An early priority in President Donald Trump's second term could trigger a red-state revolt against Republican candidates, a report warned Monday.
Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency imposed drastic cuts to public land agencies that are hitting rural conservative communities across the western United States, with an estimated 5,200 workers terminated from the agencies that manage the 640 million acres of federal public lands and even deeper cuts expected next year. They threaten to wreck communities that rely on those lands, reported Politico.
“The federal payroll from the [Bureau of Land Management], the Forest Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service in these small rural communities is huge," said Steve Ellis, chair of the National Association of Forest Service Retirees. "It helps pay taxes. It helps keep the little hospital open. Federal employees have kids in the schools where the funding from the state depends on the number of students.”
Ranchers and farmers rely on public lands for their livelihood, outfitters, guides and hunters regularly use them for sport and sustenance, and forestry, timber and sawmill workers ply their trades in wildfire mitigation and lumber, and support for adequately staffed public lands and continued public access enjoy broad support across the rural west.
“Both the rich and the poor get to use public lands. I believe every piece of public land in the West should be able to be accessed by public land hunters," said 57-year-old Terry Zink, a third-generation houndsman who hunts big game. "The wildlife belongs to we the people.”
Zink told Politico that he's heard of fellow hunters who had to cut their own way onto trails due after Forest Service trail crews were sent home by DOGE, and he's concerned about wildlife management after agency scientists were also cut.
"You won’t meet anyone more conservative than me, and I didn’t vote for this,” Zink said.
Conservation issues are highly important to Montana voters like Zink, and national Republicans risk awakening a sleeping giant if they continue cutting budget for land management or selling off public lands – as Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) added as a provision to Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill before other GOP senators from Montana and Idaho got that measure removed.
“Hollowing out staffing, cutting budgets, changing priorities — all of that very much lends itself to the idea of essentially causing those agencies to fail at meeting their mandates, and that will lead to the call for privatization,” said Sarah Lundstrum, glacier program manager with the National Parks Conservation Association. “Because if the government can’t manage that land, then obviously somebody else should, right? In documents like Project 2025, there are calls for the privatization of land, or the sell-off of land.”
Montana voters rejected GOP gubernatorial candidates in 2018 over their Trump-like support for slashing national monuments and opening up public lands to drilling and mining, and the staunchly conservative Zink told Politico the same thing could happen again next year if the president continues his attacks on public lands.
“If we get poked too hard on this, they’re going to get primaried and voted out,” Zink said.