Politics

DOGE sacks workers behind ‘America’s greatest idea’

Shalyn Yost-Haynes says the Sandburg goats are one of the things misses most about her job as a park ranger. ‘How could you not?’ she says. ‘It’s like having 18 kids, and they all have their own personality.’

By SHALYN YOST-HAYNES, Published: March 4, 2025

I cried, I yelled and then I tried to understand, but ultimately I am devastated. A disheartening effort to rid me of my position, and yet another blow to the historically underfunded National Park Service. Terminating its most valuable resource, its dedicated staff.

If Wallace Stegner believed that our National Parks are America’s greatest idea, then park rangers would be America’s second greatest idea. Who else would take a demanding job in customer service, where one would be just as likely to unclog a toilet as they are to save someone’s life?

I have done both, as well as countless other tasks as a park ranger for the National Park Service. Well, sadly, up until the morning of Valentine’s Day.

Harboring the stories of America

I had worked a few weeks shy of one year as a permanent park ranger at Carl Sandburg National Historic Site when the letter came. My heart sank, as I saw all the hard work I have done as a civil servant evaporate.

My NPS journey started like most rangers, when I was a child. I grew up on a farm in upstate New York. There I had the freedom to run, play and explore the outdoors to my heart’s content. In adulthood, I gained employment with the state of New York department of Environmental Conservation as a seasonal park ranger. There I cut my teeth as a young Ranger learning what keeps a park running is more than chasing butterflies. Patrolling waterways by foot on the absolute hottest days, cleaning restrooms, collecting trash, answering the same question a hundred times with a smile, working as a cashier, troubleshooting computer problems, learning every trail, mopping the floors, learning the history of the park and on and on. Additionally, I had to learn every single tree, bug, plant, cloud, hill, mountain, rock, river, lake, because the public expects Park Rangers to know literally everything! Then there is the take-home pay for all that knowledge. My first year I made a whopping $15,000.

Why would anyone in their right mind do this as a career for so little?

Like moths to a flame, Americans are drawn to our National Parks. I am no different. These lands, these places belong to all of us, and they captured my imagination. So, I developed a plan to become a park ranger for the National Park Service. However, I quickly found out that gaining a federal job is no easy feat, and little did I know that my journey would be full of hope, tears, joy and frustration.

My life journey took me to Western North Carolina, where I found a job working as a trail guide at Chimney Rock State Park. A few years and many, many applications later, I finally got hired as a seasonal interpretive park ranger on the Blue Ridge Parkway. To say I was overjoyed with this assignment is an understatement. For six seasons, I was able to connect kids to nature, assist visitors to the best spots in WNC, handle complaints, work through the endless changing covid protocols, but above all, represent a unique federal park. Oh yeah, and my seasonal yearly take home pay broke the bank at $18,000 a year.

However much I loved the Parkway, and all that money, I yearned for a permanent position with the National Park Service in Western North Carolina, my home. As luck would have it, after years of applying, six years as a seasonal, and months and months as a term employee, I landed a permanent position as a park ranger at Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site. To say I was over the moon wouldn’t even come close. I had finally made it; my long journey of denied applications and endless hoop jumping was over. A bright future was now firmly in front of me, and I jumped in with both feet.

Park rangers are truly the face of the National Park Service. We welcome you to your park, we can help you plan your day, or even your entire visit, we will assist you with parking, we will search and rescue you if you become lost, we will educate you on the park, we will keep the park clean, we will tend to medical emergencies and even sell you a memento. However, my job at Carl Sandburg became much, much more than that. I was tasked with garnering community support, outreach activities, juggling 40-plus volunteers, interpretive programs, guided walks and educational talks. But perhaps the best thing at Carl are the goats — that’s right, GOATS! I helped care for 18 goats of the original Sandburg herd that live at the park. On top of that, I helped identify plants, animals, trees and swear in the next generation of stewards as Junior Rangers.

I have lost my career but the American people will lose more.

Our National Parks are truly unique, each one holding a different story of the American experience. They are open doors to America’s past, present and future. Endeavoring to provide us all with recreation opportunities for a day trip, a serious adventure, or something in-between. Most of all, these public lands belong to all of us — all Americans. They are what we as American’s choose them to be. The Park Service budget has been flat over the past 20 years, despite contributing more than $55 billion to the economy. Park visitation has gone from 280 million in 2011 to 326 million in 2023. Yet, permanent employment trends with the Park Service have been in steady decline, mostly due to low wages and high cost of living.

Finding that unique individual who is willing to do so much in their job for so little is very rare indeed. To take on the good, bad and ugly side all for the sake of the American experience, you truly have to be a bit crazy. I was one of those crazy ones, I love our parks. Shoot, I got engaged at the bottom of the Grand Canyon and spent my honeymoon in Yosemite and Sequoia national parks.
All our unique parks are dear to me, I hold them in the highest of regards. Any boss or CEO of any company will tell you that best and most productive employees are those who believe in the mission of the company. I can tell you without a doubt that I believe in the mission of the National Park Service. I even swore an oath to it.

My termination came as a shock and a surprise. I have been with the park service for 8 years in some kind of employment capacity. In that time I have been learning and gaining experience to the American public. Essentially getting better and better at my job, for all park visitors. In fact, scoring some of the highest marks on my performance ratings. However, since on paper, my time at Carl Sandburg was just shy of a year (11 months and 15 days), I was let go.

Thousands of park rangers were let go in the same manner. A young workforce of dedicated employees, the next leaders of your national parks, gone in one day. Who do you want to run your parks America? A staff that is overworked, understaffed and underfunded? Imagine if this was your place of employment, would you be a productive, motivated employee? My guess is no.

If we want to keep our “greatest idea” — our national parks — we need to reinstate and keep our “second greatest idea” — the people who run them and serve park visitors. We can’t have one without the other.