How federal cuts threaten small town economies and elevate fire risks

By Bryce Dix, KUNM

Justin Schatz is a self-described lifelong fisherman and avid outdoorsman.

In fact, Schatz’ passion for the outdoors has led him to make big changes in life – drawing him to the nation’s first ever wilderness area to lead a U.S. Forest Service trail crew.

“I actually wanted to go down to the Gila to help out with the Gila trout,” Schatz said. “We just want to save our forests, and allow people to access these lands.”

This story originally appeared at KUNM and is republished with permission.

While the work was often grueling and notoriously underpaid, he absolutely loved it.

“We would camp in the wilderness for eight days,” Schatz said. “And during those eight days, we would hopefully cover about 60 to 80 miles. Then we would cut thousands of trees every season.”

An agency that manages nearly 193 million acres of land, the U.S. Forest Service employs more than 800 people nationwide to maintain forest trails and thin woodlands throughout the national forest ecosystem – playing a key role in wildland fire prevention in the months before peak fire season.

Schatz was preparing for the upcoming fire season when he received an email from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management on February 18th stating he and seven other field crew members had “poor performance” and, because of this, they were fired from their jobs.

He called the allegations a “blatant lie,” saying they regularly receive overwhelming positive feedback from forest supervisors.

These, among other layoffs and slashed budgets, are a direct result of the Trump administration’s unprecedented effort to severely downsize the federal government.

Since then, U.S. Federal Judge William Alsup recently ordered that Schatz and approximately 3,400 other U.S. Forest Service employees be reinstated. Though, he stressed that it doesn’t guarantee workers get their jobs back permanently.

The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to block the ruling, signaling a desire to continue workforce reductions.

Schatz’ first day back on the job was on Monday and has been receiving back pay. He told KUNM permanent employees have until Saturday to make a decision to return.

While these orders were supposed to exempt operational firefighters, many of those laid off were trained and qualified in wildland firefighting, serving as a safety net to fill gaps on the fire line.

Benjamin Sears, a forestry technician in the Sandia Ranger District, was training to get his qualifications – known as a “red card” – before he got fired.

“There isn’t really such a thing as a Forest Service employee that doesn’t have anything to do with fire management,” Sears said.

Sears was on probation and has since been offered his job back, but he’s worried about returning just to get fired again.

But he said the Forest Service was already struggling before Trump.

“We only had a quarter of our positions filled,” Sears stressed. “We were already extremely understaffed, and the Forest Service was already in the worst-it’s-ever-been hiring crisis.”

Back in September, as the agency faced possible budget cuts, the agency announced that it would be suspending all seasonal hires for the 2025 season and implementing a freeze on all external hiring for permanent positions, a decision that would drastically cut most of the trail workforce.

There is also a large backlog of trails that need maintenance across the country. That’s a consequence of a lack of resources and the sheer number of miles the agency is responsible for.

“Honestly, the Forest Service should probably have twice as many field-going employees working for it if we’re going to actually manage wildfire risk in this country and in this state,” Sears said.

This extraordinary shift in federal policy comes at a pivotal moment in time where fire experts are warning of a devastating fire season in the Southwest as blazes burn hotter and become more destructive.

Matthew Hurteau is a fire ecologist and biology professor with the University of New Mexico and he is really worried about the current state of New Mexico’s forests.

“It’s going to be dumb luck if we don’t have a terrible fire season,” Hurteau said.

He said the big telltale sign of a smoky future is the extreme dryness and the delays on forest management projects caused by the layoffs.

“As a result, we’re going to go into this fire season with both hands tied behind our back,” he said.

The trail crews have been rehired for now and they have always been an essential resource to curb fire danger. They do maintenance work on fuels, treatments, and dig-in lines for prescribed burning.

In fact, simply cleaning up everyday recreational hiking trails ensures fire break in forests, stopping flames dead in their tracks.

It’s practices like these that Hurteau points to as crucial for forest health and safety by carefully nudging fire onto the landscape.

“Our landscapes are shaped by fire, right? And when you have regular burning, it kills very few of the larger trees,” Hurteau said.

Though, when a large wildfire does spark, it has a yearslong rippling effect on smaller, local economies. State economic development officials consider outdoor recreation one of New Mexico’s target industries and value its economic impact at $3.2 billion. A 2020 report found it employs over 33,000 workers.

Megan Lawson studies the effects of outdoor recreation at Headwaters Economics. She said when people aren’t spending at businesses, that diminishes local government and statewide tax revenue.

“When a wildfire is happening, visitors aren’t going to be coming to town,” Lawson said.

Her research has found that all of New Mexico’s counties that rely on outdoor recreation are at high risk from wildfire and they account for nearly half of the state’s total outdoor recreational economy.

This includes Cibola and McKinley, which lean on a sizable uptick in outdoor trail use to boost their local businesses.

“These outdoor recreation communities are thriving, especially in the West, because of their access to public lands,” Lawson said.

That’s why the threat of federal cuts worries Lawson – not only because more may be on the horizon – but because the long-term economic and social impacts could be unprecedented.

The post How federal cuts threaten small town economies and elevate fire risks appeared first on New Mexico Political Report.