Scott Fitzwilliams spent more than thirty years with the U.S. Forest Service, the last sixteen of which were as the Forest Supervisor for the White River National Forest in Western Colorado.
He took early retirement last year, shortly after the Trump administration fired thousands of workers at the Forest Service and other land management agencies.
Now, he’s warning that the administration’s priorities and actions will hurt rural Western communities, even if they don’t see the impacts just yet. Fitzwilliams was recently featured by Wilderness Workshop as part of their 2026 Naturalist Night speaker series, speaking in both Carbondale and Aspen.
Rocky Mountain Community Radio’s Caroline Llanes spoke with Fitzwilliams to find out more.
Editor’s note: this interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Llanes: So to give listeners an introduction, you worked for the Forest Service for over 30 years in a variety of locations, including Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Alaska, and the Pacific Northwest. But the last 16 years were spent as the supervisor of the White River National Forest, right here in Western Colorado, so you were basically the highest authority for that 2.3 million acres. When the second Trump administration was sworn in, you took an early retirement. Why was that?
Fitzwilliams: Yeah, I was eligible to retire, and I had planned to retire in a year and a half or so, maybe two years. But I took the opportunity, and I really recognized I couldn't work in the environment that was being presented to me. You know, it really came to a head when—we called it the Valentine's Day massacre—when we had to fire a bunch of employees, and then we had to give them a letter that said it was based on their performance. And I thought, “well, if we're going to lie to our employees like this, we're gonna lie to the public.” This is going to be a ruse, and I can't—I spent 34 years trying to do the right thing. I couldn't be involved with that. So, I had the opportunity and stepped aside. And it's hard to watch what's going on.
You know, it's pretty deliberate dismantling of the public land system in our country, and it's hard to watch. It's hard to understand why. At a time when our public lands have never been more popular and never been more important to such a wide spectrum of people, we're just choosing to only focus and prioritize small advocacies for certain types of industries. And, that doesn't make sense to me. Our public lands, I've said this a million times, the system is a great experiment in democracy. Nowhere else in the world do we have, where a government set aside lands in the public domain, managed in the public trust for everyone. It's such a great democratic concept and I believe it's part of the strength of this country. And I'm really concerned that the playbook of Project 2025 is being implemented to a tee when it comes to public lands. And I don't think people understand how they'll be affected, and some of the effects are subtle.
Llanes: Okay, yeah. Let's talk about this dismantling of our federal public land system that you've just mentioned. What do you see as some of the ways this is happening and what are some of the potential impacts?
Fitzwilliams: The prioritization of what is going to be important in this administration, and clearly it's extractive resources, which I am absolutely not against. I've been with the Forest Service 34 years and multiple use involves some extractive resources, but… it's so out of balance as far as the prioritization of that. The (One) Big Beautiful Bill has a lot of emphasis where, you know, “we're going to reduce royalties for oil and gas companies”, which does nothing but hurt local communities. Because if you reduce the royalties, the local county governments get a portion of those, from federal leases. So that's gonna affect their pocket.
But it requires the Forest Service to increase timber sales—250 million board feet every year for a decade. Again, not against cutting trees. We have a lot of fuel reduction to do, but that's not what this is about. This is about saw timber for commercial timber and it will come at the expense of doing fuels treatment in the areas that really need it, that don't have—you know, the trees aren't viable for commercial timber production.
But across the agency, in less than a year, the agency lost 5,000 non-fire employees. And I know the forest that I was leading has lost somewhere in the neighborhood of 40% of their staff. You know, they've eliminated seasonal hiring. So the people that do the work on the ground, the people's work, keep bathrooms clean, toilets clean, trails cleared—hiring has ceased. And just a reduction of critical staff like biologists and archeologists and engineers. I'm really concerned, especially with the lack of snowpack this year that, you know, the divesting (from) fuels mitigation work because we're emphasizing commercial timber—every year that goes by, we're playing with fire, literally. If we're not doing fuels mitigation, we're increasing the probability we're going to have a major wildfire.
And so I think people are gonna start to see this. It's a little subtle, and the dedicated people that are still around the agency are trying like heck to minimize the impacts, but they're coming. And people are going to see reduced services, reduced trail maintenance, reduced maintenance and cleanliness of facilities and bathrooms, and delays in permitting. And that’s going to lead to a gradual degradation of the ecosystem function, user experience, all those things that people enjoy about their public lands. And you know, the word on the street is, the agency needs to get rid of another 1,500 non-fire employees.
Llanes: So what do you think the Trump administration's end goal is when it comes to public lands?
Fitzwilliams: You know, you look at what, you know, the priorities and policies of the agencies, where they're spending their money, what the legislation that has gone through so far, I think the ultimate (goal) is to degrade it and dismantle it to the point where we hurt rural communities who are mostly around these public lands, to the point where they maybe start to think maybe someone else needs to manage them. And I think that is the absolute deliberate (goal), they are looked at as an asset on a profit and loss statement.
Llanes: So you've talked a lot about the harms you see taking place on public lands right now. What do you think it's going to take to undo some of these damages that you've laid out in our conversation?
Fitzwilliams: It’s going to take some work. It will depend a lot on how future elections go. If there's a pushback in the midterm, I think at least some of these things will be stalled and there'll be some oversight related to it. But I think there needs to be a concerted effort. Okay, what's got to be rebuilt? What are the future investments? And we've got to rethink this, get that back to basics and manage these lands for the greater good, and the masses in the middle who just want, you know, to run their cattle. You know, maybe it's a logger that wants to do some logging, that's great and fine. Recreationists, hunters, anglers, you know, people just want that. And we've got to really focus our future prioritization and policies on delivering that. And I think if we do that, people won't get disgruntled with the agencies. They'll go back to partnering and realizing that, you know, these lands in public trust are this brilliant idea that was thought up over a hundred years ago, is part of the strength of this country and it's part of what makes our democracy great.
Llanes: Well, Scott, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with Rocky Mountain Community Radio.
Fitzwilliams: Oh, no worries.
Copyright 2025 Rocky Mountain Community Radio. This story was shared via Rocky Mountain Community Radio, a network of public media stations in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico, including Aspen Public Radio.
