The only locksmith at Yosemite National Park in California, the sole EMT ranger at neighboring Devils Postpile National Monument, an experienced sled dog musher in Alaska’s Denali National Park.
These are just a few of the several thousand national parks and forests employees abruptly terminated last week by the Trump administration, in what some are calling the “Valentine’s Day massacre.”
Around 2,000 recently hired employees were fired at the U.S. Forest Service and an additional 1,000 jobs were slashed at the National Park Service. The terminations, which were part of a broader push to cut federal bureaucracy and spending, have left federal workers bewildered and worried about the future of public lands.
“These folks aren’t the swamp. They aren’t bureaucrats,” said Steve Gutierrez, with the National Federation of Federal Workers. “They feel like the the government doesn’t have their backs.”
NBC News spoke with 18 current and former employees from national parks and forests across the country. They described working on public lands as a dream job and joked that their low pay was offset by beautiful sunsets.
As their ranks diminish, park rangers say fewer employees could mean long entry lines, dirty bathrooms and potentially unsafe conditions for hikers and campers during the busy tourist season.
“The lands are all still there, but there won’t be anybody to manage them. I’m afraid people will lose access if there’s no staff to maintain and operate the campgrounds, service the cabins, clean the bathroom,” said former forestry technician Kevin Farrell. “The public isn’t going to get served.”
Last summer, Farrell spent much of his time at the Willamette National Forest in Oregon cleaning fire pits and toilets, picking up litter, posting maps and informational signs at kiosks and patrolling trails near wildfires.
His 25 years of experience working on state and federal land was cut short last week when he received a termination email, the same one sent to thousands of other federal workers. It said his time as a probationary employee at Willamette — he'd been in that position for less than a year — did not meet agency standards despite having received “exceeded and far exceeded expectations” reviews from supervisors.
All three people on his crew were terminated last week, Farrell said. Others within his district, including people who worked at the front desk and doing backcountry patrols were also let go. In total, 12 out of 18 people in his district were fired last week, he said.
“Every last person there was committed, dedicated public servants who enjoy doing their jobs and came to work with the right attitude,” he said. “Our supervisor called us ‘the dream team.’”
In an emailed statement, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service, said many of the terminated positions were funded by the Inflation Reduction Act under President Joe Biden.
“We have a solemn responsibility to be good stewards of the American people’s hard-earned taxpayer dollars and to ensure that every dollar spent goes to serve the people, not the bureaucracy,” the statement read in part.
Anna Kelly, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement that the Trump administration will “protect America’s abundant natural resources while streamlining federal agencies to better serve the American people.”
The National Park Service did not respond to a request for comment.
At Devils Postpile National Monument, in eastern California, Alex Wild said he was often the first to arrive when a hiker or camper was experiencing a health emergency. Until last week, he was the park’s only certified EMT ranger on staff who could perform CPR. He now worries that people will have to wait hours for local first responders to arrive when there’s in a life-threatening situation.
“It could mean life or death for someone who’s having an emergency,” he said.
Democratic lawmakers denounced federal job cuts, calling buyout offers from earlier in February “damaging and short-sighted” in a letter signed by Democratic 20 senators.
The letter also warned that mass cuts could create “staffing chaos” in the national parks.
“Not only does this threaten the full suite of visitor services, but could close entire parks altogether,” the senators wrote.
Kristen Brengel, with the National Parks Conservation Agency, said the terminations reflect a “bad business decision” by the Trump administration. Parks draw millions of visitors each year; in 2023, they supported an estimated 415,000 jobs and $55.6 billion in total economic activity, according to the senators’ letter. They are economically crucial to gateway communities and appeal to a large, bipartisan base that spans all ages and demographics.
“Americans have said this time and time again — we want to have places that are not commercialized,” she said.
At Denali National Park and Preserve in Alaska, sled dogs are one of the biggest attractions for tourists every year. People come from all over the world to meet the canine rangers, learn about the work they do in the park and watch demonstrations.
Mitch Flaherty was part of a small kennel staff that cared for the 31 dogs. His experience training, feeding and running the canines made him an essential employee during the Covid pandemic, when Denali closed.
It’s optimal to have three to five people working with the four-legged rangers, who participate in three demonstrations a day during the high season, he said. The kennel team is now down one person after Flaherty was fired last week, which could impact how tourists interact with the sled dogs.
“If we don’t have enough staff, we don’t run the dogs during demos,” he said. “The visitors are always bummed if they aren’t able to see the dogs actually working and pulling the cart. It’s definitely the main attraction.”
Recently, staffing cuts at the Forest Service led to the closure of a popular trailhead and snow park near Seattle called the Franklin Falls trailhead, which receives more than 1,000 visitors on busy days.
“It’s a super popular trailhead all year round,” said Jon Hoekstra, the executive director of the Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust, a nonprofit conservation organization based in Seattle. “There aren’t the front-line Forest Service staff who normally would be there for safety — for sanitation, for cleaning up, for helping people in a pinch. Those folks aren’t there now and they’re not going to be there.”
Hoekstra said the Forest Service was also delinquent on invoices his nonprofit had submitted for conservation work funded by the Great American Outdoors Act, which included habitat restoration and improvements to the trailhead.
“Putting a freeze on those payments is unprecedented in my 10 years” with the trust, Hoekstra said. “It’s very unusual. Most federal contracts are reimbursement-based. We enter in to do work and there’s a budget and as expenses are incurred, we submit invoices and they’re paid.”
Sydney Hansen, a 24-year-old physical science technician, said she emerged from Jewel Cave in South Dakota, the nation’s second longest cave, on Friday afternoon to a message that she needed to see the superintendent immediately.
Hansen stripped off her knee pads, helmet, elbow pads, cave pack and muddy boots — after finishing her qualifications to lead cave tours at the national monument — and began to cry.
“They did us dirty, and I don’t appreciate it at all,” Hansen said this week. “I am proud of all the work I did and I was proud to work for the park service and I know this isn’t necessarily the park’s service’s fault. I’m not happy or entirely proud of our government.”
The termination letter said she’d “failed to demonstrate fitness or qualifications for continued employment” and that her expertise didn’t fit the service’s needs.
Hansen’s performance reviews, obtained by NBC News, suggested otherwise. Hansen “exceeds expectations,” according to the review, which described her as a quick learner who was “careful and accurate in all her work” and always prepared for tasks above the ground and below.
Hansen offered cave tours to visitors, helped lead exploration in the more than 220-mile network of caverns and helped with biology, cartography and wildlife projects. The cave won’t be as safe without her and visitors likely won’t have as many options to tour, Hansen said.
This story first appeared on chof360.com. More from NBC News:
