Forest Service’s mission being destroyed by Trump administration’s shakeup

Eric Antrim hands out pins to tourists walking to the Mendenhall Glacier Recreation Area on Thursday, July 24, 2025. (Jasz Garrett / Juneau Independent)

By Eric Antrim

I am a proud employee of the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), Alaska Region, and recording secretary for the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE) Local 251 currently representing nonsupervisory Forest Service workers in the Alaska Region. However, I’m writing for myself and not as a formal representative of the Forest Service or my NFFE local.

In January 2024, my union records show that the Forest Service Alaska Region had 677 employees: with 489 of those employees in my NFFE Local 251’s bargaining unit. Currently, my records show just 459 jobs in the Forest Service Alaska Region overall and just 314 of those are union jobs, (i.e., in my bargaining unit). Overall, this is a loss of 218 good jobs for Alaskans due to the current president’s attacks on the federal workforce generally and the Forest Service specifically; doing work that many Alaskans would love to do and are proud to do, from protecting our wildlife and heritage, to building bridges and maintaining roads.

The biggest attack on Forest Service workers last year was the illegal firing of all probationary workers in probationary status via a form letter signed by the current U.S. Forest Service Director of Human Resources Deedra Fogle. These form letters were autogenerated from a database of names with no specific knowledge of who these individuals were or how well they were doing their jobs. The general public may not understand, but being on “probation” in this context is nothing like being on probation in the normal context; the only crime these people committed was wanting to work for the Forest Service and accepting a job or promotion in the year or two before the current administration decided to fire all of them. This massive abuse occurred over the Valentine’s Day weekend and my union has branded it the “Valentine’s Day Massacre.”

Thanks to lawsuits by my union and other federal employee unions, on March 5, the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) issued a ruling that probationary employees terminated by the USDA should be reinstated because the agency engaged in prohibited personnel practices and violated federal laws and regulations governing RIFs and probationary terminations. The MSPB issued an order requiring employees to be reinstated. By the time the courts ordered employees to be reinstated, most had already moved on; deciding they no longer wanted to be in this fight with the current administration as employees of the Forest Service. Justice delayed is justice denied.  What’s been done cannot be undone.

In her July 24, 2025, memorandum titled “Department of Agriculture Reorganization Plan,” USDA Secretary Rollins said, “Much of this reduction was through voluntary retirements and the Deferred Retirement Program (DRP), a completely voluntary tool.”  I know from the stories of my colleagues that “much of this reduction” was not voluntary; that many made their decisions to change jobs, resign or retire, under a state of significant distress and duress; deciding to choose their own destinies rather than leave it in the hands of the current administration.

It is possible to find the engineer that was already looking to move to private practice or the manager that was already looking to retire; both taking the offered incentives to make their decisions a year earlier than they were already planning to, but, by far, the more common stories are people who were illegally fired deciding the drama and fight to keep their jobs wasn’t worth the trauma for themselves or their families. Many forecasted the current administration’s intent to eliminate their jobs and decided to leave on their own before they were forced to leave.

Last Tuesday, the current chief of the Forest Service, Tom Shultz, dropped another bomb in this administration’s war on federal workers in a series of meetings and letters sent to workers depending on where they sat in the USFS hierarchy and where they sat to do their work. These communications were described by a senior FS manager today as “elements of a plan.”

Current USFS managers are promising to still do “the work that matters” without defining what that is compared to the work the FS has always done; leaving workers to forecast for themselves what work this administration cares about.

Current USFS managers are promising that any worker who wants a job with the Forest Service will still have one. I highly doubt this. Past USDA and BLM forced moves from D.C. to the West have generated resignations on the order of 80%. If this administration doesn’t want someone to continue working for the USFS, they only need to offer them a job they don’t want or a move they don’t want to make; then, they can label that resignation as “voluntary.”

I know that the 677 Forest Service Alaska workers in 2024 were insufficient for our multiple-use, sustained-yield mission at that time. I can talk about the specific work in my bridge program that we couldn’t do then, and we very much can’t do now. The USFS has many programs from fisheries to recreation that were doing all they could with what they had then and have far less to work with now. There is no magic, no new AI tool, and no new secret genius management approach that will accomplish the work that was being done in 2024 with 218 fewer people doing the work.

I know that too many Forest Service workers will be offered to “opportunity” to change their careers or to move their families to far away locations in order to keep their jobs. These “opportunities” are really just workers being forced to subvert their careers and lives to the whims of this administration or leave. I know that some of this will happen in Alaska.  Much more will happen in Portland, D.C., and in other locations where our working brothers and sisters also deserve our solidarity.

My car needed an oil change last December. It still hasn’t gotten one. Just because it still drives doesn’t mean I’m not abusing my engine. Similarly, the destruction of the Forest Service may not be immediately visible during this administration, but the Forest Service has a long-term mission and that mission is being destroyed by people who won’t be around to feel the consequences of their actions.

• Eric Antrim is Juneau resident who works for the U.S. Forest Service and is recording secretary for the National Federation of Federal Employees Local 251.