Federal firings hit national parks and more
Welcome to Climate Point, your weekly guide to climate, energy and the environment. From Palm Springs, I'm Janet Wilson.
Amid a flurry of federal firings this week, one Facebook post quickly went viral: a young National Park Service ranger whose wife is pregnant with their second child discussed being abruptly fired on Valentine's Day.
"I am absolutely heartbroken and completely devastated to have lost my dream job," wrote Brian Gibbs, an Education Park Ranger at Effigy Mounds National Monument in Iowa, named for 2,500 year old Native American ceremonial mounds. "My position was ripped out from out under my feet after my shift was over at 3:45pm on a cold snowy Friday."
In his emotional missive, he said, "Please know and share this truth widely: I am a father, a loving husband, and dedicated civil servant. ... I am a work evaluation that reads 'exceeds expectations.' I am the 'fat on the bone.'"
"Mostly I'm just tired. I am tired from weeks of being bullied and censored by billionaires. I am tired of waking up every morning at 2am wondering how I am going to provide for my family ... Things are not ok. I am not ok."
Gibbs was one of more than 10,000 federal employees who lost their jobs in just six days, including 3,400 at the U.S. Forest Service, 1,000 with the National Park Service and 800 with the Bureau of Land Management.
Losing 1,000 personnel at popular national parks months before the busy summer season could impact everything from toilet and trash clean-up to already long lines to gain entrance, advocacy organizations said. About 325 million people visit national park sites each year, and 159 million use national forests annually.
"Staffing cuts of this magnitude will have devastating consequences for parks and communities," National Parks Conservation Association President Theresa Pierno said in a statement.
FEMA, EPA, nuclear safety and natural resources conservation staff all saw cuts too, But USDA is seeking to rehire personnel who were tackling the bird flu virus, saying they were accidentally included in a purge of 2,000 employees, writes the Des Moines Register's Donnelle Eller.
President Donald Trump and his adviser Elon Musk say the cuts are necessary to rein in the nation's annual deficit. The sweeping reductions coupled with 75,000 buyouts are so severe that one economist told Paste BN's Paul Davidson they would tip Washington, D.C., normally a bastion of steady employment, into a recession.
Congestion conflict. Trump took credit for having his Transportation Secretary nix backing for New York City's congestion pricing program, which charges people $9 to drive below midtown Manhattan. The fees have cleared commuter backlogs and cut tailpipe pollution, but are deeply unpopular with suburbanites.
But New York Gov. Kathy Hochul vowed to keep tolling cameras up while the state challenges the federal action, writes Thomas Zambito for the Journal News.
Giving a hoot. Elsewhere Paste BN Network reporters are covering conservation of wildlife, forests, coastal homes and a Midwest river.
Five years after the world’s largest PCB cleanup ended in Wisconsin's Lower Fox River, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Medill School of Journalism took a look at how it's doing. Bottom line, it's a lot cleaner, but it's still not safe to eat the fish.
Wild things. Want to know which states have the highest wildlife conservation and diversity? Check out a new report covered by Florida Today.
Going up. A new Florida program aims to help elevate houses and stop flood insurance claims before they happen, reports the Palm Beach Post, though it's based on federal funds.
Forest for the trees. Andy Mahler has fought for three decades to stop logging in the Hoosier National Forest. Indiana's only national forest encompasses more than 204,000 acres and offers hiking, camping, boating, mountain biking and hunting, and old growth tree stands. Many credit Mahler, who lives in a private home in the forest, with halting logging and prescribed burning there for more than a decade in the 1980s.
With new logging proposed, he continues to wage battle, reports the Herald-Times, and now his efforts and others' are being captured in a new documentary.
"Since 1985, my life is to protect this forest," Mahler explained. "Any sane society will protect its forest if it wants to survive into the second half of the 21st century."
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