“We Are Not Political Pawns.”

Mass firings of Forest Service and National Park Service employees earlier this year triggered a wave of protest across the US. Since then, court orders have mandated the federal government reinstate all laid-off staff with back pay. Amid the relief, many reinstated staff have expressed fear their jobs remain vulnerable to future cuts by the federal government.

To get a better idea of what this disruption and uncertainty mean for these workers and the public lands they take care of, we interviewed five fired and reinstated park staffers. Beyond taking an oath to serve the US national park and forest services, they don’t have much in common. Some interact with hundreds of visitors a day; others manage small business operations in parks or government relations with tribes; a few remain behind the scenes, studying underwater worlds of kelp forests or the patterns of wildfires on satellite imagery. What they do share is a love for the natural world and a commitment to defending it.

These interviews took place after the workers were terminated and before they were reinstated by court order. They have been edited for length and clarity—and the opinions shared are entirely their own. Ahead of publication, one reinstated federal worker in a tribal relations role withdrew consent to be featured in this article due to fear of retaliation.

Kenan Chan
Marine scientist at Channel Islands National Park, California—the ancestral homelands of the Chumash and Tongva.

I worked as a biological science technician at the Channel Islands National Park, a set of five remote islands off the Ventura coast. My job was to serve and protect the park and the surrounding waters by better understanding the ecosystems so that generations down the line could enjoy them like I did. I first joined park staff as a seasonal employee in 2015. From then on, I spent five nonconsecutive seasons collecting and analyzing data for the rocky intertidal and kelp forest monitoring programs before transitioning into my permanent role.

The work was physically demanding and extremely rewarding. To monitor the intertidal zones, I would spend weeks out on the Channel Islands with a small group of scientists in the fall and winter during optimal low tides. To access our sites, we would hike, camp, boat or kayak each day to get to one of our 20 long-term sampling sites; count a wide range of organisms, whether that be mussels, sea stars, abalone or algae; and measure other information about the ecosystem, like the tar levels or the mussel bed health. Then, we would return to the mainland to further process and analyze the data.

Our kelp monitoring program is one of the longest-running programs of its kind—so, this work was also extensive. A group of us would spend up to a week on the Sea Ranger II, one of the National Park Service boats, diving from sunup to sundown at our various 33 underwater sites. We would run up to 11 different survey protocols, counting hundreds of species (such as scallops, lobsters, sea urchins and snails) and estimating their size, age and sex. While working at the park, I completed 500 dives—and spent about 30,000 minutes underwater counting species. Both the kelp monitoring and rocky intertidal monitoring programs are critically important and valuable long-term monitoring programs that began about 40 years ago.

The waters could be cold. The currents could be strong. Sometimes the conditions were not the most hospitable. But then you have those days that are magical. You’re swimming in and among kelp that extends 60 feet to the surface. It’s those days when I had to pinch myself and say, “Wow. I get to do this for work.” You’re able to see so far through the sea, with the sunlight beaming down, forming beams of light as you move through blades of kelp with fish swimming by your side.

Protecting the park had become a big part of my identity. So, being terminated and having that taken away was extremely hurtful. And I’m worried about what will happen when we take away resources from these monitoring programs. These programs collect data that our local community, our policymakers and the broader scientific community deeply depend on to ensure these waters remain healthy for everyone to enjoy.

I hope people understand that our public lands are not a political entity. They exist for the enjoyment of all Americans. And we, the federal employees that steward these lands and waters, are not political pawns. We are subject matter experts. We have specialized knowledge and training. We were hired by the government to protect and preserve our public lands—and it’s always in this mission where our loyalty will lie.

Maria Diaz
Conservation educator at Tongass National Forest, Alaska—the ancestral homelands of the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian.

Living in Alaska and being a ranger here has been a total dream of mine. I was born in Peru and emigrated to the US when I was really young and went on to spend much of my childhood in North Carolina. We did have a forest nearby, though I wasn’t aware of it as a kid. My grandma took me on a cruise to Alaska when I was 13 and I loved it. We saw the sled dogs in Denali, and I remember seeing these massive starfish. The beauty of it really stuck with me.

