Federal cuts hit Wenatchee River Ranger District, threatening Leavenworth backcountry

LEAVENWORTH – Ten U.S. Forest Service employees have been fired at the Wenatchee River Ranger District Office amid agency wide cuts, with fears that more agency firings are on the way.

“It feels like…We're kind of the canary in the coal mine…This is like the beginning of actions that are going to really start affecting everyday people, not just government employees,” said Lead Wilderness Ranger Kyle Warden, who was included in the Wenatchee River Ranger District terminations.

The employees were among 3,400 Forest Service employees that were fired by Presidents Day as billionaire Elon Musk and President Donald Trump have taken swift actions to cut federal spending.

“These cuts to the Forest Service are devastating, in particular for my district, the eighth congressional district, just because we have vast expanses of national forest land,” Congresswoman Kim Schrier (D-District 8) told Ward Media. “The people who keep our forests safe and protected are critically important.”

A Shrinking Staff 

The Wenatchee River Ranger District (WRRD), based in Leavenworth, has three field crews that oversee and maintain roughly 800 miles of trail and approximately 696,000 acres. This acreage contains large parts of three congressionally designated Wilderness areas: the Alpine Lakes Wilderness, Henry M. Jackson Wilderness, and Glacier Peak Wilderness.

In fall of 2024, the Forest Service already dealt a blow to WRRD’s size, announcing it would not hire temporary seasonal workers for the 2025 season due to a shrinking budget, cutting about 2,400 jobs agency wide. 

The Leavenworth-based district lost all of its non-fire temporary seasonal employees, which accounted for three Wilderness crew members, one trail crew member, and three development and dispersed recreation crew members, according to former staff. 

Now, the most recent firings, which targeted permanent seasonal employees in probationary periods, have gutted the district’s field operations. 

All trail crew members were let go, which consisted of three permanent seasonal employees and a mule packer, who is responsible for 11 mules that are used to transport volunteers and heavy equipment into the backcountry. The mules were not only used by WRRD, but were also available for the Naches, Entiat, Cle Elum districts.

As of Feb. 19, only one permanent seasonal employee remained in each of the other two teams: the Wilderness crew, which lost three employees, and the development and dispersed recreation crew, which lost one. Included in the terminations was the district’s volunteer coordinator, further complicating its workforce.

In addition to the eight field employees, the office lost its only two front desk employees that provided visitor information and services.

“Terminating your lowest paid employees who are making $15,000 to $20,000 a year is not the way to cut the budget. And really it's the taxpayers who are going to see the negative consequences from these illegal terminations,” said National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE) union steward Rachel Granberg.

Granberg told Ward Media that the union knows of 40 Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest employees that were included in the firings.

Probationary, but Experienced

While the terminated employees were in their first and second years of their probationary period, they had already dedicated a number of years to the district as temporary seasonal employees. 

“It's extremely common for people to have, you know, 20 years as a seasonal that just had the opportunity to either get a promotion or turn into a perm[anent employee],” said Warden.

Temporary seasonal employees are often referred to as “1039 employees,” as they are only allowed to work 1,039 hours in a season–one less hour required to be eligible for year round health benefits. It took Warden seven seasons as a temporary seasonal employee with WRRD before landing a permanent position.

Even as a temporary seasonal employee, Warden had field-specific skills such as terrain familiarity, medical and rescue capabilities, firefighting certifications, trail building knowledge, and physical strength to hike up 60 pounds of gear over 5,000 vertical feet.

“People think you can just throw any college intern in these jobs, and everything will be okay, but there's a serious chance of injury out there on a day to day basis, so just having the people with the skill set to make those safe decisions is huge,” said Warden.

“A big slap in the face”

The district’s four Wilderness rangers were funded through the end of the 2025 season by a grant from Washington state’s Recreation Conservation Office, according to RCO grant details. Yet, three of them still received letters of termination, and for reasons Warden found perplexing.

“[The letter said] I'm being terminated, I've been deemed ‘not in the public interest’ or something…But it also says ‘due to performance,’ which is a big slap in the face to everybody,” said Warden.

After four seasons of positive evaluations from Warden, his direct superior, Wilderness Climbing Ranger Owen Wickenheiser received the same reason in his letter.

“All of the employees I've talked to who have been terminated have positive performance evaluations, but their termination documents say that they're being let go due to poor performance,” said Granberg.

