The Best People I Know Are Losing Their Jobs, PART 2

My anger knows no bounds, day two.

You can read part one of this series here.

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3400 people have lost their jobs with the Forest Service over the last two days.

When I wrote about this yesterday that figure was somewhat amorphous—I knew a handful of people who feared they were on the chopping block but hadn’t gotten confirmation yet, and I have a number of friends whose positions are supported by Forest Service funding who are uncertain as to whether they’ll have a position in a few months. But within an hour of publishing my piece yesterday it became startlingly real how many people, families and communities have been impacted by these illegal firings.

What’s bizarre is that the people I know who have been fired were people I started with in the Forest Service. People I worked with in my early years, archaeologists and fish biologists who I lived in government bunkhouses with, people who I hotshotted with, people I followed on social media when I was first starting out and trying to find a community of other Forest Service seasonals. These were my people, my generation. People who found the Forest Service when they were 23-27 and were finally moving into career positions after 6-7 years as seasonals. People who were starting families and buying houses (FINALLY) because they had moved into a career position (FINALLY…for those who have ever been stuck in the endless quagmire of Forest Service seasonal work, you get what I’m saying). People who were young, passionate. People who’d spent years of their lives making nary more than $15 an hour and living in cramped, decrepit government bunkhouses in the most remote places you can imagine (very likely without wifi or internet service! or a grocery store within an hour’s drive!) just for a shot at getting a career with the government, where they would almost certainly never make more than maybe $80-90k a year. Public servants. I am not being dramatic when I say these were the people you want to support with your tax dollars. No one works harder for less than your local Forest Service GS 6s and 7s (the majority of those fired were at this pay grade).

Many of these folks only got their “perms” last year during a big push to make more permanent positions in the Forest Service. Many of these perms are in their late 20s and early 30s, in their “probationary” phase, which is a bit of a misnomer in that it is an early career position, not like they were being disciplined or something. In fact, at least five people have told me they had sterling performance evaluations over the entirety of their FS career, despite the letter they received suggesting the opposite:

“A probationary has the burden to demonstrate why it is in the public interest for the government to finalize an appointment to the civil service for this particular individual. The agency finds, based on your performance, that you are not. You have not demonstrated that your further employment at the agency would be in the public interest. For this reason, the agency informs you that the agency is removing you from your position of ___ with the agency and the federal service, effective immediately.”

This is horrific. I made a call out on my Instagram last night to try to connect those who were fired with journalists who are interested in covering this story, and I’ve had no less than 60 people reach out to share their stories with me. I personally know about 15-20 of those folks. These are hard working, salt-of-the-earth people who make very little money, all in a labor of love for our public lands. Public lands that we ALL use, regardless of if you spend any time in the woods. Public lands that, as I mentioned in my last piece, make up the forested watersheds that provide drinking water to 180 million people in the United States. That’s over half of the US population.

And for those of us who do use public lands for work (guiding etc), recreation, or to get away from the absolute gong show that is our current reality in this country, this should have you FUMING. If you haven’t made those phone calls yet, now’s the time. From what I’m seeing in my Instagram DMs, trail crews in Montana, especially, have been absolutely decimated. Helena-Lewis and Clark NF lost 15/17 people on their trails crew, which managed 1300 miles of trails in the Bob Marshall Wilderness. Do you know what happens when trails aren’t managed? They erode, become overgrown, or get so f*cked up with windstorm treefall so as to be completely unnavigable. This happens in the course of, like, six months. Gutting trails crews will reduce access to your favorite trails. Hope you like hiking with a Stihl 290 and a couple gallons of gas, because you’re going to need that to access your favorite wilderness areas from now on.

I have a lot more to say and maybe I’ll say it tomorrow. I didn’t have plans this weekend anyways so ranting on the internet is as good an activity as any given *gestures broadly at everything*. I’ll leave you with this comment from my post yesterday, which broke my effin heart and which I hope breaks yours too, because it’s the reality we’re facing right now:

“The thing is, with using probationary employees as a target, the administration is not only going after the easiest targets but essentially attempting to cut off the future of the agencies. These are the developing leaders, recent grads with all of the fresh science, the spark of enthusiasm, not yet disillusioned with decades of … red tape … that may have jaded them. It’s a knife to the throat ma dudette.

Don’t worry, we are fighting back.”

Get out there and fight however you can. I recommend lawsuits.