For the last two years, I was a park ranger for the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center. The visitor center is in the Tongass National Forest, which is our country’s largest forest and spans about 16.7 million acres across most of Southeast Alaska. Because the visitor center is connected to a road system, the glacier is one of the most accessible in the world. We would get well over 500,000 visitors a year to come and see the glacier on a few of our accessible trails. I could easily talk to hundreds of people a day.

A lot of my job was focused on conservation education. We have a natural salmon stream that runs through it [the center], so I would talk a lot about fish, about how glaciers move and why they’re important. I would also monitor trails and talk to people about some of the wildlife they may have seen or some of the flowers they were interested in. Sometimes, people would show up at our visitor center not even knowing that it’s federal land. But then they would come out of it with a sense of gratitude for what we do there. It’s awe-inspiring to see a glacier for the first time—and that was something that I got to see often in people’s eyes.

All of the park rangers at the visitor center, including myself, were fired on Valentine’s Day, 2025. It was a kick to the chest. Now, there’s only one person, transferred from a different department, who is stationed at the center. These cuts are going to severely harm the overall visitor learning experience, but it could also cause some pretty dangerous situations as far as wildlife encounters and just general safety on the trails. We’ve had very close bear encounters. We’ve had people try to fish protected salmon right out of our streams. It won’t be possible to monitor these situations with only one permanent staff person on-site.

I don’t know what’s next for me. But I know I won’t stop serving my community. The federal government can try and take this position away from me—but they can’t stop me from helping others. And I’ll always hold on to that.

Emily Hansen
Concessions manager and certified EMT at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, California—the ancestral homelands of the Mono (Monache), Yokuts, Tübatulabal, Paiute, and Western Shoshone.

I never thought I was going to be a park ranger. I had dreams of being this powerful corporate businesswoman. I tried that on, but it didn’t really suit me. And so, in 2015, I decided to abandon all of that. I sold my house. I traveled for a year. I landed in Arizona, living in my RV, when I saw an email ad from an RV job site to go work at the Grand Canyon for their nonprofit partner, the Grand Canyon Conservancy. I got the job and was placed at the visitor center on the north end of the Grand Canyon, shoulder to shoulder with all the interpretive rangers. They were amazing. I remember thinking, “Holy cow. People have dedicated their lives to this. And I can, too.”

My husband and I recently moved down to Sequoia to get a bit more balance in our lives. The wilderness out here is vast and the park staff small, with even less trained staff to respond to emergencies. When safety emergencies did occur—which was more likely during swift-water season—we’d pull from all different work groups to get trained specialists on-site. I’m an emergency medical technician, technical search and rescue operator, and certified firefighter, so I would help respond to medical emergencies or other crises within the park as needed.

I was recently terminated from Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, where I worked as a concessions management specialist. I supported concessions operations for the lodges, restaurants, gift shops and markets; managed authorizations for small businesses that operated within the park; and coordinated special-use permits for events like weddings and First Amendment demonstrations.

Because we have such few staff trained to respond to emergencies, it was super important for us trained staff to keep all of our certifications up to date. So, the week before all the terminations, I traveled up to Yosemite to take an advanced EMT refresher course. On the drive down, I was terminated. In retrospect, it was traumatizing. I planned on retiring with the Park Service—and I didn’t even start with the service until I was 39 years old. It took me a long time to get there. But once I did, it felt like home. It felt like my community.

I’ve returned to the park once since I was fired to attend a protest. Out there, the trees are spectacular. It’s hard to wrap your brain around it. Walking down Grant Grove, you can see giants standing next to old stumps logged a long time ago. It’s awe-inspiring and heartbreaking at the same time, and it’s a testament to why these places need to be protected. With all these staff cuts, and everything going on in our country, it feels scary to think about what’s going to happen in the next couple years and how our parks will suffer. But when you go up and sit in front of a tree that’s 30 feet across and 260 feet tall, it brings you back to yourself. You realize that life goes on—life survives. That simple thought has been grounding me through these really hard times.

Chelsea Andreozzi
Research ecologist for the US Forest Service.

I entered the federal workforce last year to help support the Forest Service’s Wildfire Crisis Strategy, a program developed under the previous administration to increase wildfire resilience in 21 landscapes across 10 Western states. My job included helping the agency understand how vegetation management practices could strategically protect ecosystems and communities in these regions and make them more resilient to climate change. I also was trying to uncover how particular communities might be disproportionately vulnerable to wildfire hazard because this knowledge could increase awareness and inform strategies to better protect these communities.

