Many, many years ago, I was a national park ranger at Arches National Park and the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site. As a ranger, I led tours, helped people understand what they were seeing, cleaned up trash, removed graffiti, and answered numerous questions. (The most popular was “Where’s the bathroom?” “Out the door and to the left,” was the answer.) I assisted on search and rescue, carried out visitors who needed first aid, and fought fires.
I knew that I was privileged to be a ranger and work in these amazing places. I knew that I was not alone. My best friend was a career employee for the National Park Service. “The primary thing I liked about my career was that nearly everyone was passionate about the mission,” he said. “People weren’t there just to make money, they believed in the agency mission and were putting their heart and soul into the job. It seems like that dedication and commitment is being undervalued right now as agencies just haphazardly terminate employees.”
Over the past three decades, I have continued to be impressed with the federal employees I have met in my adventures writing about human and natural history.
I have skimmed across Admiralty Inlet in a Zodiac with a United States Geological Survey biologist focused on diseases in forage fish, such as herring and sand lance. His work is helping protect these important fish species. As another federal biologist told me, herring “link predator and prey…[and] are very much the hub in the wheel of the Sound.” Without the increased knowledge of forage fish that is coming from federal studies, we significantly reduce the ability to improve herring runs, to the detriment of salmon that feed on herring, and the orca that feed on salmon. No herring, no orca.
I have walked through ponderosa pine forests on the east side of the Cascades with a United States Forest Service ecologist. He showed me how a century of fire suppression had created forests highly susceptible to fire and how future conditions could lead to even more devastating fires with climate change. He told me of research that illustrated the deep relationship between Indigenous people and fire and how their stewardship had created resilient and adaptable forests. He gave me insights and observations clearly based on his passion for and knowledge of these forests.
I have hiked out onto the Nisqually Glacier at Mount Rainier National Park with a National Park Service glaciologist. Our goal was to change the batteries on two seismic probes he had set up to monitor water discharge and sediment movement. His long-term project was a novel test for developing non-contact methods to obtain basic, on-the-ground data. This information would help the NPS with management of the Nisqually and other glaciers in the park, along with habitat downstream of the ice. I could never have accessed this stunning area without him.
I have boated across Puget Sound with a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ecologist working on a study of bycatch of lingcod and rockfish. (When fishers accidentally catch a species other than the one they planned to catch, the “wrong” fish is known as bycatch.) The goal of the NOAA project is to determine whether there are better ways to catch lingcod without bycatching rockfish. This is important because overfishing of rockfish in Puget Sound led to the listing of two rockfish species on the federal list of endangered and threatened species. As part of their long term research, federal biologists have also helped develop a better understanding of rockfish (27 species of which inhabit the Sound) life histories. This, in turn, has resulted in improved management and a consequent increase in rockfish populations, though we still have a long way to go. Yet another reason for on-going research.
Unfortunately, I have also encountered people and reports who felt that government scientists were biased and questioned the accuracy of their research. I find this assertion hard to believe. Of the dozens of state, federal, tribal, and academic biologists I have interviewed, all of them clearly expressed their concern about the environment and how people, government, and industry affected it. I am sure that each has some bias—we all do—but they are scientists who take great pride in eliminating those biases to try to get to the underlying truths. They were up front about where they lacked knowledge and recognized that they didn’t always have enough experimental data to fully explain what was going on, which is why they were out in the field trying to get the data.
I write this now, of course, because of the unprecedented dismantling, abuse, and firing of thousands of federal employees in the past few weeks. These ill-conceived actions are short-sighted and narrow-minded and predicated on a fantasy of agencies rife with abuse, fraud, and mismanagement. In fact, most of the mismanagement and fraud comes straight out of the mouth of the guy who is foisting these bad ideas. Why should we think that Elon Musk (aka Leon Skum, or King Skum) has a clue as to what he’s doing? The estimated value of Twitter since Musk bought it has dropped 80%.
All of the federal employees I have spent time with have been forthright and helpful, insightful and inspiring, and always dedicated to the land, people, plants, and animals where they worked. Without their kindness and knowledge, I couldn’t have written my books. Thank you to all of them and to the many others dedicated to doing their jobs well.
Here are three links to stories and newsletters addressing this issue.
The Consequences are Inevitable - Ethan Freedman has a thoughtful list of stories about the layoffs.
Westerners Favor Protecting the Land - A High Country News story on a recent Colorado College poll that shows that even MAGA voters prefer public land conservation over oil and gas development.
On the Chaos Emanating from T-ville - Jonathan Thompson is doing a great job of documenting the rhetoric from the reality.
One final note. Once again the great clam debate has been chowered. Lawmakers in Olympia couldn’t mollusk the might to garnish the votes to cook up their plan for a state clam. Neither the geoduck nor the Pacific razor clam advanced. As they say, legislation for an honored clam is mired in the muck.
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