Future of trails, campgrounds uncertain
The firing of nine “probationary” employees at the Methow Valley Ranger District (MVRD) has sparked concern not only for the workers and their families, but also for the future of beloved trails and campgrounds, and the preservation of skills needed to maintain fragile ecosystems.
Uncertainty and anxiety hang over the ranger district as people process the impacts of firings carried out by the Trump Administration in the name of eliminating “waste, bloat, and insularity,” as the presidential executive order put it.
But some things are already clear to the people who manage the national forest. There won’t be enough employees to clear trails, maintain campgrounds and clean bathrooms, nor to care for the MVRD’S 22 horses and mules, which support trail work in the wilderness.
The nine employees — most of them long-term seasonal workers whose jobs were recently converted to permanent seasonal positions — were fired because they were officially on probationary status for having been at their job for less than a year.
“I was recently unethically let go from the Forest Service. It’s a disaster for public lands,” said Ray Beaupre, a 10-year veteran of trail crews for the agency. Beaupre had racked up a decade of positive performance evaluations and was promoted to a permanent position in the fall. “You don’t fire people you give promotions,” he said.
Beaupre managed and trained trail crews and coordinated volunteers. He was responsible not only for organizing the work crews, but also for creating and implementing emergency-action plans and for radio communications, he told the Methow Valley News last week. Although his job was seasonal, Beaupre could count on it, since he had what was called “rehire status.”
The MVRD converted 20 temporary seasonal jobs to permanent last year, in recreation, wilderness and wildfire. When the district learned last fall that it couldn’t hire temporary seasonal employees this spring because of an agency-wide budget shortfall, those recent hires gave managers confidence that they’d be able to keep up with at least some of the recreation and wilderness programs.
Now some of those people have been fired, even though most had worked for the district for five to 10 years. The nine fired employees make up about one-third of MVRD’s non-wildfire-related staff. They received no severance pay.
Permanent jobs were often difficult to establish, and the ranger district depended on these experienced seasonal workers every year, said Jennifer Zbyszewski, who retired in 2017 as MVRD’s recreation, trails and wilderness program manager.
‘Eliminating inefficiencies’
Supervisory staff at MVRD were told to direct all questions to the national office of the U.S. Forest Service. “[U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke] Rollins fully supports the President’s directive to improve government, eliminate inefficiencies, and strengthen USDA’s many services to the American people,” a USDA spokesperson told the Methow Valley News last week.
“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. As part of this effort, USDA has made the difficult decision to release about 2,000 probationary, nonfirefighting employees from the Forest Service,” the agency spokesperson said.
The Forest Service placed some of the blame on the Biden administration. “Released employees were probationary in status, many of whom were compensated by temporary IRA [2022 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,” the agency said.
“Secretary Rollins is committed to preserving essential safety positions and will ensure that critical services remain uninterrupted,” the agency said.
Although the cuts have been described as a way to preserve federal funds, trails and recreation programs haven’t been funded through the federal budget for a long time, Zbyszewski said.
Until the federal recreation-fee program was implemented in 2004, the agency never had enough money to pay people to clean toilets or maintain trails. The rec-fee program charges users at areas such as trailheads that provided certain amenities. Although initially controversial, the fees went toward wilderness rangers, trail crews, and campground cleaners and maintenance staff, and provided matching funds for state grants, Zbyszewski said.
Not only will the recent cuts and firings not reduce federal spending, but they’re likely to result in lower proceeds from the rec-fee program because there won’t be enough employees to enforce it, Zbyszewski said.
‘Invisible’ work
Even though the work was still seasonal, the permanent jobs included year-round benefits and health insurance, said Alex Mason. Having benefits was “another cool, stable thing in my life — for a brief period,” Mason said.
Mason has been a seasonal employee for the Forest Service since 2019. She spent the last six seasons working doing trail maintenance for the MVRD, and the past two years as a crew leader. She was hired as a permanent seasonal worker last year and, like Beaupre, was fired on Feb. 14.
With all the national news, the firing wasn’t a total surprise, but Mason was shocked by how soon it happened. Mason and her crew did hard physical labor. They logged out trails with chainsaws and used hand tools in wilderness areas.
Work done by trail crews and wilderness rangers can be invisible. It only registers when fallen trees block a trail and they have to turn around. “Nobody sees a clean toilet or a well-maintained trail,” Zbyszewski said.
Will Parke-Hoffman worked as a climbing ranger for MVRD, but his duties also included trail work, law enforcement, and even cleaning toilets. His main job was to protect the land, especially in fragile areas around Washington Pass, Parke-Hoffman told the News. He was part of a crew that built a climbers’ trail to Liberty Bell Mountain to replace a user-created trail so badly eroded that it had become a waist-deep trench.
Like the other fired workers, Parke-Hoffman was on probationary status after his job was converted to a permanent seasonal position. He’d been with the district for more than five years.
Although everyone was told they were fired for substandard job performance, the fact that these were the employees selected for permanent jobs shows they were “the cream of the crop,” Parke-Hoffman said. In fact, local supervisors made it very clear that the firing wasn’t performance related, he said.
The firing letter said the official paperwork would state that she had been fired for poor performance, but Mason has copies of superlative evaluations she received about her work.
