Cassidy Randall writes:

The road to the tiny hamlet of Marion in northwest Montana is lined with the thick trees of the Flathead National Forest, with modern homesteads of trailers and modest homes dotting clearings here and there. Outside a timber frame café called the Hilltop Hitching Post, one of the only gathering spots for Marion’s population of less than 1,200, hunter Terry Zink pulled up in a dusty, well-used F-150 pickup and got out wearing a camo jacket against the early September chill, and a ball cap atop wire-rimmed glasses.

Zink, 57, is a third-generation houndsman who hunts big game, including mountain lions and bears. He also owns an archery target business. He’s a rural Montanan whose way of life and livelihood depend on public lands.

He led me into the Hilltop, where half the people inside knew his name, to a corner where we sat drinking diner coffee. “You won’t meet anyone more conservative than me, and I didn’t vote for this,” Zink said.

“This” is the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) deep cuts earlier this year to federal public lands agencies’ funding and to the staff at those agencies who administer that funding and steward public lands and wildlife.

Zink voted for Trump but said he doesn’t agree with everything the president does. Zink clarifies he calls himself a “conservative” over calling himself a “Republican.” He doesn’t like Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric. “I prefer common sense in the middle,” he said.

He believes wolves need to be hunted to manage their numbers; abortion should only be legal in cases of rape, incest and to protect the mother’s life; and he’s an ardent Second Amendment supporter. He’s also a passionate advocate for public lands and wildlife. And the cuts have, frankly, ticked him off.

He is vocal not just about protecting public lands but also about protecting the staff at those agencies. “We have to listen to our wildlife biologists. We have to be strong advocates for those people,” Zink said.

Hunting season had yet to open when we spoke, but Zink was already hearing from fellow hunters who had to cut their own way into trails to hunting camps after Forest Service trail crews were laid off en masse. He worries about wildlife management with agency scientists also terminated.

Zink’s story is just one example of how the DOGE cuts to public lands agencies are hitting rural, conservative communities — one of this administration’s strongest voting bases — the hardest. Starting in February, an estimated 5,200 people have been terminated from the agencies that manage the 640 million acres of federal public lands in the U.S. That number doesn’t include the many who took the administration’s buyout or early retirement offers also meant to cut staff. Further, Trump’s 2026 budget proposes more budget cuts and a reduction of nearly 18,500 more public lands employees.

Much of the national spotlight has fallen on the impacts of these cuts to national parks, as that is the public lands model the majority of Americans are most familiar with: Yosemite, Yellowstone, Glacier, the Grand Canyon, to name just a few of the most iconic. In the rural West, though, federal public lands are more than just a scenic spot to take a family vacation once a year. These agencies are often the primary employers in the communities adjacent to public lands. [Continue reading…]