Trump’s Forest Service cuts have people in tinder dry New Mexico on edge

MCGAFFEY, N.M. – In the American West, where the federal government owns more than half the land, much of everyday life is tethered to the federal agencies that manage it.

In the remote Zuni Mountains of northwestern New Mexico, Brian Leddy owns an historic cabin on land he leases from the U.S. Forest Service. There should still be snow and mud under the tall pines. Instead it’s alarmingly dry.

“I think the fire season is on everyone’s mind right now,” Leddy says. “I’ve had a heck of a time getting insurance on this place. I lost it and haven’t been able to get it back this year. So it’s a real concern for us.”

Adding to the anxiety, Leddy says, is a more man-made problem: the funding cuts to federal lands agencies by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE, and namely the elimination of hundreds of Forest Service jobs, with reports that thousands more could follow.

“What’s going to happen if a fire starts, who’s going to respond to that? Right now it doesn’t feel like there’s a lot of confidence that the federal government is going to be able to act and respond accordingly,” Leddy says.

Leddy, who also heads a nonprofit that promotes the local outdoor recreation economy on public lands, says it appears the administration is trying to hobble federal lands agencies.

For its part, Trump lands officials insist wildland firefighting positions continue to be exempt from the federal hiring freeze. The Forest Service declined an interview request but in an email said its operational readiness is “not impacted.”

Forest workers say morale is low and everything is on pause

But that’s not the whole story. An untold number of probationary employees fired in February alone also carry “red cards” meaning, when there’s a fire, they leave their regular jobs to help out.

One of them in New Mexico is Kayla, whose full name NPR isn’t using because she fears retaliation. A self described proud New Mexico native, she says working for the Forest Service was a dream job, especially after growing up in a local ranching culture that depends on the land.

“It was like a slap to the face, it’s just shocking to me that our position could be taken away that easily without thorough investigation on exactly what we do and how we perform,” she told NPR.

Kayla has been rehired, for now, following a recent court ruling. But she says morale is down and the work that actually helps protect the land and wildlife from fires – the lesser publicized things like watershed and floodplain restoration and brush clearing – isn’t getting done.

“It’s a ticking time bomb. I feel like we were doing everything in our power to help prevent the catastrophic fires,” she says. “With the loss of so many positions, it’s scary, it’s just really scary.”

In interviews, several federal workers described a similar demoralizing environment to NPR, but most didn’t want to go on the record. When the administration froze all federal funding for review last winter, they said, slash piles in forests went unburned and are now sitting there like matchbooks. Wildfire prevention grants with any connection to “climate change” or “diversity” – this is heavily Hispanic New Mexico – were scrapped, and elite firefighting teams are half their normal staffing or worse.

Locals say the U.S. government doesn’t have their backs at a perilous time

Meanwhile, President Trump has also ordered the Forest Service to boost logging by 25% as a strategy to address the fire crisis. But in New Mexico and across the West, NGOs that the agency contracts out to do forest health and wildfire mitigation such as thinning have seen some of their federal funding frozen or cut, meaning critical on the ground projects are on hold or stalled indefinitely because there’s no money to pay workers.

“If you have turmoil in your nine to five work environment, you’re not going to be able to show up at the incidents, at the prescribed burns, to run all the timber sales or fuels management projects,” says Eytan Krasilovsky of the Forest Stewards Guild in Santa Fe. “You know, that system needs to function.”

And with wildfires already burning in the Southwest, people feel like the system is not functioning.

In Taos County, north of Santa Fe, County Commissioner AnJanette Brush says residents were already on edge after the deadly Los Angeles wildfires in January, and an extraordinarily dry winter locally.

“That’s when we as elected officials really started to very much hear the panic,” she says. “People are very worried.”

About half of Taos County is owned and managed by the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. Local officials say they can’t get answers on staffing levels at either of the agencies.

“There’s nothing really super efficient about going through the process of firing, rehiring, firing, going to court,” Brush says.

Brush says her wildfire weary constituents deserve to know that the federal government has their backs and right now it doesn’t feel like it.

“These folks are not you know, some faceless freeloaders, they are our family, our friends, our neighbors,” she adds. “They are good people who believe in the mission of protecting this place and we need them out there working hard for us.”

Some rural westerners support trimming federal land agencies

But just like everywhere else in the rural West, even in Democratic-leaning New Mexico, there are long standing tensions against federal land agencies.

A century ago, the Hispanos living on ancient land grants from the Spanish in northern New Mexico resisted the then-new Forest Service’ restrictions on grazing, irrigation and other land uses. More recently, in 2022, the agency lit prescribed burns that got out of control and turned into the largest wildfire in New Mexico history. The fallout from the Hermit’s Peak Calf Canyon fire persists today as scores of survivors say the federal government still hasn’t made them whole.

And complaints about red tape delaying or scuttling projects on public land tend to cross political lines.

Back in the Zuni Mountains, Bill Siebersma has worked with the Cibola National Forest for the better part of the last two decades building and expanding mountain bike trails which have helped draw tourists to the isolated region.

“Over the years it’s gotten more bureaucratized, maybe you’d say,” Siebersma says.

Siebersma, who’s father, a pastor, first brought his family to the area fifty years ago, also has a popular bipartisan bumper sticker on his jeep: Public Lands Owner. He generally supports the administration and DOGE because he thinks there is fraud to be rooted out and plenty of fat to trim.

“You know the further you go up the ladder the more bureaucrats there are and people who sit in an office and push paper,” Siebersma says. “I don’t know what they do.”

More immediately though, New Mexicans are waiting to see how true the Forest Service’s promises are that it’s ready for what could be a long fire season.

This is the latest report in an occasional NPR National Desk series examining how President Trump’s early actions are playing out across America.