According to New Hampshire Public Radio 11 WMNF employees have been laid off. There are about 100 employees.
WMNF Layoff
- Thread starter JToll
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Ken MacGray
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Here is the article. Help support our friends at the USFS by volunteering in any way that you can, if you are not doing so already. They need us now more than ever.
https://www.nhpr.org/nh-news/2025-0...-forest-employees-among-federal-staffing-cuts
https://www.nhpr.org/nh-news/2025-0...-forest-employees-among-federal-staffing-cuts
ImYourHuckleberry
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I have mixed feelings about this. Of course, I have no ill feelings toward the USFS. But volunteering potentially takes our Federal Govt off the hook for these insane decisions and policies. I think it might be better to let things fail, close, etc. and let everybody feel the pain and get angry.
Creag Nan Drochaid
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Just read the article from Conway Daily Sun, posted by Ken. I suggest we do read it before we reply here, as there are several facts
that put these firings into perspective.
- These 11 are about 10% of USFS full-time staff on the WMNF.
- They are full-time recent hires of less than 1 year seniority, in their probation period.
- The firing exempts these specialists: firefighters, law enforcement, certain meteorologists, and about 5,000 seasonal staff
nationwide.
- In my experience, seasonal staff are likely to be hired for seasonal work, like patrol trails for blowdowns, plus related work like building fixtures. They are trained and scheduled by full-time permanent staff who have worked on that forest and that ranger district
for quite some time.
- On the WMNF, much trail patrolling and fixture building is done by volunteer trail adopters, and they in turn report to region leaders
or schedulers working directly for USFS, who are also volunteers.
Please do not think I approve of the current arbitrary and wholesale firing of workers who frankly were hired because their services
were needed, especially on public lands out West and in most government departments. Junior workers often do the routine work
for which their department was created, and senior ones administer them and assigned programs. Government departments exist
to be accountable, so they are not efficient like private for-profit businesses are. Those businesses exist and flourish in a society and economy sustained in part by government-financed infrastructure and services. We all pay taxes to support that government,
and we should.
Whether the right people pay too much and others not enough, and on what the money is spent, is another discussion. All I say here
is that volunteers are very much part of what works (mostly) here already.
that put these firings into perspective.
- These 11 are about 10% of USFS full-time staff on the WMNF.
- They are full-time recent hires of less than 1 year seniority, in their probation period.
- The firing exempts these specialists: firefighters, law enforcement, certain meteorologists, and about 5,000 seasonal staff
nationwide.
- In my experience, seasonal staff are likely to be hired for seasonal work, like patrol trails for blowdowns, plus related work like building fixtures. They are trained and scheduled by full-time permanent staff who have worked on that forest and that ranger district
for quite some time.
- On the WMNF, much trail patrolling and fixture building is done by volunteer trail adopters, and they in turn report to region leaders
or schedulers working directly for USFS, who are also volunteers.
Please do not think I approve of the current arbitrary and wholesale firing of workers who frankly were hired because their services
were needed, especially on public lands out West and in most government departments. Junior workers often do the routine work
for which their department was created, and senior ones administer them and assigned programs. Government departments exist
to be accountable, so they are not efficient like private for-profit businesses are. Those businesses exist and flourish in a society and economy sustained in part by government-financed infrastructure and services. We all pay taxes to support that government,
and we should.
Whether the right people pay too much and others not enough, and on what the money is spent, is another discussion. All I say here
is that volunteers are very much part of what works (mostly) here already.
It seems to be behind a paywall.
Creag Nan Drochaid
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The article Ken posted is not behind a paywall, or I'd not be able to summarize as I did. I hope you are able to read it somehow.
Why don't you post the URL?
ImYourHuckleberry
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It's just upthread a few posts, and not paywalled for me either. (Looks like it's reprinted with permission. If you went directly to the Conway Daily Sun, perhaps that is paywalled.)
https://www.nhpr.org/nh-news/2025-0...-forest-employees-among-federal-staffing-cuts
Thanks. And yes, I was looking at the Conway Daily Sun.
Ken MacGray
Active member
The link I posted was from NHPR, not the Conway Daily Sun directly, and is not behind a paywall.
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