Crushed dreams, search-and-rescue teams reportedly asking for volunteers, and outraged community leaders are just some of the fallout in the wake of the Trump administration's firing of 1,000 National Park Service employees and thousands more from the U.S. Forest Service.
www.nationalparkstraveler.org
Angela Moxley, a botanist and biological technician, was ten days shy from ending her probationary period with the Park Service when she got her termination notice.
"I received an email on my work computer that I was being 'separated from federal service' because I have 'failed to demonstrate fitness or qualification for continued employment,'" she wrote Saturday on her LinkedIn account. "I had been waiting for the email, because six of my colleagues had already received theirs. I had earned a high performance rating at my annual evaluation, I was recently asked to serve on a subject matter expert hiring panel, and my supervisor disagrees with the decision and didn't have anything to do with it."
At
Zion National Park, staff reportedly alerted professional SAR responders who assist the park's rangers on rescues to say "SAR is currently volunteer only for non-NPS employees. Administratively determined hiring is currently on hold. Callout requests will proceed as normal, and all members are encouraged to respond to callout requests on a volunteer basis when available."
That directive could delay response times, particularly if some of the park's SAR rangers are on vacation.
"I have done 12+ hour SARs," one community responder told the
Traveler. "There were times that it was a struggle to find enough people and this will only make it worse."
A call Saturday to the park's public affairs staff was not immediately returned, nor was an email to Zion Superintendent Jeff Bradybaugh.
Meanwhile, communities affiliated with
The Mountain Pact, an organization that works with local elected officials in more than 100 mountain communities across the West, sent out a blistering release urging Interior Secretary Doug Burgum "to stop playing politics with America’s public lands and reverse these irresponsible and short-sighted actions.”
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Brian Gibbs was a ranger at Effigy Mounds National Monument in Iowa who educated visitors on the history of the Native American burial mounds there.
"Without any type of formal notice my position was ripped out from under my feet at 4 p.m. on Friday," he wrote in
an essay posted elsewhere. "Before I could fully print off my government records, I was locked out of my email and unable to access my personal and professional records."
Along with citing his myiad roles — "I am the toilet scrubber and soap dispenser, I am the open trail hiked by people from all walks of life, I am the highlight of your child's school day, I am the Band-aid for a skinned knee, I am the lesson that showed your children that we live in a worl of gifts -- not commodities, that gratitude and reciprocity are the doorway to true abundance, not power, money, or fear I am the one who taught your kid the thrush's song and the hawk's cry" — Gibbs added that, "I am gone from the office, I am the resistance, but mostly I'm just tired.
"I am tired from weeks of being bullied and censored by billionaires. I am tired of waking up every morning at 2 a.m. wondering how I cam going to provide for my family if I lose my job. I am tired of wiping away my wife's tears and reassuring her that things will be okay for our growing family.
"Things are not okay. I am not okay."
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