Paul Goodrich is just worried about his mules.

The pack of mules, 16 in all, live with seven horses at a U.S. Forest Service property called Eightmile Ranch in the Methow Valley of northern Washington. The ranch grows its own grass to feed the mules, and a small team of Forest Service workers tend to the animals, which are used to pack supplies, building materials and fire equipment deep into the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest.

That was then. After four years as lead animal packer for the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest, Goodrich was fired Feb. 13 as part of the Trump administration’s widespread purge of the federal workforce. All the other seasonal positions at the ranch were recently eliminated, he said, which has left him wondering who will tend to the animals or the land.

“With little money to buy hay, and staffing shortage, we’re unsure who, or how, our herd will be fed this coming season,” Goodrich said Wednesday.

So far, an estimated 200,000 people have been affected by the federal job cuts, including 2,000 in the U.S. Forest Service. More job losses are expected to come.

Federal officials have said the cuts are an attempt to eliminate “waste, bloat, and insularity.” Their efforts started with “probationary” employees who are new to full-time positions.

Goodrich had just been converted from a seasonal worker to a “permanent seasonal” employee, a change that gave him benefits and didn’t require a rehiring process every year but that also required him to be “probationary” for a year.

“It just doesn’t seem real yet. It’s happening so quickly,” Goodrich said. “I’m fighting for my animals. I’m trying to find out what’s next with them.”

Northwest impact

It’s been difficult to understand the full scope of the U.S. Forest Service firings in the Pacific Northwest. That’s in part because those at the agency expect more job losses.

In his Feb. 11 executive order, President Trump ordered all agencies to prepare for large-scale Reductions in Force — an official process by which a federal agency eliminates positions. Agencies are expected to produce reorganization plans by March 13.

Resignations and retirements are also expected, especially if the government utilizes the existing “early retirement authority” that allows agencies to lower the retirement age and service requirements to encourage more “voluntary separations.”

A current manager for the U.S. Forest Service in the Pacific Northwest, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation, said there has been little communication about the firings outside the executive order. The number of probationary firings they heard was more than 250 in Oregon and Washington. That number couldn’t be independently verified.

“We know basically what you know because we hear things in the news,” the manager said. “It’s a pretty bleak time, I’ll be honest.”

The cuts are expected to touch virtually every corner of U.S. Forest Service properties in the Pacific Northwest, affecting campgrounds, restrooms, trail maintenance, search and rescue, wildfire efforts, environmental studies, education and other services that happen largely out of the public eye.

“There’s impacts everywhere,” the manager said. “We have people that are out there, whether it’s in the front country or the back country, who are talking to people, they’re doing safety, they’re involved in search and rescue, they’re finding abandoned campfires, they’re educating people, they’re keeping toilets cleaned, they’re keeping campgrounds open and running.”

News reports about the firings have already laid out some of the potential impacts locally.

Former field ranger Liz Crandall, who was fired from the Deschutes National Forest in central Oregon during the job cuts, told the Bend Bulletin that she expected there would be an uptick in illegal activity in the forests, as well as fires. Crandall worked on a team that hiked through the backcountry to look for abandoned campfires and hand out citations. She and at least 16 colleagues lost their jobs, she told the newspaper.

The Washington State Standard reported that a team managing the famed Enchantments area was reduced from 13 people to three, potentially impacting the safety and access to one of the Pacific Northwest’s most popular hikes.

In the Willamette National Forest outside Bend, an estimated 33 people were fired, including most of the recreation program staff, the Salem Statesman Journal reported. Brady Kleihauer, a wilderness ranger for the Detroit district of national forest, told the newspaper that his district was “devastated.”

In a statement emailed to The Oregonian/OregonLive attributed to a U.S. Department of Agriculture spokesperson, the agency, now headed by Brooke Rollins, acknowledged the “difficult decision” to fire about 2,000 “probationary, non-firefighting employees” from the U.S. Forest Service.

The U.S. Forest Service has not broken down the number of fired employees by state, let alone by national forest.

“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 statement read. “It’s unfortunate that the Biden administration hired thousands of people with no plan in place to pay them long term. Secretary Rollins is committed to preserving essential safety positions and will ensure that critical services remain uninterrupted.”

A group of lawmakers, including 10 from Oregon and Washington, have urged the government to roll back the U.S. Forest Service firings, warning of the “potentially catastrophic consequences this will have on wildfire prevention efforts across the country,” in a letter to the Trump administration on Wednesday. Many workers who have been fired are reportedly part of a backup team of certified firefighters.

‘Cruel’ decisions

The termination letter landed in Eli Eckert’s inbox Feb. 13. After three years working as a forestry technician on the Okanogan-Wenatchee studying soil and water health, he received the letter signed by Deedra Fogle, director of human resources management for the U.S. Forest Service, citing a 2005 federal report that said a probationary employee has “the burden to demonstrate why it is in the public interest for the Government to finalize an appointment to the civil service.”

“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. For this reason, the Agency informs you that the Agency is removing you from your position,” the letter read. Effective immediately.

Eckert said he was baffled by the notice. He had just received a positive performance review at the end of last season, he said. And though he had been in the position since 2022, he said he was a probationary employee because he, too, was converting to a permanent seasonal role.

Nevertheless, he and his entire four-person crew were fired.

“A lot of these people that got cut, I don’t feel like it’s the government waste they’re trying to find,” he said. “It’s just a big disservice to the land and the people who live here to get rid of these people. Their jobs are important.”

Suzanne Cable, who worked 30 years in the U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service before retiring in 2024, said the conversion of long-term seasonal employees to career positions was seen as a “once in a generation opportunity” to offer stability to crucial field workers. The fact that the Trump administration’s new Department of Government Efficiency then used those employees’ new probationary status to fire them was “cruel,” she said.

“The actions that have been taken by the Trump administration via DOGE are not only shocking but have no apparent strategy that makes sense,” Cable said.

With only law enforcement, public safety and immigration enforcement officers exempt from the executive order (as well as full-time wildland firefighters, the administration later added), Cable said she feared the U.S. Forest Service would be pared down to the “fire service.”

“The mission of the forest service cannot be fulfilled without a functional workforce to deliver on its multiple use mandate,” she said.

The mass firings also threaten to derail the next generation of federal workers.

Rebecca White, 23, was recently hired by the National Resources Conservation Service, an agency under the U.S. Department of Agriculture that helps farmers and other private landowners. After earning a master’s degree, she started her job in Waterville, Washington, on Jan. 26, hoping to begin a long career with the federal government. She quit Feb. 21, after dodging the probationary firings due to a clerical error.

“It’s insulting honestly and it’s unfair and it’s just given me way too much stress,” White said. “I’m not going back to the federal government after this.”

And then there are the mules.

On Wednesday, Goodrich was still making calls to get his animals some hay. It was no longer his job to do so, but he didn’t want to leave them in the lurch. They weren’t at risk of starving, he assured, but if nobody sticks around to care for them, they’ll need to find a new home, ending the Okanogan-Wenatchee’s longstanding traditional stock program.

“When we took these positions it was a total dream,” Goodrich said. “To be told that we were just not doing good work was sort of unfathomable.”