Conrad Scheid, member of the Nation Federation of Federal Employees FSC Local 60, had been working seasonally maintaining Missoula-area Forest Service trails for the past seven years.
“In the eyes of the federal government my title was an 0462 forestry technician wilderness/trails, but I guess I called myself a wilderness ranger,” Scheid said.
Until February 14, when Scheid said he got a call saying he had been fired.
“From it being a potential, to me hearing from our district ranger that I lost my job was less than 24 hours. It was definitely a gut punch—it really sucked,” Scheid said.
Last year, the agency made a push to transition temporary seasonal employees to permanent seasonal employee status. They would still work seasonally but not have to reapply each year. Scheid was one of the employees that took on the new title, and with that went into a year of probationary status.
The email Schied received on Feb. 14 had the subject: “Notification of Termination During Probationary Period".
“I don’t feel like a probationary employee, I mean I was one on paper but I’ve been doing this work for the better part of a decade and really devoted my life to it,” Scheid said.
Despite receiving positive evaluations, the letter went on to say, “The Agency finds, based on your performance, that you have not demonstrated that your further employment at the Agency would be in the public interest.”
A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which runs the Forest Service, sent a statement to Yellowstone Public Radio explaining the layoffs, saying: “USDA has made the difficult decision to release about 2,000 probationary, non-firefighting employees from the Forest Service. To be clear, none of these individuals were operational firefighters. Secretary Rollins is committed to preserving essential safety positions and will ensure that critical services remain uninterrupted.”
The USDA has previously said the cuts are to improve government and eliminate inefficiencies.
Besides those laid off within the Forest Service, the layoffs ripple beyond to the many organizations that partner with the Forest Service such as the Montana Conservation Corps, a nonprofit organization which for the past 30 years has contracted with the agency sending young people into the field to do work on federally managed land.
Jono McKinney, CEO and President of Montana Conservation Corps, says about 80% of the organization's budget comes from work they do on federal public land and many of those contracts are under review.
“For MCC we have about $2.5 million dollars of projects kind of in that unknown status,” McKinney said.
Although the fieldwork typically takes place over the summer, MCC’s work is set to begin this week hiring and training 75 crew leaders.
“It’s difficult to follow through on those commitments if there is no guarantee of work in the summer,” McKinney said.
McKinney believes that the contracts will likely go through as they are priority work on public land, but what that looks like on the ground is still uncertain.
“Will there be people in place who are able and have the expertise and experience to supervise our and support our crews when they are working on projects," McKinney wondered.
People like Scheid.
“Yeah another part of my role was getting out into the field and seeing where we could use those big MCC crews. But without people such as myself to actually direct that work, or work side by side with them I think it’s going to be a lot of wasted time and money,” Scheid said.
Scheid imagines a Montana summer of uncleared trails, and minimally maintained toilets and campsites, and a potential for extra smoke.
“Even if we're not firefighters myself and a lot of folks have our red cards and take on collateral firefighting duties filling in, whether that's you know actually on hand crews or initial attack or helping to moisture analysis or road guards all sorts of stuff. It's a team effort for sure and they might say firefighters are not affected but the fire fighting season is absolutely going to be affected by this,” Scheid said.
