Public Lands Jobs Are Being Axed and We’ll All Suffer For It

Mass layoffs in the National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service threaten public safety, rural economies, and wildfire prevention.

This story was originally published in The Daily Yonder. For more rural reporting and small-town stories visit dailyyonder.com.

In mid-February, thousands of jobs in the National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service were axed as part of President Donald Trump’s push to cut government spending and improve efficiency.

Trail crew members, park rangers, EMTs, and other essential public lands workers received soulless termination letters on Valentine’s Day, stating “the Agency finds, based on your performance, that you have not demonstrated that your further employment at the Agency would be in the public interest.”

When I visited the Grand Canyon a few years ago, I walked a half-mile down Bright Angel trail in the middle of the afternoon when I was stopped by a park ranger. “Do you have water? Do you have a plan?” she pressed me, urging that I turn around rather than get stuck at the bottom of the Grand Canyon with no water, no tent, and a ratty pair of Tevas.

That happens all the time at the Grand Canyon where it’s easy to walk miles downhill before realizing that you do, indeed, need to get yourself back up to the rim. In the summer, when temperatures reach triple-digits, this can be a deadly adventure. The Park Service is often on high alert for foolish tourists like me who are wandering the canyon without a plan. They’re the ones who keep people safe. And they’re part of the workforce that was fired last week.

Many Park Service and Forest Service employees live in rural communities where the federal government is the primary employer and the only housing comes from these agencies. Not only have people lost their jobs, but their homes, too. This move, in the name of government efficiency, completely disrupts real people’s lives.

One fired park ranger wrote on Instagram that he and his wife had just moved their two daughters to a small town in northern Wisconsin for his job. They bought a house, enrolled their kids in the local schools. “This is the particularly cruel part of firing federal workers who are just beginning in new communities,” he wrote. These small towns face the very real possibility of losing a significant chunk of their population as federal employees move away for new opportunities, or simply because they can’t afford to live there without those jobs.

For communities at the edge of national parks and highly-trafficked wilderness areas, this summer could be a nightmare for them – and everyone else. Toilets won’t be cleaned, trails will be overgrown, ranger stations and parks offices will be understaffed, and emergency services to rescue people from places like the bottom of the Grand Canyon will likely be slow. During the 2018 government shutdown, the parks saw vandalism and intentional damage to facilities; former Park Service employees are warning that this could happen again.

Wildfire risk is another huge concern. A ProPublica investigation into the funding freezes on Forest Service spending (that have evolved into mass firings) found that wildland firefighter trainings have been postponed and fuel-reduction projects slowed, paving the way for what could be a highly flammable summer.

By cutting spending now, the Trump administration is setting itself up for a very expensive future if it has to put out fires, literally and figuratively, on public lands across the country.

_{Claire Carlson is staff correspondent of The Daily Yonder, where this article was originally published in its email newsletter, Keep It Rural. See DailyYonder.com.}