Randy Moore is sworn in as the 20th chief of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service in June 2021. (Tanya Flores/U.S. Forest Service)
This story was first published by WyoFile on Feb. 26, 2025.
Hundreds of U.S. Forest Service employees in Wyoming opened their inbox Wednesday to find a consoling message from their chief that offered some clarity to the resignations, layoffs and turmoil that have dogged the federal agency for weeks.
It was a welcomed note for many, albeit one conveyed while Forest Service Chief Randy Moore was announcing his resignation.
“For me, sitting in Wyoming in Region 2, this is the first email of this kind that has come out since this all started,” one Forest Service employee said on Wednesday morning. “Usually I delete these emails, but I actually saved this email. I think it says everything that I’ve been wanting to hear from his level.”
WyoFile is granting the employee anonymity due to the potential for retribution.
Amid an information lockdown, the email from Moore, the Forest Service’s chief since 2021, offered some clarity and empathy. The workforce “will continue to be unsettling for a while,” he wrote in a missive that attempts to raise downtrodden staffers’ spirits.
“We provide drinking water to over 80 million Americans. We also help provide energy independence to the nation, issuing nearly 3,000 oil and gas leases,” Moore wrote. “I say that to say this: You and the work you do is vital to the American way of life and you are a valued employee who has performed admirably.”
The precise toll that downsizing related to the Trump administration and billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has inflicted on the national and Wyoming workforce remains unclear. But some national forests and ranger districts have been walloped: The Bridger-Teton National Forest, for example, lost over 40 full-time employees, according to sources familiar with the losses. Nationally, roughly 2,000 probationary employees have been axed within the Forest Service.
The past several weeks, Moore wrote, “has been incredibly difficult.”
“As part of a broader effort to reduce the size of the federal government, we parted ways with colleagues we worked alongside, who successfully contributed to our mission, and who were valued members of our Forest Service team,” the Forest Service chief wrote in his farewell email.
Moore, a soil scientist by training, was the 20th chief of the Forest Service and the first African American to hold the position. He retires on Monday after 45 years of employment with the federal government. His goodbye email is posted below.
YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE.