Colorado has more than 20 million acres of public lands, which are largely considered a cornerstone of the state.A recent analysis found Colorado lost more public lands employees in 2025 than any other state in the country.While those in favor of the cuts argue it made the federal agencies more efficient, others are worried by the loss within that workforce.Dorian McDaniel frequents Green Mountain Trail and Denver7 joined her there on a sunny July morning. She has lived in Colorado since 2016, but said that from a young age she knew she wanted to move from California to the Centennial State.As soon as I got out here, just got immersed into all the outdoor activity," McDaniel said.As she climbed the trail, she looked over the skyline of Denver which was thick with haze."This is one of the first clearer days," McDaniel remarked, noting that earlier in the week the haze was worse. Everyone was on edge about this fire season, and so to see it happening is just so sad for me and for the future of our forests.She fears the layoffs from last year are coming at a dangerous time, saying it is only the start of the summer and fires are already burning tens of thousands of acres across the state.It's just not okay for Coloradans and our forests to have all these job cuts," said McDaniel.McDaniel is a member of an advocacy group called Mountain Mamas, which has three central initiatives: clean air for children, a clean climate, and protecting access to public lands for future generations. Denver7 wanted to know what is happening behind the scenes with public lands employees, and sat down with an anonymous national park ranger to better understand the on the ground impacts.We're running on a skeleton crew, even less than a skeleton crew," they said. There are not enough rangers to properly manage these national parks, and there's not enough rangers to properly keep people safe in their national parks. Read more of Denver7's stories on Colorado politics hereAccording to an analysis of federal workforce data, almost 6,000 federal public lands jobs were lost in 2025 throughout six western states. Among those states Arizona, California, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, and Nevada the Centennial State lost the most jobs in the nation at 1,753.The report was conducted by Prospect Partners and Hawk Eye Strategies, which are consulting firms composed of former government officials. The overview for Colorado from the analysis shows that the loss of 1,753 public lands jobs accounts for 26% of that workforce in the state. It continues to claim that 36% of the reductions were aimed at "junior and probationary employees, the newly hired federal employees who are the foundation of visitor services, field operations, and emergency operations."Roughly a third of the jobs lost in Colorado were due to moving personnel from the field to Washington, D.C. as staff were reassigned from regional offices to the Department of the Interior (DOI) Headquarters, the report says.Denver7 asked the White House about the findings from this analysis, and a spokesperson replied with a statement which said, in part, "President Trump has been committed to eliminating bureaucratic overhead so that taxpayer dollars go towards what actually benefits the American people."The statement continued to describe the people behind the reports as "washed-out former Biden administration staffers," adding that the Trump administration's "commitment to streamlining operations has not come at the cost of retaining first responders, parks services, or energy production employees." Across the administration, President Trump has been committed to eliminating bureaucratic overhead so that taxpayer dollars go towards what actually benefits the American people. Despite these reports from washed outnbsp;former Biden administration staffers, using data from last year, our commitment to streamlining operations has not come at the cost of retaining first responders, parks services or energy production employees.A White House official tells Denver7 that fewer employees have not led to "fewer results" for the American people at the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). According to that official, the BLM has approved over 6,106 Applications for Permits to Drill, which is more than were approved in the last 15 fiscal years.Denver7 shared the response to the analysis from the White House with the anonymous national park ranger.They have only added more bureaucracy, more red tape, more hoops to jump through. So, this has not been efficiency at all, not even a little bit," the ranger said. "Everything that they have done was possibly the complete opposite to what people on the ground level would have suggested to make the government more efficient.The ranger conducted the interview anonymously, since their job is at risk for speaking with the press in such a raw manner. Denver7 verified the employee through two different sources.They only spoke from their perspective, and not on behalf of all park rangers.Many other people probably are afraid to come forward, because they fear the loss of their job and therefore their livelihood," the ranger said. A lot of our jobs are tied to our health insurance in our agency. A lot of the jobs are also tied to our housing. So, if you lose your job, you lose your health insurance, you lose your housing, and if you don't have any support systems, you are basically homeless without any help.Still, the ranger felt they had to come forward and share what they have seen inside of a national park."What I'm seeing is just so egregious and so concerning, it would be wrong for me to not say something," they said. If you are not in federal civilian service, then you typically do not have any idea what is actually happening behind the scenes, what your taxpayer dollars are going to. The ranger said this work, for many, is done by people who are passionate about their job."Unfortunately, you know, for some people it is just a job. For a lot of people however, this is their life, this is their career, this is their calling, this is their passion. And unfortunately, oftentimes we are stuck paying the passion tax," they said. In the past there's always been a passion tax, just like for teachers, doctors, you know, volunteers, but now the passion tax has just gotten astronomically high.According to the ranger, the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) helped bring jobs back to public lands agencies following the first Trump administration. They said that ended with the start of the second Trump administration."Unfortunately, there's what is notoriously known as the Valentine's Day massacre, and that was when a number of Forest Service and National Park Service, and other agencies as well, but thousands of people got fired indiscriminately," the ranger said.The general public is not feeling a lot of the effects of the layoffs, the ranger said, because of how hard staff is working. Still, they said there are obvious impacts to those who see