Washington Sen. Patty Murray attacked the Trump administration for falsely claiming these workers had been fired for poor performance. “We know Trump’s firing spree isn’t about merit because they are targeting new employees, people who have been recognized for outstanding performance, and people who were recently promoted — who are now are getting fired from their newly earned jobs,” she said. Murray said 3,400 Forest Service workers had been fired nationwide.
The typical season for trail work is from May through October, so seasonal employees like Beaupre, Mason and Parke-Hoffman have other jobs during the winter. Beaupre is a ski patroller and risk manager at the Loup Loup Ski Bowl, and Mason works in retail sales.
Parke-Hoffman was also an active volunteer for the ranger district, doing snowmobile patrols and cleaning Sno-Parks. Being fired means he will probably need to find a new place to live, since the volunteer work helped him secure housing in the MVRD bunkhouse, a crucial benefit in the Methow’s costly housing market.
The crews were typically out for eight-day stretches, supported by a pack string, Mason said. This year, there is little certainty that there will be anyone to feed, water and care for the horses and mules, let alone supply trail crews in the wilderness. With no one to lead the crews, Beaupre is worried that, even with grants from private associations, no trail work will be done this year.
Lost expertise
Unlike most of the fired MVRD employees, Dan Leininger had a year-round desk job as an environmental coordinator, reviewing projects throughout the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest under the National Environmental Policy Act.
After working for years as a firefighter, both for MVRD and at the North Cascades Smokejumper Base, Leininger went back to school. He was hired as environmental coordinator a little over a year ago, a job that carries a two-year probationary period.
Leininger’s wife also works for the Forest Service. “It’s a little stressful, with two Forest Service jobs on the chopping block and two kids at Little Star,” he said.
The fired workers don’t blame the local managers. “Everyone was there to support me. It was really out of the district’s control,” Leininger said.
Remaining staff at the ranger district are disgusted and in a state of pandemonium, trying to figure out how they’ll function without these vital teams, Beaupre said. Although supervisory workers generally have some field skills, most have moved on from those jobs and now support the younger people who perform the bulk of the physical labor, Beaupre said.
The people still working at MVRD, who face “a very unpredictable and stressful next few years,” Parke-Hoffman said.
Vital skills
Firing these employees translates into a huge loss of knowledge and skills passed down from veteran trail crew workers through hands-on training and apprenticeships over many years, Parke-Hoffman said. These skills — like building bridges in the backcountry — are vital for public safety, he said.
Moreover, this high-caliber work was being done for comparatively for wages. Parke-Hoffman estimated the projects would cost four times more if MVRD had to hire private contractors. “The Forest Service has been getting a great deal, because these people love the land and love the work,” he said.
Zbyszewski worries about what the loss of so many federal workers will ultimately mean for public lands, which provide access to the natural world for everyone. Without an adequate workforce to care for natural resources, Zbyszewski fears the federal government could make the case for selling off these lands by blaming poor maintenance. These drastic cuts and firings can seem like part of a plan to make government agencies fail — and therefore force national forests into private ownership and management, she said.
With the ban on hiring temporary seasonal workers announced last year, Mason had already been bracing for inaccessible trails and gaps in maintenance. “It’s not necessarily about me — I am going to figure my life out and will be OK,” she said. But she is deeply concerned about the state of trails and other public amenities, and about the long-term future of public lands. “It’s probably going to be pretty bad,” she said.
Appeal: Firings violated federal law
Fired U.S. Forest Service employees got a bit of a reprieve on Friday (Feb. 21), when the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) asked for a 45-day injunction on the dismissals, finding that the federal agencies had violated the law when they fired thousands of workers. Probationary employees “may only be terminated if their performance or conduct demonstrates that they are unfit for federal employment,” the OSC said.
But the reprieve may be short-lived. Federal law requires agencies to initiate a reduction in force (RIF) as part of a general restructuring or downsizing, OSC said. Each agency has the right to decide whether a RIF is necessary and when the RIF will take place, but the agencies don’t have discretion to bypass RIF procedures when reorganizing on account of a lack of work or budgetary concerns, OSC said.
The appeal was filed by employees of six federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which oversees the Forest Service.
USDA and the Department of Veterans Affairs both made public statements confirming that their Feb. 13 terminations of probationary employees were done in support of President Trump’s directive to downsize government agencies and reduce spending, OSC said. One agency official said the Office of Personnel Management had suggested the agency use a template that cited “performance reasons” for termination, but ended up removing that phrase because many of the employees had performed well, OSC said.
OSC requested a 45-day stay to allow the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board to review the dismissals.
Union looking at options
The National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE), the union that represents U.S. Forest Service workers, is looking into legal action in response to the mass firings, said Aana Kulaas, NFFE steward for the Methow Valley Ranger District. “We are currently looking at all options available,” Kulaas said.
Federal law permits the termination of probationary employees based on performance or conduct, but it does not allow for mass firings, Kulaas said.
One venue for challenging the firings is through an administrative action, but some people running the boards and councils that hear the appeals have also been terminated, Kulaas said. Filing a claim is a long and complex process, and grounds for appeal are limited for probationary employees, she said.
NFFE represents 110,000 federal employees, including 20,000 Forest Service workers. Federal unions are different from unions in the private sector. They cannot negotiate wages or go on strike, Kulaas said.
The state Employment Security Department has already seen a steep increase in unemployment claims from federal workers, compared with last year at this time. Thus far in 2025, 650 federal employees have filed claims, compared to 479 at this time last year, a 36% increase. Eighty percent of those filings have been since Inauguration Day.
