U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins on Thursday said she expects a “review” which could lead to some Western North Carolina-based Forest Service employees — terminated under President Donald Trump’s sweeping workforce downsizing – being hired back.
Rollins’ comments came during her first visit to see the damage Hurricane Helene caused in Western North Carolina’s Forest Service lands.
“We're moving into wildfire season, certainly here in North Carolina with all the devastation under Hurricane Helene, which is causing a little bit of more potential for some significantly damaging fires. I wanted to come see it for myself,” Rollins said during a press event at the Forest Supervisor’s Office in Asheville.
Rollins, who was sworn in Feb. 13, spoke with N.C. Gov. Josh Stein when she landed Thursday morning.
“The most important thing is that wildfires and hurricanes know no political party. There is no Republican or Democrat as part of that. It is how we work together to ensure the people of this great state have the services they need and that we're able to preserve the beauty of North Carolina,” Rollins said.
In its initial survey after the storm, the Forest Service said that roughly 20% of the total acreage in the Nantahala and Pisgah National Forests were damaged, totaling more than 187,000 acres. The bulk of the damage is in Yancey, Mitchell, McDowell, and Avery counties.
In addition, nearly 900 miles of Forest Service-managed roads and an estimated 800 miles worth of trails were damaged with some completely washed away.
Almost a month has passed since the Trump administration began terminations inside federal organizations including the Forest Service. When asked about the impact of staffing reductions on hurricane recovery, Rollins stuck by the Trump administration's commitment to “right size” the federal government – but acknowledged some “mistakes” and pointed to the administration’s attempt as of late to re-hire some critical workers.
“We feel good about those decisions, having said that, we have made mistakes. We have been the first to say mistakes have been made,” Rollins said. Referencing re-hiring those working on avian flu research, Rollins said that those who were “mistakenly fired” would be reinstated.
“If at any moment anything comes up that is potentially compromising to this state and to our Forest Service's ability to fight these fires effectively, we will immediately, immediately put those people back in place,” Rollins said.
The Trump administration says that no “frontline” Forest Service firefighters were terminated. However, BPR has spoken with one WNC-based worker who are trained to fight fires and who lost her job despite some of her duties being related to firefighting logistics.
BPR asked Rollins if she would rehire those Forest Service workers who were trained to work on fires. She responded that she is committed to reducing the size of the federal government but that “perhaps the most important role of government” is to “protect our citizenry and ensure that they are safe and secure, whether it is a secure border or whether it is, containing wildfires, this is the priority.”
“My commitment is to ensure that as those decisions were made, we're reviewing all of them and we've begun to pull some of that back and I suspect we'll be doing similar reviews in this arena as well,” Rollins said.
Former Western North Carolina Forest Ranger and Public Affairs Specialist Jenifer Bunty was one of the thousands of federal workers fired last month. She told BPR that while she wasn’t in a primary firefighting role, she was trained to respond to wildfires and is "red-carded."
“Almost everyone on our forest, the vast majority of our employees, hold fire qualifications. It's all-hands-on-deck when it happens,” Bunty said, referring to the Pisgah National Forest where she worked.
There is currently an increased wildfire risk in the forests due to the weather conditions as well as debris on the ground from Hurricane Helene.
The Forest Service says that if the downed trees are left in dry, fire-prone conditions there would be a “considerable” wildfire risk.
“Hurricane Helene left catastrophic damage across a large portion of the forests in Western North Carolina, with several thousands of acres of blown down trees in the Pisgah National Forests alone,” James Melonas, Forest Supervisor for the National Forests in North Carolina said in a recent press release.
“The longer we wait, the greater the likelihood that a severe wildfire could threaten the Pisgah and our neighboring communities, and that’s simply not a risk we’re willing to take.”
Alan Abernathy, a spokesperson for the U.S. Forest Service told BPR in an email that recovery for the forest has been an “all-hands-on-deck situation”
“The National Forests in North Carolina has made Helene recovery on the Pisgah National Forest a priority and has already begun laying the groundwork for its long-term plans,” Abernathy said in an email. “This includes having staff focus on several areas, including timber salvage and replanting, wildfire risk reduction, wildlife habitat restoration and watershed improvements.”
When Rollins was asked about specific fire evacuation plans in the region she said she was "impressed" with the local leaders who will lead that plan.
She added that the team in Washington is “restructuring the Forest Service in general to hopefully get more money into mission aligned and less into DEI and some of the other things from the last administration.”
After the press event, Rollins met with local Forest Service officials, state officials and other local representatives in a closed meeting. The meeting included representatives from the Governor’s office, McDowell and Haywood county governments and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.
