In late January, more than 2 million federal workers received a now-widely reported email from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, inviting them to resign from their jobs in anticipation of pending reductions to the federal workforce.
Among others, it went to employees at the Department of the Interior, which houses the National Park Service (NPS), the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and the US Fish & Wildlife Service—and many at the Department of Agriculture, which oversees the U.S. Forest Service (USFS). Career workers didn’t know what to make of the letter and some questioned its legality. On Valentine's Day, less than a month after receiving the email, thousands were fired during a massive reduction in the federal workforce that included 1,000 NPS employees, 4,300 at USFS, and more than 420 at the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.
Combined with recent freezing and thawing of federal grants that support habitat work, the unexpected termination of so many public land stewards has left America’s conservation community deeply concerned. Hunters and anglers who advocate for public lands and wildlife habitat tell Field & Stream they’re anticipating blocked trails in the absence of crews to maintain them, understaffed fire seasons that could prompt full-on closures of entire National Forests this summer, and stalled fisheries work on famed waterbodies across the country. There are also concerns that de-staffing federal land agencies like the Forest Service could lead to layoffs and impede projects at hunting-focused conservation groups that partner with the Feds on critical habitat work for big game species.
Buried inside all the existential concerns about habitat and public land access, however, are the careers of dedicated wildlife professionals who were axed without warning on Valentine's Day. They were civil servants who managed public wildlife, maintained park infrastructure, and provided critical support during peak fire seasons in the West. Some worked for years as seasonal employees before earning their full-time "probationary" status. Others were newly promoted when news of their firing came through. None of them that we talked to made more than $70,000 a year. Here are just a few of their stories.
Adin Kloetzel, Former Forestry Technician—U.S. Forest Service
Adin Kloetzel grew up hunting deer and elk in Montana’s Blackfoot Valley. Always handy with horses, he started working as a mule packer for a local outfitter at a young age, guiding occasionally and helping hunters pack meat from the game-rich forests near his home. Then, five years ago, Kloetzel landed a job with one of the leading employers in his small home valley—the United States Forest Service.
“It was a dream job,” Kloetzl told Field & Stream. “I worked on everything from fire to blasting to bridge building to animal packing, but my official title was Forestry Technician. I was going on my fifth year based out of the Philipsburg Ranger Station.”
Kloetzl did four years of seasonal work with USFS before finally earning a full-time position in May 2024. That came with added responsibilities and longer hours working with crews out in the field. But it also afforded him health insurance and a house in Philipsburg.
“I lost it all on Valentine’s Day,” he said. “My District Ranger and his boss called me up and said: ‘We regret to inform you that you were on the list that DOGE sent out to all the agencies. You gotta go.’”
Kloetzl was one of 3,400 Forest Service employees axed across the country during the mass firings on Valentine’s weekend. In Montana alone, more than 360 employees lost their jobs. “In our district we lost our whole trail crew. There’s no one left to spray weeds on grazing allotments, no one to work on fence, or anything like that,” he said. “We lost timber folks, soils folks, fisheries folks—everyone that was field-going and didn’t work in the office most of the time.”
Kloetzel said he received nothing but positive reviews during his time as a USFS forestry technician and animal packer. But like thousands of others, he was slapped with a poor performance black mark when the DOGE firings went through. “None of us do this for the money. I never made more than $45,000 a year,” he said. “We do it because we're passionate about these places and keeping access available to the general public. Without these crews out in the field, none of our trails are getting cleared this summer. We live in lodgepole pine mecca. There won’t be access.”
Taher Fletcher, Former Fisheries Biologists—U.S. Fish & Wildlife
On the same day that Adin Kloetzel was fired from the Forest Service in Montana, a fisheries biologist named Taher Fletcher lost his US Fish & Wildlife Service job restoring land-locked salmon to Vermont's Lake Champlain. Fletcher—a lifelong fly fisherman who got his start on Michigan's Au Sable River—was one of more than 400 Fish & Wildlife Service employees across the country abruptly terminated on February 14.
