Federal layoffs hit the deep-red, rural US west: ‘Our public lands are under threat’

Republican representative McKay Erickson walked through the halls of the Wyoming capitol with a Trump 2024 pin on the front of his suit jacket. Much of Erickson’s home district in Lincoln county falls under the jurisdiction of the Bridger Teton national forest and Grand Teton national park.

With that federal land comes federal workers. While it appears districts in Wyoming crucial to US energy dominance have been spared the brunt of the layoffs, McKay said his forest-heavy district has not been so fortunate. He’s hearing from his constituents about the layoffs, and he’s troubled about the implications for his district’s future.

“These people have a face to me,” Erickson said. “They have a face and a place in either Star Valley or Jackson that I know quite well.”

Erickson is a small-government conservative, laments bureaucracy and stands by his belief that there’s a need to “cut the fat” at the federal level. But in his district, he foresees a lack of trail maintenance hurting local outfitting companies, and understaffed parks with closed gates.

“This way is so indiscriminate, and it doesn’t really drill down on the real issue as to where those cuts need to be,” Erickson said. “I’m afraid that probably all we’re going to lose is services.”

Erickson’s district is in a bind that’s playing out across the American west.

Wyoming, for the third presidential election in a row, voted for Donald Trump by a wider margin than any other state in the country. Neighboring states Idaho and Montana also swung red with mile-wide margins. All three have high proportions of federal land (Idaho – 62%, Wyoming – 48%, Montana – 29%), and thriving outdoor recreation industries dependent on public lands.

Erickson, while watching cuts with apprehension, said that he is still supportive of the president, who won more than 81% of presidential votes cast in Lincoln county in 2024.

“It hasn’t really shaken me. It’s concerned me, but not shaken me in my support,” Erickson said.

As layoffs under Trump and billionaire Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) bleed out of the Beltway and across the country, local business owners, politicians and federal employees in the rural Mountain West told the Guardian that they feared devastating consequences for their communities.

The Guardian reached out to US senators from Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, some of whom have publicly praised Doge’s work, about their constituents’ concerns. None responded to a request for comment.

Few towns represent the ties between small town economies and public lands better than Salmon, Idaho. With a population of just over 3,000, Salmon is cradled by a nest of federal lands, including the Salmon Challis national forest, the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness, and a smattering of Bureau of Land Management holdings.

Dustin Aherin calls Salmon home, and is the president of Middle Fork Outfitters Association, which represents 27 local businesses. He said that the day-to-day duties of forestry service employees, from river patrol to permitting to conservation, keep businesses like his alive. Recent layoffs put their future in jeopardy.

“The team in the field that manages the Middle Fork and Main Salmon river, all but two were terminated. And the two that were left have been reassigned,” Aherin said. “We have no on-the-ground management as of right now.”

The urgency caused by the layoffs sent Aherin to Capitol Hill, where he spoke with the Guardian between meetings with federal officials. He held cautious optimism that Idaho’s federal delegation would be able to help craft a solution.

A hundred miles south-west of Salmon, in Stanley, Idaho, Hannah, a terminated employee from the Sawtooth national forest who requested anonymity, has a grim outlook for the future of the small mountain town. She said that about 40% of staff was cut, including the entire wilderness and trail crew. She wonders who will handle the public-facing jobs, from cleaning toilets and campgrounds to providing visitor information, and worries about the effects on Stanley, which took a major hit in the 2024 wildfire season.

“In a small town like this where you only have a couple good months of a summer season, one hard year and another hard-ish year could be really bad for some local businesses,” Hannah said.

Hannah said the termination cost her her health insurance just weeks before a costly surgery, and she expects to have to relocate. In the early stages of her career, she said the experience will likely sour her, and other young civil servants, on public service.

“We’re losing the next generation of public land stewards,” Hannah said. “And our public lands are under threat.”

Similar anxiety is creeping into communities surrounding the Mountain West’s marquee national parks, which are economic engines for the region. A 2023 report estimated that National Parks generated more than $55bn in economic impact off of a budget of $3.6bn. Many of these dollars went to gateway towns in red states, such as those framing the entrances to Grand Teton national park or Yellowstone national park.

Dale Sexton, owner of Dan Bailey’s fly shop in Livingston, Montana, is helping push the revival of the Yellowstone Business Coalition, whose 400-plus members are lobbying Montana’s federal delegation to work to address the effects of federal layoffs. Sexton is pragmatic about the national political climate, and is betting that an economics-based argument will move the needle.

“I’m envisioning that our delegation currently doesn’t want to abandon the Doge ship,” Sexton said. “But I’m also hopeful that outcry becomes so loud that it garners their attention and affects change.”

Livingston city commissioner Karrie Kahle envisions a trickle-down effect from the layoffs.

“As we lose federal workers first, if one of them is lost, we’re potentially losing a whole family from our community,” Kahle said. “If that federal worker has a partner, is that partner a teacher or doing other work in our community? Are we going to lose kids out of our school systems?”

Andrea Shiverdecker, an archaeologist in Montana’s Custer-Gallatin national forest, lost her job on Valentine’s Day. Along with the impact on her personal life and community, Shiverdecker dwells on potential consequences for Yellowstone.

“I don’t think people understand the sheer volume and amount of people that come through our ecosystem every year and the amount of manpower it takes to keep cleaned up,” Shiverdecker said. “This is what we fear with our public lands … We need to be stewards and foster them for future generations.”

Shiverdecker said the layoff process has been disorienting. She said she was terminated 25 days before the end of her probationary period, while paperwork was being run for her promotion. She said she believes in “good people” and hopes to somehow return to her job, but right now, she has a lot of frustration.

“How am I getting laid off for performance issues when you were processing my promotion?” Shiverdecker said. “It’s heartbreaking as a dedicated public servant, as a disabled veteran, as somebody who loves the fact that they’ve served. That’s the biggest honor you can give.”