NPS LAYOFFS STING
This article was published in the February 22, 2025 Edition.
Olek Chmura was one of two custodians covering facilities from Wawona to Glacier Point in Yosemite.
He didn’t mind doing the dirty work – cleaning feces of bathroom walls, picking up diapers, taking care of the trash – because he loved working in the park.
But on Friday, Feb. 14, he received a termination letter from Lena McDowall, Deputy Director of Management and Administration.
“The Department determined that you have failed to demonstrate fitness or qualifications for continued employment because your subject matter knowledge, skills, and abilities do not meet the Department’s current needs,” the letter read.
He had only ever received positive reviews in his work evaluations.
“He has always been here on time and willing to stay late if needed, and I’ve never heard a complaint from him, even when things are almost overwhelming,” his supervisor wrote in his October staff evaluation, noting that they’d been short-staffed this year.
Chmura is one of more than twenty Yosemite park employees who were terminated last week with little to no explanation or warning, and one of approximately 1,000 National Park Service (NPS) employees fired across the country.
“I’m just so frustrated,” he said in an interview with the Sheet. “It’s just insane. This is like throwing a baby into a microwave.”
The firings target employees who are in their probationary period, which includes people hired recently and people who took probationary promotions.
NPS advocates say the mass firings, in line with President Donald Trump’s push to cut federal spending, will have decimating effects on National Parks, which were already understaffed and underfunded.
“It was done indiscriminately and there was no real basis for the firings,” said Mark Rose, the Sierra Nevada Program Manager at the National Park Conservation Association (NPCA), an advocacy organization, in an interview with the Sheet.
Yosemite has been struggling with managing an increasing visitor count against its diminishing budget and staff for several years, leading to long entry lines, ecological damage to the park and congestion around attractions.
The park has toyed with an on-again-off-again reservation system, with trial periods in the 2020, 2021 and 2024 seasons. Park staff have been working on finalizing a formal entry system for more than two years, preferring one with a permanent reservation system.
But staffing challenges could reverse those plans, Rose said.
“The concern is […] even if they are allowed to move forward with a reservation system, they might not have the staff to handle it,” he explained.
The staffing challenges are expected to exacerbate pre-existing problems within the park, including littering, wildlife endangerment and ecological health. The cuts could also risk public safety, as the number of Wilderness First Responders was cut down.
The firings also took out Yosemite’s only locksmith, Nate Vince, who was terminated three weeks before his probationary period ended, 48 weeks into his employment.
“I have lost my career and I have no plan,” he wrote in an Instagram post. “This was my dream! All of my eggs were in this basket and I planned to stay until retirement.”
“This is going to affect us,” John Wentworth said of the cuts at Mammoth’s Town Council Meeting on Wednesday.
Ten Inyo National Forest Service employees were also terminated over President’s Day weekend, and three of those employees worked within the Mammoth Ranger District, said Rob Patterson, Mammoth’s Town Manager, at the meeting.
He does not yet know what the impact of those lost employees will mean for the Town or County, but expects to see an “increase [in] requests that come to the Town Council through our budget process to fill in the gaps,” he said. One of those requests, coming up in March, will likely be to fund two recreation technician positions as town employees.
At a minimum, these cuts will have “significant” impact on forest thinning projects slated for this summer to prevent wildfire, said Janet Hatfield, Resilience Program Director Whitebark Institute, in a public comment.
Democratic senators, including U.S. Senator for California, Alex Padilla, denounced the job cuts, saying in a letter that “gutting staffing at national park units will devastate local “gateway” communities where parks generate significant economic activity,” before the mass firings were imposed.
Saturday, February 15, the day after the protests, some of the terminated employees gathered in Yosemite to protest the action. They held signs which read “Elon fired your park rangers” and “watch them efficiently destroy public lands.”
Some of the terminated employees are seeking legal action in class action lawsuits. One of the lawsuits is headed by James & Hoffman legal firm.
“Over the past few days, we have been developing the legal arguments and strategies that we believe will be most effective in this matter,” the firm wrote in an intake response email. It has begun coordinating with labor unions and other law firms to form their argument.
Another group, the Office of Special Counsel by Democracy Forward, accompanied by the Alden Law Group, have also started their own legal processes in defense of federal workers across nine agencies who lost their jobs.
“The Administration’s mass termination of employees in their first or second year on the job is an unprecedented and grossly unfair circumvention of the merit principles upon which our civil service is based,” said Michelle Bercovici, a partner with the Alden Law Group.
The arguments the group plan to use in the courts are different, James & Hoffman confirmed in a website post on Sunday, Feb 16.
Actions like the lawsuit give Chmura hope. He’s joined the lawsuit, and, along with friends, plans to organize more protests in the near future.
This article was corrected due to an error which stated that Olek Chmura was the only custodian for the area: there was another custodian as well, but he was also terminated.
