Colorado led the nation in public lands job losses from federal workforce reductions, with 1,753 positions eliminated — a 26 percent cut across the state’s Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service, and Fish and Wildlife Service offices — according to an analysis of Office of Personnel Management data by Prospect Partners and Hawk Eye Strategies.
No single site in Colorado was hit harder than the White River National Forest. The White River, based in Glenwood Springs, lost approximately 60 positions — roughly a quarter of its workforce — and serves as the most-visited national forest in the country, drawing 8 million visitors annually and generating an estimated $1.6 billion in economic activity in the communities surrounding it. Scott Fitzwilliams, the White River’s forest supervisor, said the cuts create a direct operational problem: fewer people to manage that volume of public use, fire risk, trail maintenance, and resource protection.
The cuts reflect the broader restructuring of the federal land management workforce under the current administration’s Department of Government Efficiency initiatives and OPM-directed agency reductions. Colorado’s 1,753-position loss leads every other state in raw numbers.
The timing compounds the concern. Colorado’s 2026 wildfire season is forecast as the most dangerous in recent years, with 97 percent of the state in some level of drought as of late April. The DFPC and the state’s fire management resources depend on coordination with federal forest managers for fire detection, initial attack, and resource deployment. A 25 percent reduction in White River staff entering the highest-risk summer in years creates a gap at exactly the moment when full capacity is most needed.
For communities in the White River corridor — Glenwood Springs, Aspen, Vail, Steamboat Springs, and the surrounding resort economies — the staffing cuts carry both immediate service impacts and longer-term questions about whether recreational infrastructure that supports those economies can be maintained at current visitation levels with a materially smaller federal workforce.
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