by Andrea Delgado and Bernie Kluger
In a recent conversation, Bernie Kluger and Andrea Delgado, former government officials now at Prospect Partners and Hawk Eye Strategies, discussed how federal personnel cuts may undermine the delivery of essential services and resources that the public has come to rely on. Federal land management is a top issue for a public that keeps a close watch on wildfire risk reduction, mineral and gas leasing, recreation, infrastructure safety, renewable resources, and conservation, as well as the overall balance of multiple uses within public lands.
In their time as federal agency leaders, Andrea and Bernie were challenged daily to meet the public’s expectation that federal agencies serve as stewards of the nation’s resources. More recently, Bernie and Andrea pondered about public lands and wildlife, balancing increased land use and the resulting strain on natural resources and staff. They also discussed the implications for financially strapped states and communities who rely on the federal government to administer funds, provide technical assistance for fund recipients, and deliver resources in a timely manner.
Andrea: Fresh off watching the Super Bowl, and armed with caffeine and spreadsheets, you took on the unenviable task of combing through new federal workforce data that the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) released last week (2/5/2026), and you’ve finished an initial analysis. This is the first full-year snapshot of the 2025 staffing cuts across public land management agencies in the USDA and DOI. While some eyes may glaze over at the sight of all that information, data and policy wonks like us can easily indulge in this type of information. For those who prefer to be spared the details, what’s the big picture, Bernie, and what’s the bottom line?
Figure 1: Net Change in 2025 in Public Land Agency Workforce, New Employees (Less Than Five Years Federal Experience Experience) by State
Bernie: At a high level, the total job loss in 2025 across public land and natural resources management agencies was greater than I anticipated, with a final net change of -26,208, a 17% drop in the overall public land agency workforce. But the real shock was the depth of the cuts in the West and among front-line staff. New employees, those with fewer than five years of service, experienced a total job loss of -14,837, which is a 32% reduction in this category of workers nationwide. In western states (AZ, CA, CO, ID, MT, NM, NV, OR, UT, WA, WY) we focused on new employee job loss, ending 2025 with a net loss of -3,850 workers, a 26% drop compared to the 18% loss for all federal public land agency employees in the West. The bottom line is that staffing levels were down in every state, at every public land agency, and in nearly every job.
Figure 2: Net Change in 2025 in Public Land Agency Workforce, New Employees (Less Than Five Years Federal Experience) and Experienced Employees (Five or More Years Federal Experience) by State
Andrea: Under the banner of government efficiency, the American public was told that personnel reductions and reorganization were necessary to allegedly eliminate “waste, fraud, and abuse,” and reduce “bloat.” Do these numbers directly contradict the official messaging that reorganization and cuts at federal public land agencies wouldn’t undermine services? When I think of new employees, I think of those on the front lines of stewarding our public lands, natural resources and wildlife. Whether they are the forestry technicians that we rely on to reduce wildfire risk through hazardous fuels reduction, the entomologists who let us know where insects and disease are threatening to decay or destroy lush vegetation, the recreation techs who clear and maintain trails for avid hikers like myself, and enable access to our public lands for hunters and anglers, or those who national park visitors rely on when they run into trouble.
Bernie: Agencies claimed they’d protect mission-critical and public facing staff when they announced staffing cuts. Well, the numbers tell a different story.
Andrea: They certainly do and they raise a lot of questions, too. I am looking at the numbers, and I was surprised to see cuts in states across the West and in jobs that require technical expertise or fire qualifications. Colorado lost 25% or more staffing in critical functions like aircraft operations. Washington lost its last entomologist, Oregon its last dispatcher. Those states together have lost their last six meteorologists. Wildfires don’t care whether they’re burning Tribal, federal, state or private lands, and when a wildfire or other hazards strike, agencies and cooperators rely on experts like meteorologists to make risk-informed decisions in the planning and execution of incident response.
Figure 3: Net Change in 2025 in Public Land Agency Workforce, New Employees (Less Than Five Years Federal Experience) and Experienced Employees (Five or More Years Federal Experience) by Agency
Bernie: That’s the immediate impact, undermining everything from conservation and recreation to forest health. The loss of those specific, regional capabilities—like the last entomologist in Washington, while its forests face insect pressure—suggests haphazard rather than intentional, strategic cuts. That’s a huge issue for agency risk reduction as we look to the 2026 fire season. What about the long-term impact on the workforce and public land management?
Andrea: The disproportionate loss of new federal public land employees impinges on the future capacity. In some of the critical jobs where we develop the next generation, new employees were eliminated at 3x to 6x the termination rate of experienced employees. Internship and trainee programs were down 50% to 100% across the board. This essentially guts the training and development pipeline for future stewards of our public lands.
Bernie: We have been hearing a lot from Interior and USDA leadership about plans for permitting reform and the reduction of waste, fraud, and abuse. Are you seeing anything to back up these plans in the personnel data?
