My parents sacrificed to show my two siblings and me the astonishing riches of the United States as protected by the National Park Service. We road-tripped several times, from coast to coast, in a second-hand station wagon towing a second-hand tent trailer. We played in the tide pools on the craggy coast and wandered among the biggest trees on earth. We hiked the hoodoos in the great southwestern desert and bought Maine lobsters off the boat near Acadia.
And it’s now generational. Carol and I spent part of our honeymoon in a tent in the shadow of Denali and took our own kids, climbing them among ancient, abandoned kivas in Mesa Verda and paddle-portaging them across Isle Royale. And we learned together, to look for the far horizons and to see the ethereal traces of time and distance looking back.
I haven’t been to all of them, but I’ve been to most and even as individual memories of discrete natural wonders and wild places fade, I hold a tender-close memory with all clarity. It is the memory of my young twins, taking the junior-ranger pledge in the CCC-era ranger station, beaming with pride.
As a Junior Ranger I promise
To explore our parks and pick up litter
To protect every plant and every critter
To learn important stories of our past
So that these treasured places last
I will keep our parks out of danger
Because I am a Junior Ranger!
The NPS junior ranger program gives kids a list of fun activities to teach about the history and ecology of a park. On completion, they are awarded a badge and swearing-in by repeating the pledge for a friendly Park Ranger in a regulation Smokey Bear ranger hat. It’s a big deal for a six-year-old.
Last week, that friendly ranger was fired.
(Oops. My bad. Active voice hides the malice by leaving the actor out of the sentence. More discipline here. I’ll try again.)
Last week, an anonymous, extremist, DOGE-minion fired the friendly ranger (under dubious legality).
Understand the cruelty here. That friendly ranger woke (likely over the Valentine’s Day weekend) up to find a spammed email saying that,
Based on your performance, you have not demonstrated that your further employment at the Agency would be in the public interest. For this reason, the Agency informs you that the Agency is removing you from your position. (widely shared across social media)
To begin with, her firing had nothing to do with her performance. It was an ideological purge.
My Ranger is made-up, but she is the aggregate of many thousands of Federal workers in the conservation agencies, dozens of whose stories found their way into my social media accounts. Many were literally my former students or colleagues, many social media stories were recognizable as authentic because they describe the common experience of Federal workers in the Park Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the US Geological Survey, the Soil Conservation Service, or the Forest Service (and others). I know this from my students and friends, indeed, I worked as a seasonal employee in the USDA Forest Service years ago. Ironically I was part of a project to make fire management more efficient.
In aggregate, they sought to work where they did because they believed in public service, because they believed in the public trust obligations of government, and because they themselves were deeply connected to some parts of the creation that we commodify under the aseptic term “natural resources.”
In the aggregate, their most recent performance reviews rated them as performing their jobs well, even excellent. In the aggregate they were both proud of their work and proud to do it which is why the spammy anonymous email fictitiously blaming their “performance” for not being “in the public interest” looks deliberately cruel. It must seem impossibly quaint and naive to the DOGE vandals that anyone would hold ideals more noble than a smash and grab play for power and a willingness to do surgery with a chainsaw, but this is the same political culture that turned “owning the libs” into a sneering virtue and made a pejorative out of “woke” (synonyms = aware, conscious, evolved).
In the aggregate, they did important, valuable, vital work. Work for which they made large personal sacrifices in seeking specialized education or enduring the difficulties in obtaining (what once were) desirable and secure positions.
This being a Christian blog, Reformed specifically, I will code-switch my language here: caring for creation happens most effectively at the level of policies, statutes, and regulations that enable conservation activities and mitigate harmful effects of humanity–particularly western humanity’s cavalier attitude to the pollution it creates and the impacts it has on other species. I find that Christianity, at least the versions I know, largely talks the talk but fails to follow through with the political parts for fear of conflict. I’ve gotten push-back on this during my teaching gig at Au Sable Institute for fear of offending the conservative schools.
You don’t work for long in natural resources without getting to know people working in the federal agencies. My inventory includes old friends, new friends, colleagues, collaborators, former students, and scientists and leaders whom I admire. Those categories overlap substantially but in my case, it’s a big group.
Selective memory aside, I can’t think of a bad actor among them. To a person they’ve been professional and competent and apolitical on the job–but moreover patient with bureaucracy imposed on them and gracious despite the slights that are routinely directed by the ignorant towards “government workers.” They do their jobs despite the fact that they could likely be better-paid in the private sector. They are there because they believe that stewarding this county’s wild and natural riches for future Americans is worth doing, worth their doing. They believe in the common good and the good of the commons.
