Fired from National Park Service, rangers still speak for the trees
Submerged in a city, the quiet King Gillette Ranch in the Santa Monica Mountains was struck with political pandemonium on Saturday morning. Swept off a dusty road and shrouded by trees, the stone plaza outside the Anthony C. Beilenson Interagency Visitor Center was a calm spot for a political demonstration.
For the love of rangers, rallies titled “Protect Your Parks” raged in over 150 national parks across the country on March 1 to protest mass firings in the National Park Service (NPS). The demonstrations, demanding NPS rehirings, were consolidated under the name of Resistance Rangers, a collective of fired rangers, and carried out on-ground by local activists.
On Feb. 14, about 1,000 NPS employees were fired in a mass action. The Resistance Rangers claim the firings were illegal. In consult with the National Parks Traveler, National Parks Conservation Association president Theresa Pierno alleged the job slashes “will have devastating consequences for parks and communities.”
Southern California saw their share of park protests in cities including but not limited to Joshua Tree, San Diego, Death Valley, and Calabasas. When the Calabasas lot began to fill, organizer and filmmaker Cris Graves was taken aback.
Graves was convinced the turnout would consist of herself and a handmade sign. “I literally just put out a post out on Thursday night and didn’t think I’d get a response,” she told the Corsair. “I put out a post and 100 people showed up two days later.”
While spirits were incendiary, the rally was quiet and pacifist. Chants were low, without following a rhythm.
“What do we do when our public lands are attacked?” called Graves. The crowd replied, “Stand up, fight back.”
In attire appropriate for spur-of-the-moment fly fishing, protesters carried signs with messages like “We Love Park Rangers,” “Forests Over Fascists,” and “I Speak 4 The Trees, They Say Go Away.”
Younger eco-cadets jangled Junior Ranger charms. One red baseball cap, a MAGA parody, read “Make Earth Cool Again.”
Alongside ecological havens, other national park sites are facing cuts in employment, including monuments at the National Mall and the Gateway Arch. Graves, who makes daily calls to Congresspeople using an app called 5 Calls, believes the federal cuts are giving history an acidwash.
But the turnout was a silver lining. “I love the generational aspect of it. There’s people from their 70s down to little eco-warriors I saw, being public park defenders, which was quite wonderful,” Graves said.
“Who do we love?” called one of the tots. The assembly responded, “Rangers!”
Most fell under the label of concerned, but unaffiliated, citizens, with no relation to NPS.
Others lamented lost career opportunities in the parks. Some solidarity-bearers were federal employees that were fired from other departments in the nationwide slew of layoffs.
Most pertinent to the rally were the Resistance Rangers in attendance, including Mariah Walzer, who worked for 10 months as an archaeologist in Channel Islands National Park. Walzer was a recipient of a surprise firing via email on Feb. 14.
“On Valentine’s Day, they sent us an email from… somebody way up in the department that was just like, you’ve been fired immediately, due to your skills no longer fitting the needs of the department,” she said. To Walzer, the reasoning was suspect.
“I mean, basically, as probationary employees they have to fire us for ‘poor performance,’ but I had really good performance reviews. I got a performance award this year. And it’s just this mass thing,” she said. “There’s no good argument for this, actually, for poor performance.”
Walzer, hailing from Michigan, has been working for the federal government since 2018. Now, she’s doubtful she can find another position in archaeology.
She reminisced on her passion. “I really love when I get to talk to visitors, and tell them something that they really like, and see their faces light up with that new knowledge,” she said. “And I had a really great workplace.” Upon firing, then, “we were all kind of in shock, and angry, and also grieving, because we love our jobs and we love what we do.”
Supporting protester Jessica Benjamin, a producer, hoped the demonstration would inspire information-fatigued people to call their representatives.
“It’s important to be annoying,” she said.
Walzer affirmed: “Congress has the power to stop these firings and stop the destruction, the tax on the federal government. And we need them to do their job. So, call them and remind them.”
Additionally present were former NPS rangers, Maya Akkaraju and Alexis Velasquez, who both worked in parks in Oregon.
Velasquez, former forestry technician, received the slated call in February that fired almost everyone assigned to his trail, leaving only a supervisor. His main concern is the future of the trailheads, thrust into the hands of unprepared project managers.
“There’s a lot of work that needs to be done on those trails so that everyone can enjoy it,” he said. “And now I’m just thinking like, (my supervisor) can’t do that by himself. And now all those trails are gonna be, just, in terrible condition.
“All those departments in wildlife, archaeology, fish, like they all had seasonal (workers) do a bunch of work. Supervisors are doing important paperwork inside. They can’t do both.”
“We just can’t get the work done without crews of people,” said Akkaraju.
Until late 2024, Akkaraju was a fisheries technician with the Conservation and Outdoor Recreation (COR) Division. When her team was downsized, even her spared coworkers were mourning broken links, including the lead wildlife biologist.
“When we were all getting fired before Trump took office, he was like, I see my job as supporting my team so they can do the field work and I can deal with processing and the big picture stuff,” she said. “We all work as a team. It’s not work that can be accomplished by one person.”
Despite the vacancies, Walzer implores the public not to volunteer with NPS.
“We need the parks to fail, to a certain extent, to make people realize what these firings have done,” said Walzer. “So we don’t want those positions just filled in by volunteers. We want people to see the effects of what happened.”
By the time of the protest’s dissolution, an estimated 200 people were counted in attendance.
“It’s nice to know that so many people care about the parks,” said Velasquez. “It’s crazy that (the feds) actually going through with what they’re doing when this many people actually care.”
Akkaraju smiled. “What a beautiful way to put it.”