America's Worst Idea

Firing the hosts of our public lands is not in the public interest

In the beginning, when the world was new and nothing had a name, my father took me to see the ice. -Gabriel García Márquez, 100 Years of Solitude

In the early 1990’s, when we discovered the Tongass National Forest, a ranger presented our young children with a piece of ice from the retreating Mendenhall Glacier. “This ice is at least 150 years old,” she said, handing us a dripping shard of iceberg.

One hundred and fifty years ago the first National Park, Yellowstone was established.

In 1916 President Woodrow Wilson enshrined the National Park Service to “preserve unimpaired the natural and cultural resources and values of the National Park System for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations.”

The first park ranger on my childhood radar screen was a bear in a wide brim hat and holding a shovel named Smokey. Since 1944, Smokey the Bear’s been reminding us that wildfire prevention is everybody’s business.

Park rangers in wide brimmed hats are what we want to be when we grow up. They get to live and work in national parks, help protect wildlife and keep visitors safe, the quintessential good guys and gals.

But an unconscionable thing is happening to thousands of federal employees, including those who run our National Parks. They’re all receiving the same letter from the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. The Agency finds, based on your performance, that you have not demonstrated that your further employment with the Agency would be in the public interest. For this reason, the Agency informs you that the Agency is removing you from the position.

In fact, the work they do is in nothing but the public interest, for minimal pay. Many do it for the love of the job, the outdoors and the people they serve.

Without cause or commonsense, thousands of our fellow Americans are being summarily dismissed from their jobs by an unelected, unregulated and illegal de facto 4th branch of the federal government.

They are the gracious hosts of our national treasures-seashores, forests, deserts and monuments-holding the knowledge of the first peoples to inhabit these protected and public lands. The faces of our nation to visitors from all over the world.

Here in the capital of Alaska, this includes almost all staff who hosted hundreds of thousands of cruise ship passengers and other visitors seeking a once in a lifetime glimpse of the Mendenhall Glacier. These are the people who manage a bustling visitor center, show visitors how to watch a mother bear catch the family dinner from a safe distance, maintain trails and infrastructure and enlighten local children on the magnificent icefield at our doorstep.

More than ninety Forest Service employees in the Tongass National Forest have been fired, including rangers in Misty Fjords, the entire Sitka cabins and trails crew, and fisheries technicians and tribal liaisons in Petersburg.

Because many of them have been in positions for fewer than two years, they have less legal munition to fight for their jobs back. They include folks who repair, renovate and maintain popular public use cabins and trails. They empty the outhouses, and for those that don’t follow the “leave no trace” ethic of pack it in/pack it out, carry garbage out of the wilderness on their backs.

Juneau singer songwriter and open mic host Quinton Woolman Morgan was part of a Forest Service crew that maintained cabins from Skagway to the Taku Glacier. “We were taking care of the bathrooms, replacing the decks and windows, cleaning out the stoves, helping out with trails. There’s a lot to it that a lot people don’t think about. And there will be an impact from so many people losing their positions,” he said.

Like his colleagues, he found being dismissed for under performance both shocking and disturbing, “an insult.” Quinton put together a “Fired-Side Chat” open stage event at the Alaskan Bar and Hotel for fellow suddenly unemployed federal workers to gather, testify and play music.

Funding for the Forest Service and National Parks constitutes less than one percent of the federal budget.

Documentary producer Ken Burns famously quoted historian and writer Wallace Stegner, "National parks are the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst.”

Sadly, the current leadership of our country is insisting on our worst.

Government can always be run more efficiently, but this administration is barking up the wrong tree.