Trump’s Forest Service Purge Turns Greater Yellowstone Into a Wilderness War Zone

In the summer of 2025, a routine family trip into Wyoming’s Bridger-Teton National Forest turned into a slog through tangled debris and impassable logjams. The culprit? A federal workforce gutted by the Trump administration’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk, which forced out nearly 6,000 Forest Service employees. Trails once maintained by dedicated crews have become blockaded by fallen trees, forcing hikers and pack animals to saw their way through.

The Bridger-Teton is part of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, a vast and ecologically rich region spanning Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. Long heralded for its robust federal funding and collaborative management, the area supports some of the nation’s most iconic wildlife, including grizzly bears, wolves, and mule deer. But the Trump administration’s 2025 purge—dubbed the Valentine’s Day Massacre—saw immediate terminations of thousands of probationary employees across the Forest Service, National Park Service, and Bureau of Land Management. By September, the Forest Service had lost 16% of its workforce, and the BLM over 32%.

The consequences have been swift and severe. Scott Jackson, leader of the Forest Service’s National Carnivore Program, was forced to shutter his meso-carnivore monitoring project due to budget cuts and shifting agency priorities favoring logging over research. Vital equipment and field resources were discarded, crippling efforts to track and protect wolverines, lynx, and other species.

Locals and former employees warn that the damage is not just immediate but long-lasting. Peggie dePasquale, a wilderness ranger fired in the purge, fears irreversible decline: “What we’re looking at is a long-term deterioration of what we love. And once we lose it, and the degradation happens, it will be hard to reverse.”

This assault on federal land management is a stark example of the Trump administration’s broader strategy to dismantle government capacity, prioritize extraction, and sideline conservation. The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem’s fate now hangs in the balance, a warning sign for public lands across the West under siege from political overreach and neglect.