SARATOGA—”Chaos.”
That was the single word a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employee landed on to describe what life and work have been like at the Saratoga National Fish Hatchery since an offer for “deferred resignation” landed in his and thousands of other Wyoming residents’ inboxes in early February.
One of the facilities that has enabled the federally endangered Wyoming toad to stave off extinction, the 110-year-old hatchery was already in a period of transition before the chaos set in. Its supervisory biologist, Lee Bender, had recently retired, so a newcomer took the lead rearing hordes of rainbow, brown and other types of trout bound for lakes in the Wind River River Indian Reservation and fishing ponds outside of Cheyenne’s F.E. Warren Air Force Base to entertain angling airmen.
The transition meant the new supervisor was in a “probationary” employment status with the federal government. Like an untold number of other Wyoming residents, the Saratoga hatchery’s supervisor became another casualty of the Trump administration’s embrace of billionaire Elon Musk’s aggressive downsizing initiative, the Department of Government Efficiency, also known by its acronym DOGE. It’s an effort to rapidly streamline the federal government through layoffs of tens of thousands of employees everywhere, from the Department of Veterans Affairs to the National Park Service.
Within some Republican Party circles the purge has been celebrated, complete with chainsaw-wielding viral moments. Wyoming Sen. Cynthia Lummis lauded Musk’s work in a speech at the statehouse on the same day that a wave of federal employees in Equality State lost their jobs.
But on the ground in Wyoming, the indiscriminate firings look like a Bridger-Teton National Forest staffer losing his post-retirement health insurance plan and, in Saratoga, a fish hatchery supervisor packing up and bidding new colleagues goodbye just two weeks into a new job and life in Carbon County.
“I feel sorry for him,” the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employee in Saratoga said.
The employee spoke on the condition of anonymity, which WyoFile granted because of the potential for retribution.
Keeping the hatchery afloat
WyoFile visited the facility on Thursday, investigating a tip that the hatchery was losing its entire staff because of the federal government workforce turmoil. Multiple requests for information to the Fish and Wildlife Service’s regional office in the Denver metro area yielded no responses. After the reporting trip, a public affairs officer from that office reached out and asked for written questions, but no responses were received by the time this story was published.
Right now, two staffers and an intern are still trying to maintain the 120-acre Saratoga National Fish Hatchery site, which includes 10 buildings that house thousands of trout of various age classes in addition to a breeding facility for the imperiled Wyoming toad.
“We’re keeping things going, you know,” the Fish and Wildlife Service employee said. “Just trying to do the bare minimum to keep things going.”
Being fully staffed at times in the past has meant up to four full-time workers plus another part-timer. It’s unclear how long the Saratoga hatchery’s two remaining employees will last. One of them accepted Musk’s “Fork in the Road”-branded “deferred resignation” offer, which promised pay and benefits through the end of September in exchange for walking away from the job. As of last week, the employee still hadn’t received word on whether the government had accepted their resignation — and when they’d be totally done.
As many as 8,100 Wyoming residents — the state’s entire federal workforce — received the offer. It’s unclear if the Saratoga National Fish Hatchery’s other remaining employee took the deal, or is leaving for another reason.
“I think he did, but I really don’t know,” the Fish and Wildlife Service employee said.
Another federal worker who was on site Thursday at the Saratoga National Fish Hatchery declined an interview for this story.
Even if the other person stays on, running the hatchery with a single staffer assisted by an intern would be a great challenge, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service employee who did consent to an interview.
“They’re going to have to start taking shortcuts, and they’re going to have to start making decisions,” the worker said. “I don’t think it’s going to impact things right away, like fish stocking. But it’s hard to say.”
Steep losses
The turmoil and unintended consequences that Musk’s hastily launched DOGE is inflicting upon Wyoming cuts across agencies charged with stewarding land, water and wildlife spread across a state that’s nearly half owned and administered by the federal government.
“Clearly this direction is coming from somebody who doesn’t understand how government works,” said a different federal employee in Wyoming who’s employed by the U.S. Forest Service. “People [employees] are frustrated, dismayed, about the continual attacks.”
WyoFile agreed to grant the source anonymity.
Over the weekend, Musk threatened federal workers in Wyoming and nationwide would lose their jobs if they didn’t respond to an email demanding they list in bullet-point format five things they accomplished last week. Employees were given until the end of Monday to comply.
Wyoming’s federal government employees, the Forest Service staffer said, are “very concerned about losing public land and what that means for everybody: our permittees, people who recreate on the forest [and] everyone who gets products from the forest.”
Muzzled by the Trump administration’s leadership, federal agencies have not disclosed job-loss figures and are responding to media inquiries and questions with copy-and-pasted statements. But job losses within some agencies are setting up to be steep.
The 3.4-million-acre Bridger-Teton National Forest, which manages a land area roughly the size of Connecticut, has been forced to shed over 40 of its full-time staff, according to a Forest Service employee familiar with the losses. That’s just the latest blow to a federal land manager that’s watched its budget, staffing and infrastructure erode for more than a decade.
“People [employees] are frustrated, dismayed, about the continual attacks.”
U.S. Forest Service staffer
Some ranger districts within Wyoming’s seven national forests have been hit harder than others, and many have sustained losses that will inhibit their ability to function effectively and accomplish tasks like OK’ing permits.
In Saratoga, the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest’s Brush Creek/Hayden Ranger District oversees the Sierra Madre Range and west side of the Snowy Range. The district, which is staffed by a dozen or so non-fire staff, lost three or four full-time employees, including a wildlife biologist and a recreation specialist, according to a different U.S. Forest Service employee familiar with the cuts.
Economic consequences
The losses of federal jobs in the Carbon County town could reverberate economically. A Saratoga timber mill that’s dependent on Medicine-Bow commercial logging could have less cut timber to process because Musk’s effort has pushed out Forest Service staffers needed to OK sales under federal law.
“People from wildlife need to sign off on [a sale], for example,” the federal government employee familiar with the Medicine-Bow cuts said. “We can’t sell a timber sale or put it out to bid until we get those surveys done.”
Across the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service — which manages the Saratoga hatchery — approximately 370 employees were terminated during the initial thrust of layoffs, according to the National Wildlife Refuge Association.
“Losing this many dedicated employees all at once is an especially devastating blow to conservation efforts nationwide and an intentional dismantling of science,” Association President and CEO Desirée Sorenson-Groves said in a statement. “The National Wildlife Refuge System was already underfunded and understaffed. The people being fired today are the backbone of wildlife protection in this country.”
The Trump administration’s pick to helm the Fish and Wildlife Service, who will have to make do with the thinner workforce, is a Wyomingite: Brian Nesvik, the recently retired Wyoming Game and Fish Department director. To date, his former colleagues at Game and Fish have not been called in to assist with keeping the lights on and the fish alive at the Saratoga hatchery — but they’ll be at the ready, if it comes to it.
“I think that our folks, we’d help out any way we could if it becomes necessary,” Wyoming Game and Fish Department Fisheries Chief Alan Osterland told WyoFile. “The hatchery has been a part of that community for a long time, and hopefully it’ll stay that way.”
Angus M. Thuermer, Jr. contributed to this story.
The post Trump cuts may cost a trout-brooding, Wyoming toad-rearing federal hatchery its entire staff appeared first on WyoFile .