Andrea: What’s interesting to me is that rather than work to retain the expertise required to efficiently process grant applications, provide technical assistance, review applications to ensure they meet specifications, and oversee millions of dollars in distributions, staffing in these jobs is way down. Grants management staffing levels in 2025 were down 69% nationwide, and 78% among new employees. This raises concerns for long-term delays, diminished support and oversight, and increased risk in the stewardship of taxpayer dollars. I am similarly concerned about the impact of engineering workforce cuts on safety. General engineering headcount is down 25% or more in 20 states, with a two-thirds drop in Oregon and Utah. Among many roles, engineers inspect and ensure the safety of buildings and infrastructure on public lands, such as roads, bridges, dams, trails, and recreation sites. When you’re taking a hiking, camping or backpacking trip on your own or with family, the last thing you want to worry about is whether the road or bridge you’re on is safe to pass.
Bernie: Finally, onto the big question, did these layoffs actually save taxpayers money or improve service?
Andrea: The data on the immediate net cost of staffing cuts is revealing. To decrease the size of the federal workforce, the Administration offered a buy out package to employees that consisted largely of paid administrative leave through September 30, 2025, alone or in combination with voluntary early retirement. For the Department of the Interior, administrative leave hours jumped to 8.1 million hours in 2025 compared to the ten-year average of 1.4 million hours. To encourage folks to leave, agency leaders arranged for thousands of employees to be paid not to work. How do you improve public facing services to taxpayers with diminished staff capacity? How do you increase efficiency when you have encouraged those who make it possible to have safe and enjoyable experiences on public lands to leave their jobs?
Figure 4: Ten Year Trend in Hours of Paid Administrative Leave to Employees at the US Department of the Interior (2016-2025)
Bernie: I have been stunned by the enormity of 8.1 million hours. Are you saying that instead of cutting costs and modernizing our federal system, federal agency leaders, according to my back-of-the envelope estimate, spent over $200 million in taxpayer dollars for separating federal employees at DOI to not work in 2025?
Andrea: That’s exactly what happened. While DOGE was focusing on making headlines, hundreds of millions of dollars at DOI and USDA were paid out in administrative leave. Meanwhile agencies were expected to do more with a fraction of their workforce. Colorado and States across the west are home to the most visited National Forests and National Parks in the Nation. Recent reports backed by federal data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis highlights that outdoor recreation contributes to $1.2 trillion in economic output and supports about 5 million jobs. When you know the importance of the public land agency workforce to the economy,, you would think that decision makers would care to invest in the workforce, permanent and seasonal alike, to prepare our public lands for safe and enjoyable visitor experiences.
Bernie: When you see the numbers, that comes to mind?
Andrea: I think about all the people and services behind the numbers, and all the visible and invisible work that the public benefits from, myself included. I think about all the trails that didn’t get maintained. The roads and bridges that need inspections and maintenance. The information we didn’t get about fish and wildlife populations or insects and disease, and the fuels work necessary to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires that may not have occurred. What’s unsettling is that a new generation of front line staff, talented people who could have chosen to work anywhere else, chose instead to serve in the public interest only to see their careers cut short.
Bernie: Did agency leadership have a contingency plan when they moved ahead with these massive cuts or did the work just not get done?
Andrea: I can only speak to what I observed. Contingency planning only works when it’s done upfront, while you still have time, institutional knowledge, and capacity. After a large workforce reduction, you don’t have the luxury of designing an orderly transition. You’re forced into rapid prioritization and damage control. Many of the federal leaders outside D.C., who were responsible for day-to-day oversight and execution, weren’t in the room when headquarters made across-the-board staffing decisions. Instead, the burden fell on the remaining staff and leadership to pick up the pieces and re-stabilize operations. This is what it looks like when the briefing room is disconnected from the frontlines. When decisions are made in isolation from the workforce that has to carry the burden, the operational fallout is felt most sharply on the ground.
With this recently available workforce data, we are trying to form a picture now of the implications for risk in 2026. Up next, we’re going to look at newly released data on billions of dollars for federal contracting, grants, and assistance with an eye towards impacts on grantees. As we shift gears, what’s on your mind?
Bernie: I wish I could say that agency leaders made a successful pivot, shifting spending to system modernization or to state and local partners. Our initial findings, unfortunately, suggest that policy changes and headquarters staffing shortages constituted a barrier to moving those federal dollars out the door in 2025 and early 2026.
Andrea: When we have those numbers squared away, Bernie, I hope you and I can continue our conversation.
Additional findings from this study available through this download link.
Prospect Partners anticipates releasing in the coming weeks additional findings on the federal public lands workforce, as well as federal contracting, cooperative agreements, and grants related public lands management. Future studies by Prospect Partners will also expand their analysis to workforce impacts in the agricultural program workforce at the US Department of Agriculture.
We welcome inquiries about this study and questions about our work at info@prospectdc.com or here.