In the aggregate, our agency professionals do the vital work of creation care because we’ve outsourced the work and the concern to somewhere else and they’re the ones who stepped up. In the aggregate, many of them now carry extreme anxiety about their careers, their finances, and their families. I know. I’ve seen their tears welling in my office (several times in the past couple weeks) and closed the door until they’ve gained their composure. And I am raw on their behalf.
The firings, of course are chapter and verse of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. One of its authors, Russell Vought is now head of the Federal Office of Management and Budget and is described as a “committed Christian.” His wisdom on Federal workers (other than himself) is “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” according to a video revealed by ProPublica and the research group Documented in October. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work, because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down. . . We want to put them in trauma.”
Well here you go, Russ. Well done. How very Christiany.
22 Responses
Malice. Weston killing the little animals in Perelandra. Satanic, so of course, in the name of Christ. Exploiting a society with an already weak sense of the “common good” and of what’s “good for the commons,” and with an already frayed sense of “public service.” Malice destructively exploiting our weaknesses, delusions, and idolatries. Thank you for this lament.
Oh Tim. I feel your heart breaking thru your eloquent lament. I hope and pray it reaches (stabs the heart) and soul of the people who “know not what they do”.
Russell Vought is a graduate of Wheaton College. Listen to this week’s “Holy Post” podcast for the controversy now surrounding Russ and his Alma Mater.
As a Wheaton alum, I was shocked (though not surprised) to find that Vought had preceded me there (by about 10 years). There has always been a strong authoritarian subcurrent at Wheaton (view their conniptions about having to provide birth control in their employee health insurance plans), as well as a rather unique talent for shooting themselves publicly in the foot (see esp. the Larycia Hawkins controversy). Vought’s time at Wheaton would have coincided with one of Wheaton’s periodic “take back the college from liberals” times.
However, Wheaton has always had a very strong emphasis on service to “the least of these” alongside its more authoritarian streak. Many many Wheaton grads have worked during college, and some for their entire careers, for the sorts of organizations that partner with USAID – groups like World Vision and Church World Services, as well as secular organizations. Most of those I have kept up with from my years there understand this, support those organizations and others like them financially, and are horrified at the swath Vought and Musk are cutting through our government and the implications for people who are starving, living with HIV/AIDS, etc. all around the world.
Of course, none of us give money to Wheaton so our opinion doesn’t count with the board of trustees.
Ugh, I am heartbroken for creation and her educated, dedicated, and experienced caretakers. So important now for us each to take care of what we can control— like planting natives on our little piece of property and local parks, and encourage our neighbors to do the same. Make all of us junior rangers!
My experience with Park rangers has been mostly with those who have served at Rocky Mountain National Park, neighboring our family cabin in Grand Lake, CO where we vacationed for 35 years or so, summers and winters. All of them—women & men, rookies & veterans—were examples of a govt’s brightest and best public servants, as Tim says, in the aggregate. Knowledgeable, skilled, good-humored, kind, many of the seasoned ones in a second career after serving our nation in the military or serving our society as teachers, and a few incredible ones whose whole career was with the park service.
Not to disregard the roles and gifts of those in other agencies, but this dismissive path of DT’s administration is most egregious.
Thank you. And…… We who try to follow the example and teachings of Jesus can humbly acknowledge the carbon footprint involved in all our tourism.
Although not being an ardent naturalist, I have visited so many national and regional parks; often interacting with the talented and dedicated staff who love the parks and excell at being informative, friendly, professional, and obviously crazy-in-love with where they work and what they do. They tend the astounding beauty, history, and grandeur that God displays across this county. To summarily dismiss them is another dagger in the heart of what makes America great (sorry, but someone else has that phrase so wrong). And to do so gleefully, while posting golden idols of themselves, is too much. Thank you, again, for speaking truth to power and know that, on some level, we all weep with you.
Thank you, Tim. Well said! I wish that crowd were still in touch with a sense of shame. But in any case, we need to be tireless in speaking the truth and holding out against these abuses.
God said, “…the land is mine … you reside in my land.” So many ‘devote’ think it is all for us. But God said, “…the birds, the animals, and all the creatures… can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number on it.” Our God given stewardship responsibility is tossed out with those thousands of stewards. For what? Make the land private and unleash the greed to destroy it?
Tim,
Thank you.
