Reno Gazette Journal: Fired Forest Service workers warn of Northern Nevada wildfire dangers after mass Trump cuts
- Feb 21
- 4 min read
"It really is mismanagement at its worst, and it's going to have a devastating impact for states like Nevada," Sen. Cortez Masto said
Reno Gazette Journal
Published 8:55 am P.T. Feb. 21, 2025
Key Points
Fire support staff who clear brush and fallen trees among 2,000 jobs cut in U.S. Forest Service.
USDA, which oversees the Forest Service, blames firings on Biden administration and says firefighting jobs have been saved.
Poor performance given as reason for firings despite workers receiving positive job evaluations.
Erikka Olson worries how Northern Nevada will handle this year’s wildfires after she was one of 2,000 Forest Service workers who were recently terminated by the Trump administration.
“I'm honestly pretty terrified of this upcoming fire season,” she said.
It had been her job for nearly a year to, among other things, report signs of wildfires and remove fuels that could spread fires further and faster.
Last summer, Olson said, she and her fellow Forest Service crew members cleared more than 100 trees that blocked trails in three wilderness areas around Reno and Carson City — trails that are not only used by people enjoying the public lands but by firefighters needing access to knock down blazes.
“One of my coworkers who’s been with the Forest Service for over 20 years calls trails the veins of the forest,” she said. “When they get clogged, that's when fire and disaster can happen. When you're not clearing up brush and fallen trees, there's just so much more fuel that if a fire were to spark, it spreads a lot faster.”
Her team was part of the support staff fighting the Davis Fire in September that burned down 11 homes and a church. She wasn’t trained yet to work on fires but had hoped to do that this year.
Now she won’t be able to.
Ginny-Mei Adams from Carson City fought wildland fires in Utah and was part of the Forest Service support crew helping with the Davis Fire.
She was terminated, too.
“If there were another Davis Fire, you'd definitely see that the fire crews would be significantly understaffed” because of the Forest Service cuts, Adams said.
The Forest Service manages about 6 million acres in Nevada, including the Lake Tahoe Basin, the Ruby Mountains within the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, and the Spring Mountains National Recreation Area outside Las Vegas.
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto calls Forest Service cuts reckless
Firing people like Olson and Adams concerns Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nevada.
“Fighting fires isn't just about the firefighters,” she told the RGJ on Thursday.
“You not only need these incredible, courageous firefighters,” she said, “but also the support staff. They’re an essential resource.”
An active fire is not the only time Forest Service trail crews are needed, she added.
“It is in the off-season when they are trying to reduce the fuels for these fires or to develop a fire break or develop ways that they know they can protect both our urban areas and our forest areas,” Cortez Masto said. “It is really year-round, and they need the resources to do it.”
Terminating Forest Service workers shows a lack of understanding about what they do, she said.
“These actions taken by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, who is head of this DOGE group that is looking at doing all of these cuts, are reckless,” the senator said.
“What they are doing is just going through haphazardly and recklessly letting people go in the middle of a fire season, when we see how bad these fires are across the West. … It really is mismanagement at its worst, and it's going to have a devastating impact for states like Nevada.”
Cortez Masto mentioned a government efficiency commission put together by President Harry Truman that worked with Congress to figure out what areas of government to streamline.
“That makes sense,” she said. “There would be support for that — but that’s not what this president has done.”
She noted that Musk is not a government employee.
“He's a billionaire in the private sector who has over a billion dollars in federal contracts,” Cortez Masto said. “He is not being strategic in the sense that he's looking for the fat and cutting it.”
Instead, she said, he is cutting staff at agencies that might have oversight of his federal contracts.
“What is happening here is not in the best interest of the public, it is in the best interest of billionaires like Elon Musk and others whose contracts will benefit and who are going to personally benefit from this,” Cortez Masto said.
“And the hard-working Americans, the middle class — everybody who we should be fighting for and making sure we're doing right by them — are going to be harmed. It's on their backs, and we see that playing out right now.”
USDA defense of Forest Service cuts
U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins "fully supports" President Trump's efficiency efforts and the staffing cuts to the Forest Service, which is part of the USDA, a spokesperson said Friday.
“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," the spokesperson said in an email statement to the RGJ.
"As part of this effort, USDA has made the difficult decision to release about 2,000 probationary, non-firefighting employees from the Forest Service. To be clear, none of these individuals were operational firefighters."
Hiring freeze exemptions exist for critical health and safety positions, he said, adding that more than 1,000 U.S. Forest Service firefighter positions were approved last week, with more currently under review.
He blamed the firings on President Joe Biden.
"It’s unfortunate that the Biden administration hired thousands of people with no plan in place to pay them long term," he added. "Secretary Rollins is committed to preserving essential safety positions and will ensure that critical services remain uninterrupted.”
More fallout from Forest Service cuts: Toilets and medical emergencies
Olson said she and Adams were responsible for about 102,000 acres within the Carson-Iceberg, Mt. Rose and Mokelumne designated wildernesses.
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