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ELKINS -- Impact from the recent federal job cuts has begun to hit the local area, as Randolph County has seen its first confirmed firing at the U.S. Forest Service.
The former Forest Service employee was a Conservation Education Assistant at the Monongahela National Forest office in Elkins. It is unclear how many other local Forest Service employees have been let go.
Last week in Parkersburg, 80 probationary employees were let go from the U.S. Bureau of the Fiscal Service offices in Parkersburg, according to an official with the union representing some employees of the agency.
Elkins City Council Fourth Ward representative Nanci Bross-Fregonara wrote about the local firings in an op-ed column for The Inter-Mountain last week:
"Public servants passionate about their work have been demonized, and those who have cared for our national parks, protected our forests, and assisted those in need, have been handed pink slips via email and told to leave their office immediately," Bross-Fregonara wrote. "The family photos and hand-drawn thank-you pictures from school children, the seed pods and feathers, guidebooks and coffee mugs, all thrown quickly into a box."
This comes as the Trump Administration and Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), spearheaded by billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk, continues to cut the federal workforce from all sides. According to AP News, roughly 2,000 employees across the country were cut from the U.S. Forest Service as of Feb. 21.
The federal cuts could come even closer to home for the over 10,000 federal employees who work in West Virginia, as well as the over 33,000 federal employees who reside in the state.
By the end of March 2024, West Virginia had around 17,338 on-board federal civilian employees, according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), based on data from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
According to the CRS, the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS) estimated that, in 2023, around 33,332 federal government workers lived in West Virginia. An estimated 10,345 federal government workers lived in the state's first congressional district, and an estimated 22,977 lived in the second congressional district. These estimates reflect federal employees' place of residence in the state, rather than where they worked.
On Sunday, the Western Watersheds Project (WPP), a unionized nonprofit conservation group, joined three unions in a lawsuit challenging the mass-firing of thousands of federal workers across a variety of government agencies, including the National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, National Science Foundation and Bureau of Land Management. The Coalition to Protect America's National Parks, VoteVets and Main Street Alliance also joined the lawsuit.
"The Trump administration is like a clown car with a drunk driver mowing down people on the sidewalk," Erik Molvar, a wildlife biologist and Executive Director of Western Watersheds Project, said in a press release. "Somebody's got to stop them, and WWP is proud to support the unions in their effort to protect workers and the environment from this rogue administration."