‘Biohazard’: Forest Service employees warn cuts having devastating, and disgusting, impacts

The Trump administration’s Elon Musk-backed government efficiency team promised to eliminate waste throughout government. At the U.S. Forest Service, it is instead letting it build up. 

The Department of Government Efficiency has instituted new layers of review at USFS, as it has at most federal agencies. Processes that typically took minutes are now taking a month or longer and a wide range of functions are feeling the impact. In some cases, that has led to trash piling up and pit toilets—restrooms that include only holes in the ground, as is common as Forest Service recreational centers and campgrounds—going uncleaned or unemptied. 

Getting a contract approved for janitorial services, said one USFS who works on those procurements, previously took a day-and-a-half. With the added layers that DOGE has installed, it now takes six weeks. 

“You’ve got this biohazard,” the employee said, adding any cleaning that is happening occurs by employees “in their 70s with power washers that they bought with their own money so they don’t have to scrape poop off the wall.” 

The campgrounds often attract people who are dealing with mental health crises or using drugs and employees said such misplaced feces is a common occurrence. Employees like secretaries or recreation technicians, whose job descriptions make no mention of janitorial services, are being asked to do such cleaning without the proper equipment to do so. They are handling overflowing trash and, in some cases, picking up hypodermic needles. Given the cuts DOGE has already implemented at the Forest Service, employees are in some cases too fearful to reject the assignments. 

Another employee noted her National Forest is already seeing changes to who provides services such as mowing and cleaning. DOGE has overseen the revocation of purchase cards at USFS, as it has at most of government, making it harder to pay for incidental costs.  

“Leadership has no answers when the issue is brought up, including the issue with the ability to pump toilets at rec sites,” that employee said, adding the message is to “make do with what you have and make it last.” 

Some of the issues predate the DOGE and the Trump administration: under President Biden, funding cuts forced some forests to go from three visits from contracted custodians down to one. But as funding restrictions have grown more severe, employees said they do not always have capacity to clean internally and leadership has discussed having to shut down some recreational sites for the year. In his fiscal 2026 budget, President Trump proposed slashing USFS operations and National Forest management funding by nearly $800 million as it refocuses away from recreational services toward timber sales, mineral extraction and other priorities. 

USFS has sought to slash employees by firing thousands of newly hired staff still in their probationary employees (who have since been hired back under a now-paused court order) and through offers of early retirement and deferred resignation. The Agriculture Department, the agency’s parent organization, is also expected to issue widespread layoffs in the coming weeks. 

The cuts are having significant impacts. At some USFS locations, employees who work on wildland fire management are being pulled into cleaning duties. They are also working on issues ranging from marking trees for timber sales—Trump has issued an executive order calling for increased timber production, which led USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins to announce USFS will boost logging by 25% and make 43 million acres, or 30% of forested USFS land, available for that purpose—to culling invasive frogs. One employee said the non-fire team as his location has lost 40% of its staffing, meaning firefighters are now doing the alternative work. 

They will pivot back to fire-related roles as needed, he said, but that will leave the other work they are currently doing unattended. The employee said his team is not currently doing prescribed burns that the agency typically conducts. The multi-function roles for firefighters was standard practice 30 years ago, employees said, but such an approach is not sustainable given the intensified threat of fires that climate change has wrought. 

“They don’t have a  contingency plan if it fails to work,” one employee said of leadership’s plans, “and I don’t think it will.” 

A new process 

Another Forest Service employee who works in contracting said that even a modification of an existing contract, such as picking up an option year, goes to the General Services Administration and DOGE for approval. What previously took a maximum of 15 minutes now takes about a month to get money out the door. 

When a new solicitation occurs, a "requisitioner" establishes what is needed, a senior executive signs off, the budget office approves the use of the funds, a contract coordinator conducts a review before this employee approves the solicitation going out. A new layer of review within USFS then conducts an extra review. The process essentially repeats itself when bids come in to select the best proposal. Once a winner is determined, DOGE personnel can either accept or reject the contract. 

Another contracting officer said the process for getting procurements approved has changed 15 times since Trump took office. 

The employee said DOGE has denied funding to continue using “sniffers”—a device that measures air quality to detect smoke or other pollutants. It has also eliminated support for a platform that agency firefighters use to get equipment, and for devices that track which of those supplies USFS has in stock. 

The Trump administration has sought to put sweeping freezes on federal spending, but those efforts have largely been blocked in court. One contracting employee suggested the contracting restrictions were having the same effect: by making funding so difficult to obligate, it has essentially blocked congressionally appropriated funds from being expended.

‘Operational collapse’  

Other employees said it has become difficult to purchase small things that need replacing, like when a trailer jack breaks. One worker said his forest was slated to plant over one million new trees for reforesting, but the contract to plant them has been held up for weeks. The trees become worthless if too much time passes and they are no longer the right size for planting. Another noted DOGE has slowed down the purchasing of firefighting helicopters for his local Helitack crew. 

The contracting employee said leadership has expressed that any purchasing related to firefighting will be greenlit, but that has not been the case in practice. 

“It’s kind of like they’re talking out of both ends of their mouth,” he said. “‘We’re all about fire and safety but we’re not supporting fire and safety.’”

Employees largely expressed confidence those in the fire division currently working on other tasks will pivot back as needed. Those employees have so far been shielded from cuts and are not expected to be subject to forthcoming layoffs. 

Most other USFS employees, however, are trained to assist in emergencies that arise in peak fire season—typically late spring through the summer—and make up the “militia” that deploy as needed. Several employees expressed concern that those reserves have been diminished as a result of the agency’s cuts. 

“I think that we'll get along but it is my suspicion that this agency is far closer to operational collapse than ever before,” one USFS firefighter said. 

More agencies feeling the impact

The contracting issues have been felt across government as DOGE has tightened its grip on all spending. It has paraded its often questioned savings and repeatedly highlighted the contracts it has slashed. At the Environmental Protection Agency, officials have taken a new approach of limiting the number of employees who can access the EPA Acquisition System to just 500. 

The cuts will have significant impacts on how EPA does its purchasing. At the Office of Transportation and Air Quality, for example, the division will go from more than 50 licenses down to 10. 

The web-based system serves as a centralized platform for conducting acquisitions throughout the lifecycle of the procurement. 

One EPA employee impacted by the change suggested the limitations could lead to work stoppages, less internal control review and illegal procurements. Individual workers could be held liable in such a scenario, the employee said. EPA offices will have less ability to share information and employees may have to create a new acquisition system from scratch after being barred from using the existing one. 

The change will affect a wide range of EPA activity. Employees will face limitations on submitting purchase requests, buying new equipment for laboratories, adding funding to existing contracts and even deobligating funding on problematic contracts.

“This reduction in EAS licenses is not a cost savings,” an employee said. “This is not more efficient. This is wasteful as hell and introduces a fiscal vulnerability. It is a complete disservice to the taxpayers.”