When we at the National Parks Traveler learned that employees pressured out the door by President Donald Trump’s downsizing blitz included 60 from the National Park Service Regional Office in Alaska, we wanted to know more about that exodus.
Who were these seasoned veterans, and how would their departure impact the remaining workforce and the national parks and monuments across the vast Alaska landscape? This was beyond just a number, and it was information we wanted to learn and share with our readers.
After all, the Park Service manages 54 million acres in Alaska, nearly two thirds of all lands under the agency’s stewardship nationwide. The regional office provides the parks key support, ranging from science and research to management of aviation and concessions permits. It fills the gaps for parks that don’t have full suites of scientists and other experts to handle their wide array of needs.
Once I independently confirmed the number of departures, initially reported by National Parks Conservation Association and representing a one-third reduction in the regional office staff, I set about exploring the ramifications.
In today’s reporting environment, such a project requires a lot more than picking up the phone or firing off emails and expecting answers. Park Service staff fear retribution from on high if they so much as speak to reporters. With looming Trump administration threats of firings
and layoffs yet to come, nobody, not employees or most of those taking voluntary retirement, wanted to talk on the record.
That meant painstaking calls and outreach and referrals to find credible people who might be willing to speak anonymously. What I found was that employees do want people to know the story of what’s happening in the parks, about how it affects the workforce and what it means to natural and cultural resources.
Many of their stories, relayed under my promise of anonymity, were heartrending. They revealed a breed committed to and proud of their own work as well as their agency’s mission of preserving park resources for the future. They’d made the Park Service their lifelong career, some stated, even though the private sector offered more money for their expertise.
Speaking with sadness, even choking up about leaving unfinished work to accept early-retirement incentives — with no replacement hires allowed — they voiced fears that their accomplishments would be shelved, rather than built upon, by new policies that seemed to veer from the conservation values of their government tenure.
Bringing these behind-the-scenes stories to readers in today’s journalistic climate is a laborious task. But it’s one that helps shed light on what’s happening in our parks and why. It seeks to hold the government accountable for its management of the parks as a shrunken workforce struggles with reduced budgets.
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