The fascinating part is something like the NPS is a conservative movement or work. They work to conserve that which we have, to keep it, so that we might pass it on and share it with the next generation, as was done for you and you did for your children. Conservative.
Of course, that word has lost all meaning politically, since it’s more about identity than actual work, but let us never lose the core good of this conservative work and never let anyone co-opt the word or ideas for their own identity fueled ends.
Yes. The irony of “conservation” and “conservative” having the same root isn’t lost on me, or (I suspect) other practitioners.
My wife and I remark every time we go to a National Park that park rangers are the best people in the world. I know I could be wrong but I would dare wager that DJT has never been to a National Park in his life. Musk either no doubt. That is tragic in its own right but it now leads to a shrug of the shoulders that is decimating people’s lives and imperiling the vision of Teddy Roosevelt in creating a system of Natural Parks. Thanks for your passion in this piece, Tim.
You are probably right that DJT has not been to a national park. I remember him pronouncing Yosemite as Yo-Semite, pronounced like anti-Semite. And of course his distain toward Californians for not sweeping their forests.
Yes indeed, Tim. I live in the shadow of Glacier NP and our(local Kalispell folks) hearts are breaking over the shuttering of this majestic piece of God’s earth. The rolling effect of layoffs in our area makes me crazy with grief and anger. Thank you for writing your heart on paper about this.
Well, billionaires are unlikely to visit parks in the same manner that we do. It’s sad that they lack normal appreciation for the little things and little people. Perhaps reducing the enjoyment of going to parks will allow this administration to drill, pollute and exploit. Like many wealthy do.
My experience in the world of conservation and restoration has been similar to yours — government employees are real people who do their jobs with professionalism, humility, and grace. Thanks for this thoughtful and graceful perspective.
Where is it written that because you work for the government – the taxpayer – you are guaranteed a job for life. Do I detect a hint of “entitlement?” Don’t take it out on the current administration. Past administrations added huge numbers to the bureaucracy! The Park Service & Forest Service are bloated, and are stuck in low morale “analysis paralysis.” This same thing happened under Reagan and Clinton. It was called a “reduction in force,” and impacted thousands of federal employees. We survived! I will say this, Reagan and Clinton handled it way better than Trump.
And don’t tell me they are all hard working,” dedicated to the cause” employees. I was once one of them until I couldn’t take the inefficiency, waste, and lack of work ethic. You chose the pictures in your blog well, but they are very misleading and you know it! They all lost their “dream” jobs. Tell it to the blue-collar worker on the night shift in a factory in the private sector where you have to show a profit. No guaranteed dream job there, just glad to have a job.
Let’s play the “I go to these national parks and what a shame” card. I spend my time In Glacier. I am frankly quite tired of interfacing with twenty-something year-old park employees’ who are clueless, entitled, and have no common sense.
In a previous post, you quoted Bonhoeffer: “If I sit next to a madman as he drives a car into a group of innocent bystanders, I can’t, as a Christian, simply wait for the catastrophe, then comfort the wounded and bury the dead. I must try to wrestle the steering wheel out of the hands of the driver.” I did not vote for Trump or Harris – bad drivers. But perhaps the driver in the quote was the Biden administration. The American voter seemed to think so.
Here is another quote for you from a former Chief Ranger at Glacier National Park who in retirement came to work with the Montana DNRC: “Working for the state you can have an idea in the morning and implement it in the afternoon. Can’t do that at the federal level.”
I’m sorry you had a bad experience. I wrote out of my own experience of 30 years of working with Federal natural resources agencies including the NPS, USFS, USFWS, USGS, USDA-APHIS and the CWRUs. I was a FS seasonal as a young man and had a desk in a USFS ranger station in a different region for 3 years where I (as a collaborator) did the same trainings and had to obey the same internal regulations as the staff. I have friends, collaborators, former students in several agencies at all levels from newly hired seasonals to seasoned leaders and specialists with decades of experience. Want me to concede that there are bad apples in the Federal Service? Fine. There are bad apples in every organization. I will maintain that one runs into fewer of them in the natural resources agencies because of the sense of purpose and commitment I described. Want me to concede that there’s bloat and inefficiencies? Fine. Same is true of any large organization.