I’ve always felt connected with open space and natural lands. I grew up in a rural community, somewhat ironically, in Palm Beach County, Florida, near the Everglades. And I watched my own community get turned from woods to housing. I remember the loss and what it felt like as a child to see that change in our area.

After finishing college, I moved out to Alaska near the Tongass National Forest. I fell in love with the communities there and how connected with the local resources they were. I eventually ended up in California as a field ecologist while completing my PhD. I got to spend a lot of time in redwood forests, and I even got to climb up into the canopies. Through all this work, I developed a passion for conservation planning and everything that goes into thinking about how humans and other living beings use and exist in the environment.

On President’s Day, 2025, I received a termination letter that stated my job was not in the public interest. I remember reading that letter and feeling so triggered because everything we do is in the public interest. A lot of people may not realize this, but there are so many ways we can reduce wildfire hazards to communities and our natural lands while also bringing other benefits: like increasing water availability on the landscape, protecting wildlife habitat or storing carbon by preserving old-growth trees.

Many of our ecosystems are actually dependent on fire. Indigenous communities have long known this and managed landscapes with cultural burning practices. At the Forest Service, there was lots of movement to get good fire back onto the landscape—and there have been significant efforts to build collaborations with Indigenous communities as well as ranching communities.

These efforts, and my job, are all getting undermined right now with the cuts in federal agencies. What does it mean to suddenly halt actions that we had previously decided were so critical at a time of such urgency? This is one of the biggest fears I’m left with.

What does the future look like for National Park Service and US Forest Service employees?

Shortly after we conducted the above interviews, a federal judge ordered the reinstatement of all fired federal public lands employees. Of the five staffers we interviewed in early 2025, three now remain in their original roles. The other two joined the thousands of National Park and Forest Service employees who signed voluntary resignation agreements putting them on paid administrative leave until September 30, 2025. A government-wide hiring freeze has concurrently left thousands of positions unfilled across the already understaffed National Park and Forest Service system—including a 24 percent workforce reduction in parks alone. As a result, visitors have reported dirty bathrooms, slower emergency response times, and closed campgrounds and trails.

Fears of job loss intensified in the workforce in August 2025 when the National Park Service terminated Yosemite National Park Ranger Shannon “SJ” Joslin—an avid climber, computer scientist and biologist with a PhD in genomics who ran the park’s Big Wall Bat Program and oversaw data collection for terrestrial wildlife research. “We were developing methods that scientists could use throughout the world as they study bats along cliffs,” said Joslin.

Joslin told us their termination letter stated they had “failed to demonstrate acceptable conduct” during an event that occurred while off duty. In May 2025, Joslin had helped unfurl a transgender Pride flag on Yosemite’s El Capitan, a popular site for flag drops. They removed the flag two hours later without damaging the rock. The next day, Yosemite’s acting superintendent banned flags, banners and large signs in most of the park, with violators facing fines and/or up to six months in jail.

“They [Yosemite’s superintendents] are signaling that if you are not silent—even in your free time—you will be terminated. Now, no one feels safe,” said Joslin, who is nonbinary and describes the flag drop as a celebration of transgender and nonbinary identities and a legally protected exercise of their First Amendment rights as a private citizen.

“What this administration is trying to do is fracture the things that are the last nonpartisan spaces—and that’s what parks are. When we put our uniforms on, we don’t have any kind of political affiliations.”

Joslin wants to go back to work immediately, and they remain heartened by recent news of Yosemite park rangers successfully unionizing—Joslin had cast a yes vote just eight days before they received their termination notice. For now, they’re encouraging former colleagues to stay focused on their jobs despite the chaos and fear.

“By continuing to do science in the park, by continuing to take care of the park—that is a form of resistance.”

Editor’s Note: The Tongass National Forest, Channel Islands National Park, and Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks are the ancestral homelands of many different Indigenous peoples who have stewarded these lands and waters for millennia. In recent years, many Indigenous tribes have successfully established co-management agreements with the federal government—this vital work has also been undermined by federal cuts and layoffs.