPORARY EMPLOYEES will be hired. This is in response to an Agency shortfall of more than $85 million. Many reasons they so grossly overspent. Very difficult to accept such fiscal irresponsibility.
2. February 2025. DOGE Fires 3400
USFS PROBATIONARY EMPLOYEES from the USFS permament staff. Most of these employees are field level staff in Recreation on trail crews, wilderness rangering, campground maintenance, etc. A significant number also do timber, silviculture, and biological surveys. The key point is that even though this group of workers was probationary, they likely had multiple seasons of experience from prior seasons as Temporary Employees. The USFS held a key hiring event in 2024 that was to bring some life and job security to these highly skilled, experienced and knowledgeable Temporary Employees. This hiring event brought 3400 of those high performing temp employees into the permanent workforce (health care, 401K, job security, upward mobility) nationwide. Due to the oft seasonal nature of the work they became what is called "Permanent Seasonal" Employees. A portion of the calendar year they are placed in non-pay status (sometimes called lay off) with no discontinuity of their benefits (they do have to continue to pay their portion on health care and are obviously not contributing to their 401K during that time).
NPS implements this decision:
3. January 2025. DOGE/Trump Administration mandates a hiring freeze on all Federal positions. This I know less about the details of.
NPS leadership announces they are not going to hire and/or rehire their traditional summer TEMPORARY EMPLOYEE workforce. This essentially is all field based crews in multiple occupations, as a response to the Hiring Freeze. It is my understanding that this may have been reversed/rescinded either completely or for targeted positions.
A note: the workforce known by most of the public as
seasonals is officially hired as
temporary employees. Those are synonymus terms in the eye of the public but the agencies have that specific termonology.
Permanent Seasonals are those employees that work seasonal field seasons and spend the remaining time in non-pay status. They have the same benefit structure as
Permanent Full Time employees
Hopefully that helps folks understand the employees involved in the firings/layoffs/freeze. The upshot is that most of the entire field crew workforce doing so many tasks in Federal Parks, Monuments and Forests will be missing for the forseable future. At the least that includes all of the 2025 summer field season.