"I found out with less than an hour's notice that I'd be losing my dream job," Fletcher told Field & Stream. "They fired all 420 probationary employees during one mass Teams meeting. Our agency supervisors said we were being fired for reasons completely outside of our control—that had nothing to do with our abilities or performance."
But Fletcher's termination letter, issued a few hours after the firing, said otherwise. "It said I was being removed for performance reasons," he said. "I can’t stop wondering how something like this could be allowed to happen. Now almost none of the work we were doing will be able to continue."
Fletcher worked on a critical stocking effort that puts roughly 400,000 salmon into Lake Champlain and its surrounding tributaries every year. The salmon are native to area, but they were completely eliminated from the Champlain Basin during the Industrial Revolution. Now—thanks to the work of Fletcher and other USFWS biologists—there's a thriving salmon fishery in Champlain once again.
According to Fletcher, remaining employees will have a difficult time picking up the pieces, not just for lack of man power but for lack of money as well. "They have put a spending limit of $1 on everyone's agency-issued credit card," he said, "so there's no equipment that can be purchased—just basic things that we need like electrofishing gloves or genetic vials. If this work doesn't get done it's going to impact the fishery in a big way, and pretty quickly. It's going to decline substantially."
Fletcher, a new father of a 4-month-old baby boy, left a law career in his home state of Michigan to take the Vermont-based fisheries job with in the summer of 2024, fulfilling a lifelong dream. "Getting the job was one of the happiest moments of my life," he said. "Years worth of effort had finally paid off."
He said his wife works for the Service as well, but her job was spared—for now. "We're starting to worry about her's because we've heard there's another planned reduction in force of up to 40 percent of the 8,000 remaining full-time employees," he said. "I'll call this what it is. It's the intentional destruction of an agency."
Jordan Martinez, Former Wildlife Biologist—U.S. Forest Service
In more arid climates, like New Mexico, hunters and conservationists are worried about the firing of "red carded" Forest Service employees who are called in to help fight fire during peak season. One of those employees was 29-year-old Jordan Martinez who worked as a wildlife biologist for the western zone of New Mexico's Carson National Forest with a focus on threatened species like the Mexican spotted owl.
She was inspired to go into wildlife biology while listening to her grandfather's hunting stories as a child, she told Field & Stream. “I had to terminate the forestry technicians working under me before I got fired,” she said. “I was in the process of disagreeing with those terminations because the letters said they were being fired for poor performance, even though they were outstanding employees who’d received monetary awards, promotions, and multiple successful performance reviews. Then I got the exact same letter.”
Martinez herself had just been promoted in January and was coming up on her one-year anniversary with the Forest Service when she got the termination letter. Like Kloetzel and Flethcer, she described her work with the US Forest Service as a dream job. “It’s been devastating," she said. “My main concern now is what’s going to happen without all the watershed restoration work we were doing with state and non-profit partners. Those projects were helping prevent flooding events that are common after large forest fires.”
With few to no comparable jobs in the private sector and increased competition for work at state wildlife agencies, Kloetzel, Fletcher, and Martinez face uncertain futures in their chosen career paths, but recent lawsuits and board rulings might offer a glimmer of hope, however small and uncertain. According to a recent press release, all terminated probationary employees in the Forest Service and other USDA agencies will be eligible for rehiring with backpay under a stay issued by the Merit Systems Protections Board. That rehiring comes with an expiration date, however, as the employees could be fired again after a 45-day period. The mass firings have also been challenged by a federal court in the Northern District of California. That ruling determined that DOGE overstepped its authority when it ordered the layoffs. For now, there are no public plans to reinstate or provide backpay to fired NPS, BLM, or USFWS workers.
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As of this writing, none of the three federal employees we talked to have been called back to work, but they all say they're prepared to return if the call comes. “I’ll go back immediately if I’m allowed to,” Kloetzel said. “I hope they bring us all back so we can clear the trails before hunting season, pack trout into the backcountry lakes on our mules, and do all the things that make the wilderness hunting and fishing experience in America the envy of the entire world.”
