Molly Harrison was set to begin her fifth year as a seasonal employee with the U.S. Forest Service in Moab, her second as a permanent seasonal worker.
And then came the purge.
She survived the first round of firings but not the second as her employment was probationary. She is one of scores of federal workers that have lost or will lose their job in the Moab area as the Trump administration looks to fire perhaps hundreds of thousands of government employees.
“This was life-changing,” said Harrison, the tremble in her voice betraying her raw emotions. Harrison worked in the recreation side of the Forest Service, doing everything from cleaning restrooms and campgrounds to clearing trails with the aid of a chainsaw.
While appalled after many of her coworkers were let go in the first round of firings, Harrison held out hopes her job would be saved since she is a registered EMT and certified in forest protection. “We were told … we might be spared,” she said.
Harrison, who spent five years working in the forest with AmeriCorps before moving to the USFS four years ago, didn’t just lose a job — the career she had carefully planned unraveled.
“I’m quite sad about it,” she said. “Almost the entire field staff was let go as of Sunday … at least 11 people trying to make a career in public lands. Ten years I did this and now I’m thinking about moving.”
Her lost dream of a career with the forest service is not Harrison’s only disappointment. Harrison was scheduled to be part of the second round of home builds at Arroyo Crossing this year through the Housing Authority of Southeastern Utah’s affordable housing program — one of the only ways most locals could afford to realize the dream of homeownership in Moab. “I really don’t think I’ll qualify now without this job,” she said.
(Molly Harrison) Members of the U.S. Forest Service’s Moab area recreation and trails crews pose for a photo. Kneeling in front is Sara Helmrick and Molly Harrison. Back row from the left is Justice Black, Allison Aakre, Lindsay Weil, Brian Murdock, Ben Chicken and Jared Trader.
“You know, I spent those years with AmeriCorps to get the experience I needed for a career. I’m in my mid-30s.”
While Harrison laments her situation with the clock ticking, there will be a price to pay for those lost jobs, as well. Seasonal workers like Harrison perform manual labor. They clean campgrounds and toilets and build and clear the trails people hike, bike and off-road on and those services will not be done, at least not nearly as well, with the skeleton crew that’s left to pick up the pieces.
“It’s so sad for Grand County,” said Harrison. “I felt so much support from the people of Moab. It’s heartbreaking. We’ve been in this turmoil for weeks now and I think it’s designed to break you down and get you to leave. It is infuriating they did this to so many people.”
The letters the fired workers received were harshly worded and, according to Harrison, wholly untrue.
“The agency finds that you are not fit for continued employment because of your ability, knowledge and skills do not fit the agency’s current needs, and your performance has not been adequate to justify further employment,” it reads.
“We were all told it was a performance-based firing, but we all had above satisfactory evaluations for every year we’ve worked there,” said Harrison. “No one had a poor performance evaluation. This tone, talking about firings, talking about this bloat, we were manual laborers with field jobs,” she said. “It’s offensive to me. I’m somebody they consider to have a superfluous existence.”
(Molly Harrison) The trail crew was especially impacted by the federal employee purge as all five were terminated. They are from the left, Alex Mudler, Jacob Sternberg, Rachel Gravens, Christian Duran and Kita Daly.
Alex Mudler was a member of the trail crew and was set to start his second year as a permanent seasonal worker, and still under probationary status, when he and everyone else on the five-person crew was fired.
“Everyone on my crew has lost their job,” he said. “I was passively anticipating it. I only had one season there, so my situation is not as bad as Molly’s.”
The trail crew begins its season in May by “logging out” trails in the Manti-La Sal and Abajo mountain ranges. They remove trees that fell across trails and roads over winter — there’s always a lot of them — on both motorized and nonmotorized tracks.
“We were constructing a new trail, as well,” said Mudler. “The Tuk Springs Exit.” They were also working on a new connector trail in the Abajos.
Like Harrison, Mudler takes a lot of pride in the work they did. Hard work and low pay aside, the benefits of not just working in a forest, but in getting to understand and appreciate it is a treasured personal reward.
Most of the local USFS recreation staff were let go, leading Mudler to think the mission will, by necessity, have to shift.
“I’m speculating, but I think the priorities will be on patrolling, keeping up with the toilet paper,” Mudler said. “We have six-ish campgrounds that have to be maintained.”
As for trail maintenance, he said that work might be carried out by forest service partners such as the Conservation Corps, the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources and others.
(Alex Mudler) The U.S. Forest Service trail crew takes a selfie after a hard day on the mountain.
Still, Mudler said the firings will have an impact. “We know the forest better than anyone,” he said. “It will be interesting.”
Indeed, even if those partners can help, it won’t be enough from Mudler’s perspective.
“It’s going to be a weird year for public lands,” he said. “And the results will be visible.”
Mudler was able to build up his savings because he knew the work wouldn’t have begun until May, so at the moment, he said, “I’m not making any plans.”
He is a trained bike mechanic and has been in discussions with a potential employer. He would love the opportunity to get another public lands job, but with all of the recent firings he knows that competition for the few jobs available will be intense.
As for that accusatory letter of termination, Mudler had this to say. “My reaction was disappointment in the [Trump] administration. We’ve received a lot of passive support from our supervisors, but that letter, what they said, was an outright lie. I’ve reached out for copies of my performance evaluation.”
While President Trump and Elon Musk claim the federal workforce is bloated with roughly 2.4 million employees, it has roughly stayed at that number since the 1980s, when there were about 110 million fewer people living in the U.S., according to a study released in November by the Pew Research Center.
The National Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service have fired their local probationary employees. Firings of similarly situated Bureau of Land Management employees have begun, with approximately 800 employees affected so far nationwide, according to Reuters.
The importance of seasonal employees
While tourism on the mountain is popular, it doesn’t draw attention like Arches National Park. Walt Dabney, a former Southeast Utah Group of National Parks and Monuments superintendent for NPS, director of Texas State Parks and a current speaker in support of public lands, said seasonal workers “take care of things during the busy season that wouldn’t get taken care of otherwise.”
Dabney said seasonal employees are invaluable to both visitors and in protecting the park’s resources. “Look, they man the visitor center,” he said. “They clean the toilets. They help people in need and believe me, people find themselves in need all the time at Arches.”
This story was first published by The Times-Independent.
