The Wetland Trail runs through the forest at Wildwood Recreation Site, a family-friendly outdoor getaway managed by the Bureau of Land Management on Mount Hood.

Royce Daniels got a job offer as an easement specialist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture last October. About a month later, he was packing up and moving from Houston to Eugene.

But at 7:30 p.m. on Feb. 13, he said, he received a termination notice for his job with the Natural Resources Conservation Service. Daniels said he’s now stuck in a six-month housing lease, far away from home, with a difficult choice to make.

“If I was in Houston, my network is strong enough in Texas to say I wouldn’t have to worry about (finding) another job,” he said. “It’s like I either have to pay a lot of money to move back to Texas or try to make it work here.”

Daniels believes the firing of probationary employees in the federal government has been unjust and disruptive, and he has appealed his termination.

“This could have been done better with a little more grace, like, ‘Hey, you’re actually a person,’” he said. “It’s like you’re being treated like you’re an enemy of the state. I’m just an American citizen trying to do my job. I went to school for this.”

Daniels is among thousands of federal workers nationwide who have been told their jobs have been eliminated in the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s return to the White House. Billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has been slashing positions, and Trump – shepherded by Musk and DOGE – has been encouraging employees to take buyouts as part of a plan to shrink the federal workforce.

While the full scope of cuts in Oregon is not yet known, the impacts on workers who have lost their jobs and what the job losses will mean for Oregonians are slowly coming into focus – with the potential to disrupt services for veterans, jeopardize assistance for farmers and ranchers, and strain oversight of the region’s energy grid, among other things.

About 29,700 federal employees worked in Oregon as of last spring, representing about 1.5% of all employees statewide, which is among the lowest rates in the country, federal data shows. It’s unclear how many have voluntarily left their jobs or been forced out, although Oregon had about 4,700 federal workers who were still in probationary periods last August.

Also complicating the picture is whether those job cuts will stick. A federal judge in California last week ruled the firings of probationary workers were likely unlawful and ordered the Office of Personnel Management to inform federal agencies that they lacked authority to carry out those terminations. This week, the Trump administration appears to have revised its directive to terminate probationary workers, but it wasn’t immediately known what the amended guidance will mean for those who have already lost their jobs, according to multiple media reports. And at least in some cases, some of the job cuts have been rescinded as was the case with two employees at the National Energy Technology Laboratory in Albany, according to the local union president that represents workers.

A spokesperson for the Office of Personnel Management told The Oregonian/OregonLive that the agency didn’t have data for how many federal workers in Oregon have lost their jobs and how many have resigned. The spokesperson didn’t know when the agency would have that information for Oregon or other states.

“As with most everything during this chaotic administration, answers to basic questions such as how many employees have been forced out from federal agencies under the thumb of Trump and Musk are either non-existent or change on a whim,” U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, said in an email.

So far media reports have identified close to 600 job losses in Oregon, ranging from 420 at the Bonneville Power Administration, which oversees the regional power grid, to 22 at the USDA Agricultural Research Service, to an unknown number at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Other cuts include an estimated 100 people with the U.S. Forest Service, as many of 40 workers from the National Weather Service and a handful of employees from the Bureau of Land Management and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. But those numbers are likely a significant undercount.

Federal employees who lost their jobs in Oregon have the same eligibility to apply for state unemployment benefits as those working for private employers. Recognizing that could be a lot of people, the Oregon Employment Department has made information available for federal workers on its website.

“In terms of applications from federal employees so far, it is too early to tell,” spokesperson Seth Gordon said in an email. “There is always a lag with unemployment insurance claims, so it will take some time to play out.”

Some federal workers say they were terminated without their supervisors’ prior knowledge. One was Betty Odgers, who said she worked as the sole employment coordinator in Oregon for the Veterans Readiness and Employment program under the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

“They were notified when I was notified,” she said of her supervisors.

Odgers, herself an Army veteran who began her job Dec. 2, choked up talking about the clients who she won’t be able to see during their scheduled appointments. She helped veterans who were searching for jobs and did outreach with employers hoping to hire veterans. She also handled cases in others states to help with backlogs.

That employer outreach will no longer happen, she said, and some of the other work just won’t get done.

“All the cases I have are going to have to be farmed out now to other counselors who are already overworked,” she said, “and overburdened with their own high caseloads.”

Odgers said she received her termination Feb. 24 alleging performance issues, but she said other people received “identical letters.”

“We’re low-hanging fruit,” said Odgers, who has appealed her termination but has not received any response.

Joseph Mucklow lost his job Feb. 24 with the VA Roseburg Health Care System, where he was part of a four-person team that he said lost three members. The team’s job was to pack and deliver orders of medical supplies to individual clinics and nursing stations.