the inner workings of daily operations.There's no money for overtime in a lot of national parks," the ranger said. "There's less people to save people when they get in trouble in national parks. So, less people to come for search and rescues, less law enforcement rangers to respond, less normal rangers to clean bathrooms. It is causing rangers to also have to go outside of their job description, which again is not what we signed up for, but we are public service, and a lot of us will do it because it's for the greater good of the public.In addition, the ranger said the National Park Service (NPS) is lacking when it comes to supervisor roles."I am doing the job of about three different people at my level, and some of the work of someone from above my level, because those positions are just vacant. And we have not been able to fill any of these vacancies, barely, if at all," the ranger said. There are just not enough hands to do all the work that is necessary, and now the conversation in many places is, how do we shrink operations? How do we reduce operations? How do we pull back? And that is the opposite of what the public wants.When asked what the ranger fears about the future, they said the potential privatization and increased extraction of public lands. They plan to hang on to this job for as long as they can."My line is when they come to my park and start to try to cut down trees or drill or privatize it," the ranger said. "I can't say exactly how much longer, timewise, I can survive. I already survived one Trump administration, and a lot of us are now determined to make it through the second Trump administration, because we know that it is not forever.Denver7 asked the ranger what they think about the impact of layoffs during a time of high fire danger."I do think that this summer, if we are lucky to not have very many fires, will maybe be all right. But, if the fires keep happening, if more fires crop up, eventually we're going to get strung so thin that we're not going to be able to fight them all effectively or in a timely manner to reduce damage and reduce harm," the ranger said.Scott Fitzwilliams retired from the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) in 2025 after almost 35 years. Most recently, he served as the forest supervisor on the White River National Forest, but Fitzwilliams tells Denver7 he worked in seven different states over the course of his career."It's a great experiment in democracy, where we've said we're going to set these hundreds of millions of acres aside, owned by the public for the long term and managed for the public good," Fitzwilliams said. It's such a wonderful mission, it's such a uniquely American ideal, and so I just have a real passion around public lands, and was really fortunate to work all that time with the Forest Service all over the West.Fitzwilliams left because of what he called a "deliberate dismantling" of the agency he loves."I understand we've got to be efficient, but that's not what I'm seeing," Fitzwilliams said. We know the fire situation, we know the drought situation, and we have a public land system across the board, whether it's Forest Service, BLM, Park Service, that's never been more in demand by the American public." Some impacts of the layoffs will be subtle, according to Fitzwilliams, who said it may take some time to see the true extent of the jobs lost.Especially over the long term, what we're going to see is a gradual lack of maintenance and management, attention to the things people care about: a trail that's cleared and safe, a bathroom that's clean and doesn't stink, an office that has people that can answer questions or provide guidance," said Fitzwilliams.He continued to speak about how he believes the layoffs have impacted the firefighting ability of the agency.The fire staffing stayed about the same. The people whose full-time job, that's what they do, that's that's their job, you know, Congress would never let them cut the fire staffing. The problem is those 6,000 people [laid off] support the fire. They serve on national incident management teams as finance people, or planning people, or meteorologists," said Fitzwilliams.Fitzwilliams said many of the employees who either left or were let go in 2025 had institutional knowledge that takes years to learn."It takes decades to rebuild some of that," Fitzwilliams said. In the idyllic community of Grand Lake sits Shadowcliff Mountain Lodge Retreat Center, where Alexander Thompson is the executive director.So many people come up because they want to experience the wonder and beauty of Colorado's gorgeous mountains and natural lands," Thompson said.The lodge hosts retreat groups in addition to hikers passing through while on the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail (CDT). Shadowcliff was founded by Thompson's grandparents, and was constructed with the help of 650 volunteers from 42 countries over the course of 25 years.Thompson believes his grandparents would have spoken out about the public lands layoffs, as he decided to do."I think they would be proud. They cared about this place deeply, and I think they would have fought for it," Thompson said while walking around the property.Shadowcliff bears a daily reminder of the 2020 East Troublesome Fire, with the burn scar visible from almost all sides of the lodge.There were firefighters on our land fighting that fire, that protected Shadowcliff and protected the town of Grand Lake from burning," Thompson said. "Grand Lake exists still it did not burn because of the work of federal workforce people who fought that fire, and who have continued to do work in collaboration with local municipalities and the county. Colorado Congressman Joe Neguse is behind the Public Lands Workforce Stability Act," which would not allow future layoffs within DOI or the USFS until 2030.It's reasonable to say, let's put a freeze on layoffs until we understand the impacts of these things," Thompson said about the concept of the bill. "People will get tired. You'll lose senior seasoned park service workers, forest service workers, BLM workers, people who have experience and expertise and institutional knowledge that's really vital in keeping their initiatives and their work and their projects moving forward. So, I would support that as a policy.For Thompson, he felt a personal responsibility to speak out on this subject."How do I as a person, how does Shadowcliff as an organization, how do we as a nation tend to our resources? Like we have this incredible place, why would we not take care of it? Thompson said. "I feel hopeful because I live in this community, and I see the way that people show up for each other. I see the way that people show up for the town. I see the way that people are engaged and active in these conversations... I learned things from these mountains, and one of the things that I learned is that after devastation comes regeneration. So again, when I think in terms of that scale, that's a reason I think to feel hopeful. ...read more read less