Cuts to staff at the National Park Service prompted demonstrations at parks large and small across the country last weekend. The sudden firings have caused worry that some parks will be left unprepared to properly serve the public. Some fear for the future of the 433 sites managed by the service. That includes Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield.
Lexi McCarter is a local resident concerned about the cuts. Last weekend she was one of many who attended a demonstration at Wilson’s Creek, organized by a national group called the Resistance Rangers, made up of ex-park service staff culled in the recent firings.
McCarter said she was inspired to create a local Resistance Rangers group and host what she hopes will be weekly protests at the park, starting this Saturday.
“I could see that there was definitely a need for more outreach and more people to get organized and do these sorts of things,” McCarter said. She said her goal is to bring more exposure to the impact the cuts may have on the park service as well as bigger ecological issues.
McCarter says she and those like her are concerned that cutting park staff may put visitors at risk and prevent parks from properly managing the ecosystems they're responsible for.
Alexandria Hamlin is one of the staff caught up in the cuts at Wilson’s Creek. She was on a two-year assignment doing graphic design work.
Hamlin said she was “hired to help revamp the website” and do photography for events and programs. Hamlin was also hired to help update the park’s brochures and photograph items in Wilson’s Creeks library and museum. Hamlin is realistic about the work. It isn’t a life-or-death job, but she said it’s work that would have helped connect the Battlefield with the community.
It was her dream to enter the park service. She relocated from Virginia for the job. She said the reason given for her firing was low performance, but she said she’d been at the park for just six-weeks and had not even had her first performance review.
Hamlin says now the firing will be on her record if she applies for any federal job in the future. “If they ask, ‘have you been terminated and what for?’ I have to list yes and poor performance,” Hamlin explained.
Hamlin has found another job in the private sector, which many proponents of the cuts say is one of the goals, but it is not her dream job, and she now has a lease in a city she has no connections to with no nearby friends or family.
Hamlin’s story was first reported by KY3.
Her’s is just one example of a life upended by the cuts. She said she believes at least one other staff person was fired from Wilson’s Creek at the same time she was. Staff from Wilson’s Creek directed questions from KSMU to the National Park Service Office of Public Affairs, that Office provided a generic statement that did not address any specific questions and did not confirm or deny any facts.