MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
OK. Among the many federal agencies experiencing staffing cuts under the Trump administration - the U.S. Forest Service. It's responsible for everything from maintaining hiking trails to helping fight wildfires and making public lands less prone to fire. Some of those workers are now warning that staffing cuts make the agency less prepared for the upcoming fire season. Oregon Public Broadcasting's April Ehrlich reports.
APRIL EHRLICH, BYLINE: As a Forest Service ecologist in Oregon, Lanny Flaherty's (ph) day-to-day job involved collecting data, a lot of it related to plants. Some of Flaherty's data goes into wildfire behavior modeling. For example, understanding where brush and trees grow on a landscape gives firefighters a better understanding of how a fire might move through it.
LENNY FLAHERTY: When you bring in 5,000 firefighters from all over the country, you need local specialization there to tell them where the stuff is.
EHRLICH: Flaherty was one of 2,000 probationary workers in the Forest Service who were recently fired. That number was confirmed by a spokesperson with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service. In interviews, almost a dozen current and former Forest Service employees say they're worried about the way these cuts will affect fire season. Flaherty says it's not just his data collection that's affected. He also helps fight fires when the Forest Service is understaffed.
FLAHERTY: Every role is so dynamic. There's a huge amount of those secondary roles that aren't just directly digging line or swinging a tool that support the firefighting operations.
EHRLICH: Field rangers tasked with patrolling the vast wildlands that make up the West were also among the people fired, including Liz Crandall. She's based in central Oregon.
LIZ CRANDALL: I'm eyes on the woods. I'm the person that's seeing every corner of the woods that others might not see.
EHRLICH: Destroying abandoned campfires before they turned dangerous was part of Crandall's job. And, like Flaherty, she assisted firefighters when needed. Crandall says she has responded to a dozen major wildfires.
CRANDALL: I'm a Firefighter Type 2. I went to guard school. I have my chainsaw certification. I'm able to go on a fire line.
EHRLICH: Crandall and Flaherty both worked for the Forest Service for years, but they entered into probationary periods when they took on new roles. In a statement, a spokesperson with the USDA said the agency did not fire any operational firefighters and is, quote, "committed to preserving essential safety positions." They did not respond to questions about employees who were certified to fight fires as secondary roles or people who helped do fire prevention work.
AARON WEISS: You can come up with a lot of ways in which this goes sideways very quickly for mountain communities, for forest communities.
EHRLICH: Aaron Weiss is with the conservation advocacy group Center for Western Priorities. He says he's concerned that these firings will hinder wildfire prevention work like prescribed burning.
WEISS: This is the single best tactic that we have across the West to minimizing wildfire risk when it comes to wildfire season.
EHRLICH: And this is all happening on top of a hiring freeze on seasonal workers at the Forest Service that the Biden administration announced last year. For NPR News, I'm April Ehrlich in Portland.
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