Mucklow, a Navy veteran, said the cuts could lead to medical staff not having the proper supplies on time.

“They are going to negatively affect veterans,” he said of the job losses.

The House Committee on Appropriations estimates the number of veterans who have lost their jobs as part of the mass firings nationwide is at nearly 6,000.

Job cuts have also hit federal contractors who helped veterans and employees of the VA. Tigard resident Jessica Riehl, a Navy veteran, lost her job Feb. 14, with only a 24-hour notice, after a contract for the company she worked for was terminated Feb. 11.

Riehl said federal officials cut a contract aimed at helping homeless veterans receive job training. She didn’t work on that contract, she said, but felt the impact anyway. As a result, she’ll no longer keep her position interviewing agency employees about their needs and job demands, with burnout a recurring topic.

“It feels scary because of all the federal workers and contractors who’ve been laid off and who lost work, I don’t know how private industry is going to absorb all of us,” she said.

Meanwhile, some federal workers, like Bailey Langley, were given two hours or less to clean out desks and wrap-up jobs they felt passionate about. Langley worked for the Umatilla National Forest in Pendelton as a public affairs specialist and was also in her probationary period.

“People always say working-class Americans are one paycheck away from losing their homes, and in this case, that’s true,” she said. “And it goes for a lot of my other colleagues, not just myself.”

Langley has already applied for unemployment. But she said she was told Oregon must verify her wages with the federal agency and that could take some time.

Gordon, with the Oregon Employment Department, said since the federal government doesn’t provide wage data to its agency, the Oregon Employment Department has to request it after a claim is filed.

“This was just a blanket mass termination of employees who were hired to carry on and sustain the agencies for the future,” Langley said. “This isn’t a reduction in force. This is a mass illegal termination of federal employees. There are processes in place for strategic reduction in force, and that’s not what this was.”

Some workers had taken large pay cuts to join the federal government because they believed in the mission. One was Fenix Van Tassel, who last November landed a job as a planning and environmental coordinator with the U.S. Department of Interior Bureau of Land Management’s office in Prineville. She was terminated Feb. 18.

“I took a $20,000 pay cut to take this job with the BLM,” she said. “It was a big decision to make already because I was supporting my partner through grad school.”

Van Tassel said “getting fired is absolutely devastating and terrifying.”

“I definitely did not expect anything like this to happen,” she said. “It feels really scary right now not knowing how I’m going to pay my bills next month.”

Ali Mizell, who was terminated from her position as a survey technician for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said she took a $30,000 pay cut to join the government.

“I feel so strongly scammed,” she said, “about what happened with my dream position.”

Mizell said she worried the impacts from job losses could be devastating for Oregon’s habitat.

“Protected lands could be lost,” she said, “conservation projects could be abandoned. Encroachment is going to happen. Unlawful hunting is going to happen.”

Daniels, the agriculture department worker who moved from Texas, said habitat restoration work with private landowners also could be impacted. Some farmers seek help from the government to start their operations, obtain equipment or to implement certain conservation practices on their land.

Not all conservation happens on public land, he said, and there’s a lot of people who won’t get the help they need if federal jobs cuts continue.

“Essentially, all we are doing is helping private landowners,” he said.

Staci Simonich, dean of the College of Agricultural Sciences at Oregon State University, said she knows of 22 workers in Oregon with the USDA Agricultural Research Service and three others who worked for a federal agricultural program who lost jobs. The impacted positions were in Corvallis, Newport, Hood River, Pendelton and Burns.

The impacts of those job losses, she said, will be felt by farmers and ranchers across the state. Wyden and Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, sent a letter to federal officials Feb. 24 trying to save the jobs, writing that researchers look for ways to improve soil health, minimize impacts of smoke exposure on wine grapes and counter threats of disease and pests on crops.

The impact “cuts across all of our major crops in Oregon,” Simonich said.

Simonich was in Washington, D.C., last week, along with other college deans across the country, to push for the reinstatement of these positions, and other issues impacting the university.

Farmers and ranchers in Oregon have been “working hard to advocate through their channels” as well, she said.

Some federal workers have been advocating for themselves, contacting the media to shine a light on their own hardships in the wake of being fired.

Matthew Bellingham landed a job as a revenue officer for the Internal Revenue Service last July, after overcoming stage 3 rectal cancer.

Late last year, he received news that it had come back.

Bellingham said he underwent surgery in early February. On Feb. 20, while on medical leave recovering from his surgery, his termination notice arrived, effective immediately.

Bellingham has appealed and is in the process of applying for unemployment. His health benefits run out later this month.

Bellingham, who also has a son with medical needs, said he’s figuring out his options and hopes to quickly land another position with medical coverage.

“Health insurance benefits-wise,” he said, “it’s going to be really tough.”