The NFFE Forest Service Council is currently gathering performance evaluations and other documents from employees for legal action, claiming that the basis of their termination was illegal. 

“In order to let someone go due to poor performance, you have to first demonstrate that they indeed have poor performance, and also give them a chance to improve. There's an entire process that you have to go through to be able to do that. And they've completely bypassed all of that,” said Granberg.

Wilderness Areas at Risk

Going into the 2025 season, the former rangers fear irreversible damage will occur in the increasingly popular Wilderness areas, which are “designated for preservation and protection in their natural condition” under the Wilderness Act of 1964.

The Wilderness areas are not only intended to protect areas of solitude for recreationists, such as Pacific Crest Trail or Enchantments hikers, but they can also protect water resources for municipalities, or habitats for threatened species.

In 2024, WRRD saw nearly 175,000 visitors in its Wilderness areas, who left behind thousands of pounds of waste. Last year alone, the Wilderness rangers dug 14 wilderness toilets, buried 703 piles of human waste, removed 5,000 pounds of it via flight, and hiked out 635 pounds of trash, according to a 2024 WWRD wilderness report. However, Wickenheiser says the overall waste removed via flight actually amounts to about 10,000 pounds a year.

As a climbing ranger, Wickenheiser worked primarily in the Enchantments, located in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area. Although the Enchantments only makes up 6.7 percent of the wilderness area, it receives the highest amount of traffic in the entire district. In 2024, it saw over 120,000 visitors alone. 

“We hear a lot like, ‘This trail looks excellent. I didn't see any trash.’ But like, you step five feet off the trail and look behind a boulder, and there's 10 piles of poop right on the creek side,” said Wickenheiser. “We find things like full abandoned coolers up there, full of broken glass…People pop holes in their rafts and decide they don't want to carry them down.”

With the amount of trash and rogue feces piles that were found under Wickenheiser’s patrol, he only sees it getting worse in the absence of rangers. This could pose a problem for Leavenworth’s municipal water, which is sourced from the Alpine Lakes via Icicle Creek.

“The human waste issue is going to be immediate in the Enchantments. As soon as we open the gate, those toilets are going to be overflowing after a week of use,” said Warden.

A Threat to Public Safety 

As more inexperienced hikers venture into the Enchantments, the Wilderness rangers have played a crucial role in public safety. Due to their backcountry presence, the rangers often become first responders, providing emergency medical assistance and coordinating extraction with the Chelan County Sheriff’s Office search and rescue (SAR) team.

“Sometimes we are the only people there, waiting for a helicopter for four hours, which can get really difficult when there is a situation like a fatality or serious injury,” said Warden.

The rangers also take preventative measures, including providing trail safety information, deescalating potential SAR situations, and putting out campfires. Last year, Wickenheiser put out three campfires in undesignated areas, and extinguished more that were put out but still hot.

“There's so much standing dead from beetle kill…Colchuck Lake is literally a tinderbox…And that's four, five miles from town [as the crow flies],” said Wickenheiser.

Although the recent cuts exempted firefighters, the loss of field employees presents a significant blow to firefighting resources. During fire seasons, the fire qualified WRRD staff were sent on fire assignments for support, working as a resource advisor, cleaning gear, managing radio operations, or managing base camp.

“There are so many critical roles to make fire camps run, and a lot of those were staffed by either [temporary] seasonals or permanent seasonals,” said Wickenheiser.

An Uncertain Future 

A day after Wickenheiser was fired, the lottery opened for overnight permits in the Enchantments, even though the district no longer has the staff to enforce them. Warden also anticipates the district office will close without enough personnel, making it harder for recreationists to source information.

“People are paying for an experience that they're not going to get. There's also going to be just so much poaching of campsites that it's going to be difficult to even probably find a campsite in certain times for those people that are legally going,” said Warden.

The agency has yet to announce any shutdowns to the lottery or trail closures. However, the nature of the terrain access makes it near impossible to close the area off entirely. Even if the district closed the Eight Mile Road gate, persistent recreationalists could still reach the Enchantments via Snow Lakes Trailhead.

“Maybe this might not be the year to like, do all your goals out in the [National] Forest or Parks…It's going to be really hard, even if you are totally [practicing] ‘Leave No Trace,’ to not leave an impact in these times of no management,” said Warden.

Taylor Caldwell: 509-433-7276 or taylor@ward.media