My point was not about entitlement at all. It was about the important work that they do. Work that is only becoming more important as human pressures grow and biodiversity declines and climate chaos accelerates. Every Federal work (especially those with probationary status) knows that they are vulnerable to RIFs. However legit RIFs would have analyses showing the redundancies and would be done by people who, at least plausibly, understood the work – and don’t include the deliberate cruelties about performance and trauma and creating villains. This round of firings was a meat-ax approach – anonymous, opaque, and without any analysis. Public servants deserve better. And with respect to your hypothetical factory worker, I wish she had a more secure situation too. But pointing out that someone has it worse (someone always has it worse) to justify maltreatment is a race to the bottom – to say nothing of the Federal workers’ investments in specialized training and patience with the very competitive nature of the positions.
Part of the inefficiency comes from the fact that costs and efforts need to be exhaustively documented because the work is done under a microscope wherein people who make political hay out of the “bloat” and “lazy government worker” tropes lie in wait to exploit any anomaly (real or manufactured) at the expense of people who can’t talk back (as anyone who has worked in the Federal Service will know). And with respect to your description of “twenty-something year-old park employees’ who are clueless, entitled, and have no common sense” that’s not been my experience of “twenty-something” Federal Employees and I suspect I’ve known more of them over a longer time period and across more Federal agencies than you have.
I stand by what I wrote.
Rick, I will just point out that your first assertion is untrue and has no relationship to reality. Fewer civilians work for the federal government now than did in 1991 (3 million today vs. 3.1 in 1919). In the 1950s, more than 4% of the civilian workforce worked for the federal government. That number is currently less than 2%. The Biden administration increased the federal workforce by less than 5%, which was slightly more than the rate of population growth during that time. It’s also worth noting that 20% of federal civilian workers work for the Postal Service, which is (supposed to at least) fully fund its own operations through revenue.
I do not know where you are getting this assertion from, but I would carefully consider if these sources are appealing to your baser instincts: self-righteousness, resentment, etc. rather than attempting to inform you of the facts. As Christians, we ought to value the truth and carefully examine ourselves when self-righteousness or resentment or similar emotions start to bubble up within our hearts.
Sources: https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-people-work-for-the-federal-government/
https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/14/politics/federal-government-workers-what-matters/index.html
https://www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2025/03/01/federal-worker-data-visualized-as-firings-layoffs-continue/80753788007/
I’m reminded of a picture I have in my collection of an official NPS information sign in Glacier NP, circa. 2010. It boldly states that all the glaciers in GNP will be gone by 2020. Now, I’m not as smart as these park service “scientists,” but I can count. In 2025 there are still 25 glaciers in GNP. Maybe God had something to say about it. It certainly had something to say about the arrogance of man.
On Saturday my wife, excuse me, my “partner” and I drove into GNP. Just outside the park was the nameless rabble of nonessential park service employees doing themselves proud yelling and screaming and carrying signs stating “I want my job back” and “It’s all about me.” Tom Brokaw’s “Greatest Generation” would have been out looking for a new job.
I suppose I should end this with the odd statement, “I stand behind what I have written.” Why would a person need to say that? If I didn’t stand behind it, I would not have written it. Is the original blogger hiding something? Do not believe everything you read! Verify it! Both what I wrote and what the blogger wrote!
If anybody is still reading this, I commend you! I’m moving on.
My wife and I have visited GNP several times (we used to live in Missoula). I trust you had a nice visit on Saturday. GNP is spectacular. I wrote that I “stand by what I wrote” because you implied I was being untruthful. I was not. It’s that simple.
I am also happy to know the good people who are responsible for caring for GNP (and their supporters) are rallying to protest the unjust and likely illegal (verifiable here: https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/27/politics/judge-mass-firings-federal-probationary-workers-likely-unlawful/index.html). I very much doubt you saw a sign saying “It’s all about me.” I assure you, those protesters are not “nameless” as you say – which was kind of my original point. I think GNP, jewel that it is, should be carefully managed be people with the training to do it well.
With respect to the glaciers, GNP itself describes how scientists made a faulty inference on a published geospatial model about glaciers disappearing by 2020. When they realized the mistake, they corrected the interpretive signs (verifiable here: https://www.nps.gov/glac/learn/nature/glaciersoverview.htm). That’s how it’s supposed to work. The larger issue is that despite the 25 you counted, every named glacier in the park has decline since the glacial maximum (about 1850) and since more recent measurement (1966) – 39% on average due to climate change (verifiable here: https://www.usgs.gov/centers/norock/science/time-series-glacier-retreat?qt-science_center_objects=0#qt-science_center_objects). Other sources are easily found with a simple keyword search.
H/T to Wesley (above) for some verifiable fact on the size of the federal civilian workforce.