‘It Hurts So Much’: Wilderness Workers and Park Employees Reel from Layoffs as Cuts to Federal Workforce Manifest in Montana

When Jack Carroll received an email Friday explaining that his position with the Flathead National Forest was terminated because he “had not demonstrated that further employment at the agency would be in the public interest,” he replayed a greatest-hits list of memories spanning six summers of seasonal work. 

He remembered cleaning campground bathrooms and unclogging toilets at Glacier National Park and clearing jack-strawed trees obstructing the single-track trails ringing Tally Lake on the Flathead National Forest. He remembered digging drainage dykes on the Danny On trail up Big Mountain and standing under a blazing summer sun while fielding questions for eight hours as 3 million visitors converged at Glacier’s gates. He remembered the thrilling sense of duty upon joining the ranks of wildland firefighters in a collateral support role, and he remembered the satisfaction that accompanied his acceptance last year of a permanent seasonal position as a forestry technician for the Flathead National Forest.

“That was my big break,” Carroll, 31, said on Sunday as thousands of federal employees received layoff notices, which are a result of the Trump administration’s move to cut into federal land management agencies  and pare back the U.S. bureaucracy, a strategy that dealt immediate and potentially debilitating consequences across northwest Montana, where millions of acres of public land depend on a seasonal workforce.

“I love what I do. And from the beginning, I’ve known that I want to be a career public servant,” Carroll said. “I have been trying to work my way up. It’s a big deal to get permanent status.”

Despite his six-year employment tenure at three prominent federal land management agencies, the shift in Carroll’s employment status from “temporary” to “permanent” automatically placed him on a one-year probationary period and into the queue of federal employees the Trump administration began firing on Friday.

For Carroll, the opening line of the termination notice added insult to injury: “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. For this reason, the agency informs you that the agency is removing you from your position of [forestry technician] with the agency and the federal civil service effective immediately.”

“It was my job to clean toilets at campgrounds and cut trees out of the most popular trails in the Flathead Valley,” Carroll said. “What I don’t understand is, how does it not benefit the public interest to have clean bathrooms? How does it not benefit the public interest to have safe and clear trails. I was doing those things at a high level. And that’s on top of the collateral fire duties with the National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service. And as far as my performance, I have never received less than ‘fully successful’ on a performance review. I have earned five merit awards in six seasons recognizing me for my outstanding performance. That’s what makes me so mad.”

He can’t afford to be angry for very long, however; he has to start looking for another job.

According to Matthew Brossard, of the National Federation of Federal Employees, which represents 110,000 federal employees and is the largest representative of land management agencies in the U.S., the breakneck pace of the firings had made it challenging to keep track of what sectors and which tiers of employees are affected.

“It started on Friday at 1 a.m. and it has not stopped,” he said of the firings. 

As of Sunday, Brossard said the most up-to-date figures reveal that the U.S. Forest Service is firing around 3,400 workers while the National Park Service is terminating about 1,000.

Even though firefighters and law enforcement personnel are reportedly exempt from the firings, scores of workers who support public safety and firefighting initiatives in collateral roles were let go, which narrows the scope of the exemptions.

“Our firefighters and law enforcement are classified loosely as public safety, but right now we cannot get a clear answer as to whether they are exempted from termination. Members of Congress can’t get an answer,” he said. “There are 2,700 firefighters on the probationary list. That’s 18% of the workforce. But we cannot get a straight answer if they’re exempt from these terminations.”

Although Brossard said the labor union filed “multiple lawsuits” and a temporary restraining order to enjoin the firings in U.S. District Court in Washington D.C., he won’t know the outcome of the legal maneuver until after a hearing on the restraining order this week.

“We asked that it be retroactive so all these people who were terminated can get their jobs back,” he said.

Getting her job back was the only thing on Emily Clark’s mind over the weekend.

The 25-year-old Flathead Valley resident lost her job on a trail crew working out of the Spotted Bear Ranger District, which is responsible for maintaining more than 1,100 miles of trails across a remote but popular segment of the Bob Marshall Wilderness totaling nearly 1 million acres. Performing the job requires a specialized skillset as workers rely on hand tools like cross-cut saws, Pulaskis, loppers, and hand saws in a setting where motorized and mechanized tools are prohibited.

