Up until this weekend, Tanya Torst thought it was safe to say she was a stellar employee of the U.S. Forest Service. In just shy of two years working as the North Zone Partnership Coordinator, she won a handful of awards for pulling together projects to protect rural communities from wildfires across California's North State.
She said she had a panic attack when a termination letter from the Forest Service arrived.
“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 email read.
Similar notices were sent out to around 3,400 other Forest Service employees this weekend, part of President Trump’s efforts to cut the size of the federal government. The firings targeted relatively new hires still on their probationary period, which generally lasts up to a couple years.
“I'm probably going to have to file for bankruptcy. I have no way of paying my bills. I can't even file for unemployment because they haven't even given me the right forms yet,” said Torst.
She said she’ll land on her feet eventually. But she’s more concerned with those communities in California she was working to protect.
“All the rules are gone. And that's what makes me so upset,” said Trost. “I was doing such good work for the people of the North State. It just breaks my heart.”
Besides having dubious claims of poor performance, according to Rachel Granberg with the National Federation of Federal Employees which represents Forest Service workers, the terminations also included those who had worked for decades at the agency but were listed as in a probationary period due to clerical errors. She said some of those fired were months away from retirement.
“It's not people in D.C. who are making six figures who are getting canned. It's the people who are cleaning bathrooms and checking permits and ensuring that people can safely recreate on their public lands,” said Granberg.
Thomas Wartenberg also hadn’t heard any complaints about his work as a range technician for the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest. In that position he oversaw cattle grazing on public lands.
“We're always kind of trying to catch up with building and repairing fences, especially with the snow that we get in these forests. It just destroys the fences over the winter. So it's going to be a real pain to get that done,” said Wartenberg.
Now, he said, that forest not only has a skeleton crew to handle grazing but one less firefighter. That’s despite the Forest Service excluding firefighters and law enforcement from the terminations.
“Myself and a huge portion of the Forest Service, despite not being primary fire during fire season, we all go on fire assignments,” said Wartenberg. “So I think it's very disingenuous that they're kind of saying they did not fire firefighters, because they did.”
A United States Department of Agriculture statement alleges that no “operational firefighters” were fired.
“[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. 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,” according to a USDA spokesperson.
The statement said Rollins is committed to ensuring critical services remain uninterrupted in national forests and claims the agency only fired around 2,000 employees.
“It’s unfortunate that the Biden administration hired thousands of people with no plan in place to pay them long term,” according to the USDA spokesperson.
Last week, the National Federation of Federal Employees joined other unions in filing a lawsuit challenging the mass firing of federal employees.
“The dismantling of our federal workforce is not about cost savings, but an attempt to cause chaos and eliminate oversight of the White House, Musk, and their wealthy allies,” NFFE National President Randy Erwin said in a statement.
This story was updated on Feb. 19 to reflect comments by the United States Department of Agriculture.
