Working at the National Park Service was his dream job
Working with wildlife was Alex Troutman’s dream job.
“Growing up, I knew I wanted to work with nature and wildlife,” he said. “I loved to get outside and search for salamanders. When I was young I didn’t know they were salamanders so I called them ‘water lizards.’”
His desire to protect animals and ecosystems landed him jobs with the National Park Service and Fish and Wildlife Service, where he’s restored rare butterfly populations in Wisconsin, protected sea turtles on the Gulf coast, and, most recently, worked as an environmental protection specialist at the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area in Atlanta.
Stand up for our public lands workers.
But last month he — along with thousands of other public lands employees — was suddenly fired by the Trump administration.
“I was just blindsided and disappointed,” he said.
“Long-lasting damage” to our public lands
About a thousand National Park Service employees were fired as part of the Trump administration’s so-called “cost-saving” measures. The Forest Service fared even worse, losing 3,400 workers—an estimated 10 percent of the agency’s workforce. Add 2,300 workers from the Bureau of Land Management and hundreds more from the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the scale is unimaginable.
“Most agencies were already short-staffed,” Troutman said. “At the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area we have 15 park units that add up to about 10,000 acres or so. There were only 22 people managing those, including administrative staff, and that was before the cuts.”
The majority of public lands workers who were fired are people who live in our communities and dedicated their lives to protecting special landscapes.
These reckless firings of thousands of dedicated public servants will have a huge impact on our National Parks, Forests, and Wildlife Refuges — especially those in the South, which are among the most visited and most popular public lands in the country. The Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Blue Ridge Parkway see more than double the visitors of Yosemite, Grand Canyon, and Zion combined.
Losing thousands of people tasked with taking care of these important places means closed campgrounds, trails, and roads.
There’s going to be less people to get people into public lands, to manage the crowds, to clean the trash. And if you get hurt, you could be out of luck. There’s just not going to be enough rangers out on the trails.
Alex Troutman, Former NPS and USFWS employee
The firings will have an impact outside of park, forest, and refuge boundaries too. They’ll hurt local economies that depend on recreation and tourism, put a stop to important climate research, and will diminish the agencies’ abilities to do critical wildfire work. Throughout the South, the U.S. Forest Service is playing a key role in recovering from Hurricane Helene. Many of the people fired from USFS offices in North Carolina had been helping with recovery efforts.
“These mass firings will do long-lasting damage to our public lands and the communities that rely on them,” SELC Federal Legislative Director Anders Reynolds said.
A push to privatize public lands
While the Trump administration’s mass firings seem sudden, they are the latest — and most obvious — step of a long-running effort to hand off management of public lands to extractive industries or transfer them outright to states or private parties.
“Even though our public lands are more popular than ever, the agencies tasked with taking care of them have faced years of shrinking budgets and workforces. The mass firing of dedicated public servants is simply fast-forwarding the process of turning over our incredible public lands to people who hope to exploit our shared resources for private gain,” Reynolds said.
The people pushing for this sell-off aren’t hiding their goals. In recent court cases they’ve outlined the argument. In a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court last year, the state of Utah urged the court to order the federal government to “dispose” of certain public lands.
“What makes our public lands so great is that no company owns these spectacular places any more than a single hiker, hunter, or angler. If we allow our government to sell our national parks, forests, and wildlife refuges off to the highest bidder, that all changes,” Reynolds said.
More firings on the way
Recently, courts and labor boards have forced agencies to hire back some of the thousands of fired employees. While some employees have already been rehired, even those that are back at work are still in limbo. The Trump administration has called for even more firings, and agencies created “reduction in force” plans that outline additional cuts.
The Trump administration claims that these reckless mass firings will save federal dollars. But, because Troutman’s role at the Chattahoochee River National Scenic Area included coordinating with the Georgia Department of Transportation about the impact its projects could have on National Park Service sites, his position was actually paid for by the state of Georgia.
“My funding wasn’t even tied to the federal government, so it’s even more frustrating. My position was already funded by the state for the next four years,” Troutman said.
How you can help
No one voted for the destruction of our public lands. You can stand up for these special places and the workers who take care of them. Help us tell Congress to ask President Trump to protect our public lands and reverse these reckless firings.