Last summer, Clark worked at Big Prairie Ranger Station, which serves as the center of the U.S. Forest Service’s operations in the upper South Fork Flathead River drainage. Established in 1904, the historic station is located 30 miles from the nearest trailhead and is a critical wilderness outpost for forest employees, outfitters, hunters, river rafters, and other backcountry travelers.

“I spent all summer living back there and it takes a whole lot of work to get those trails cleared,” Clark said. “We had so many wind events last season that we had to clear the South Fork three or four times, and the amount of use that section of the Bob gets is mind blowing. There are so many people — outfitters, floaters, backpackers. It’s a lot of blood, sweat and tears from me and my coworkers and so many people who work behind the scenes.”

As is the case with many workers who received their termination notices over the President’s Day weekend, Clark’s employment classification underwent a conversion from seasonal to permanent, placing her on a probationary period and making her subject to automatic firing.

“When we started hearing about the cuts two weeks ago, I thought I was safe from all this because I’m a permanent employee now,” she said. “So this is pretty scary and shocking.”

At least 17 employees on the Spotted Bear Ranger District lost their jobs over the weekend, including an employee who’s worked on the district for decades, according to information relayed to the Beacon by multiple displaced workers. Trail crews were also decimated at Schafer Meadows Ranger Station, the other backcountry work station, as well as at Spotted Bear Ranger Station. More than a dozen other positions will go unfilled. 

Without the crews on hand for the summer, hundreds of miles of trail will be unmaintained and impassable in one of the wilderness complex’s most popular corridors. 

“I know this directive isn’t coming from anyone at the Flathead National Forest. They’ve all been great,” Clark said. “Billionaires who don’t know what or where the Bob is are making this decision. It just feels so demoralizing. I know how hard I’ve worked in the past four years, and it isn’t just me — the people I work with are the most hardworking, passionate people. It’s so much more than a job to me. I have never been more passionate about anything in my life. That’s why it hurts so much.”

Antonio Angel has spent his winter working on ski patrol at Whitefish Mountain Resort, but he’s been counting the days until he can return to Spotted Bear for his third summer. He stopped counting on Friday when he received a termination notice along with his friends and colleagues.

“My plan has been to make a career out of land management,” he said. “Wilderness stewardship and ethics isn’t just my job, it’s my passion. But it’s a dying trade. There’s a small group of us who have been learning and adopting skills from a different era of land stewardship that’s necessary unless you want these wilderness characteristics to deteriorate. We’ve learned how to sharpen hand tools and cross-cut saws. We’ve learned how to work with stock and pack mules. It’s a very niche skillset that I have been trained in.”

Angel expects the consequences of the layoffs to resonate with the broader public this summer and fall, when hunting camps are inaccessible, river corridors are overrun with human waste and forest workers disappear from the landscape. But time is not on his side.

“I’m in a holding pattern,” he said. “I have no idea what I am going to do. Taking these skills and applying them elsewhere is going to be difficult. I’d love to stay in the Flathead Valley, but it’s not an easy job market and it’s about to get flooded with other government employees who have lost there jobs. So it’s going to get even more competitive.”

At Glacier National Park, which is currently in the process of assembling its seasonal workforce of 350 seasonal positions, Superintendent Dave Roemer captured the spirit of desperation cutting across all tiers of land management agencies in an employee-wide email informing staff that termination notices were being issued to National Park Service employees still in their one-year probationary status.

“My assumption is that those notices will be sent directly to employees and that I will receive a list later today. As of right now I don’t know how many people or who will receive these notices,” according to the email, which was shared with the Beacon by multiple displaced workers. “This is a heartbreaking development with huge impacts in the lives of employees who have wanted to work at Glacier. I’m sure for many this is your dream opportunity. I’ve wanted so much for you all to be welcome and valued as part of the Glacier Team. You certainly are valued, although if you are the recipient of a termination notice, I realize that these words will ring hollow. I encourage all of you to summon the best of your kindness and resilience for yourselves and for others. These are trying times for public servants and National Park employees.”

The Beacon’s requests for comment to the U.S. Forest Service and the National Park Service were acknowledged but had not been returned as of press time. Staff for U.S. Sens. Steve Daines and Tim Sheehy and U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke did not respond to emails and messages for comment.

[email protected]