Headlines flooded media outlets around the country this week detailing the Trump administration plans to permanently “abolish” 2,050 jobs at the U.S. Department of the Interior, but how the layoffs will impact Wyoming remains unclear. 

An accounting of the “reduction in force,” or RIF, became public in a court document filed Monday. The disclosure was required by a federal judge out of Northern California who issued a temporary restraining order in response to a federal labor union lawsuit. Although the Interior Department has a large presence in Wyoming — a state that’s half federal land — the legal filing only revealed two clearly in-state positions that are being eliminated. 

Both those “abolished” positions are with the Bureau of Reclamation’s Wyoming Area Office. The filing does not specify which jobs are being removed from the office, which manages irrigation, flood control infrastructure and associated land in river basins west of the Continental Divide in Wyoming and parts of Colorado and Montana. A WyoFile inquiry yielded no response or information from the office, which is only partly operational due to the federal government shutdown. 

The uncontrolled spillway of the Pathfinder Dam, pictured in June 2016, is an example of water infrastructure administered by the Bureau of Reclamation. (BuRec). 

The attempted layoffs are coming at a time when many federal government employees have been furloughed because of the shutdown. The funding lapse, now in its third week, is the second longest in history, though many federal functions and properties, such as the national parks, are still going or being left open.

President Donald Trump has said he’s laying off federal workers because of the shutdown, which he is blaming on Congressional Democrats. But Interior Department officials wrote in court filings that the layoffs are unrelated and have been in the works for months. 

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Notably, court filings disclose only a subset of the jobs U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is planning to eliminate — positions covered by labor unions that are plaintiffs to the lawsuit. It is “likely” that other layoffs are slated for other offices, but so far the judge has not required the Interior Department to disclose the entirety of its RIF plans, according to Aaron Weiss, deputy director for the Center for Western Priorities.

“We know they are playing games and trying to hide the full scope of whatever the RIF plan is,” Weiss said. “Just because they haven’t said they aren’t planning RIFs for Wyoming does not mean that there aren’t RIFs coming.” 

Interior Department agencies with a major presence in Wyoming include the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Bureau of Indian Affairs, among others. 

The Bureau of Land Management’s Wyoming headquarters building in Cheyenne in February 2025. (Mike Koshmrl/WyoFile)

Employees at the Bureau of Land Management’s Wyoming headquarters in Cheyenne, for example, are not unionized. That status likely explains why the office’s staff wasn’t listed in the recent legal filing that discloses hundreds of layoffs for BLM state offices in Oregon, Utah, California, Idaho, Arizona and Colorado.

BLM-Wyoming employees have not been informed of any mandatory layoffs, according to a source who’s not authorized to speak on the matter. 

It’s a similar story for the national parks, like Yellowstone and Grand Teton. Although Interior’s legal filing lists 272 National Park Service positions slated for elimination, no jobs tied to Wyoming parks have been disclosed and staff have not been informed of any pending layoffs, according to another source also not authorized to speak about the matter.  

Weiss, at the Center for Western Priorities, attributed the secrecy around Interior’s RIF plans to their unpopularity. The layoffs will cost local jobs and inhibit permitting of commercial activities on federal lands, like grazing and oil and gas drilling. 

“It will harm local communities across the West,” Weiss said. “They know that this is indefensible. Rather than own up to it, they’re trying to hide what they’re planning.” 

Slashing Interior’s workforce is part of the Trump administration’s overall effort to make the government smaller and more efficient. The downsizing has been organized under the Department of Government Efficiency, formerly helmed by billionaire Elon Musk.

Mike Koshmrl reports on Wyoming's wildlife and natural resources. Prior to joining WyoFile, he spent nearly a decade covering the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem’s wild places and creatures for the Jackson...

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  1. “Slashing Interior’s workforce is part of the Trump administration’s overall effort to make the government smaller and more efficient” is stated as a fact. It is not a fact. It is a lie. Slashing the workforce has one purpose: to destroy the agencies and open up the public lands to privatization. Efficiency has nothing to do with it.

    Please get your facts straight.

    Reply

    1. Wyofile is reporting on the rhetoric that is being spewed from the current administration. While I don’t necessarily disagree with your comment, it is still just conjecture in relation to the real reason from these actions.

      Reply