Three U.S. Fish & Wildlife workers were fired from John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge. Another was sacked in S. Jersey.
All three sacked employees from the Heinz refuge were under the one-year mark in employment. One of them —a bio-technology worker —was just two weeks shy of a full year of service.
Screaming for Jalen Hurts at the Eagles Super Bowl parade last week, J.J., a federal employee who worked at the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum, took a second to glance at her texts.
Several started with the words, “I’m so sorry... .” Worried, J.J. then read an email from 3 p.m. saying that she’d been terminated, and would be locked out of the computer system by 5 p.m. J.J. asked to remain anonymous because she hopes to one day regain her job and fears backlash from the government.
“So at the parade, I’m surrounded by thousands of cheering, happy people while my world is suddenly collapsing,” she said.
In her mid-20s, J.J. grew up and lives in Camden County. She’s the sole caretaker of her mother, who suffers from various serious ailments. “Financial stability for us,” she said, “has been ripped away. I don’t know what we’ll do.”
J.J. is one of three workers on staff at the Heinz refuge who were fired by President Donald Trump’s administration last Friday, said Jaclyn Rhoads, a member of the board of Friends of Heinz Refuge, a nonprofit that implements education and outreach work for the refuge.
The firings are part of a wave of terminations ordered by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) program run by Elon Musk.
They have not previously been reported.
The refuge is part of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the agency from which another worker in South Jersey was dismissed, also on Feb. 14.
All three sacked employees at Heinz were under the one-year mark in their positions, with one of them —a biotechnology worker — just two weeks shy of a full year of service, Rhoads added. She said that nine workers remain.
One of 570 wildlife refuges in the nation, the Heinz refuge protects the wildlife and the habitat of the largest freshwater tidal marsh in Pennsylvania. It’s a stopover for migrating birds and the home to a nesting pair of bald eagles. The refuge’s 1,100 acres are popular destinations for bird-watchers, hikers, and students on school trips.
Attendance has doubled in the last five years to 350,000 annual visitors, Rhoads said.
“Equate this to running a corporation,” she said. “If you’re continuing to provide more and more service, and doing so with such staggering numbers, why would you shrink the workforce?”
Calls and emails to local and national U.S. Fish & Wildlife officials, as well as to other agencies, were not returned.
The firings were part of an estimated 420 dismissals of workers in wildlife refuges nationwide, leaving 2,230 employees to oversee 850 million acres of land and water, the largest network of conservation lands in the world, according to Desiree Sorenson-Groves, president and CEO of the National Wildlife Refuge Association in Washington.
“There’s absolutely no thought for what’s being done,” Sorenson-Groves said. “These employees are just numbers to DOGE, using shock and awe tactics to cut. But these are the lives of people who, in turn, deliver services to the American people.
“We’ve lost some of our best and brightest. Many of these people are scientists saving the most endangered of endangered species.”
Though a large number of the fired employees are probationary, “quite a few” have Ph.D.s and 20 or more years of experience in conservation or other sciences, she added.
“Now years of work are gone,” Sorenson-Groves said. She added, “Look, not all government is bad. It can do good things — like stewarding public lands.”
‘An oasis from the chaos’
J.J. began working at the South Philadelphia wildlife refuge three years ago, but had been in her full-time position less than a year. Her job on the Heinz refuge’s visitor service team allowed her to teach archery to visitors, lead fishing events, and work to remove invasive species of vegetation. She was scheduled to represent the refuge at the Philadelphia Flower Show next month.
“Heinz is my life and I love it,” J.J. said. “I fought hard to be here. Having it ripped away is unreal and alarming.
“For visitors, and for me, it’s an oasis from the chaos you often find in Philadelphia.”
The refuge firings come in the wake of the reported layoffs of other land-use workers: around 3,400 employees of the U.S. Forest Service, still in their probationary period. The service is part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, while Fish & Wildlife belongs to the U.S. Department of Interior.
The administration has also fired about 1,000 newly hired National Park Service employees who maintain and clean parks, educate visitors, and perform other functions.
Two probationary employees were terminated at Independence National Historical Park last weekend. Five were dismissed at Gettysburg National Military Park and five at Steamtown National Historic Site in Scranton, according to David Fitzpatrick, local treasurer of AFGE Local 2058 and secretary-treasurer of AFGE Council 270.
‘Brain foggy days’
Lisa Brouellette’s supervisor came out of a meeting crying on Valentine’s Day. The only probationary employee in an office of 17 in Fish & Wildlife’s ecological services field office in Galloway, Atlantic County, Brouellette knew immediately she’d been let go.
The loss of her job has left her in a state of mourning. “Since I was let go, I’ve had these brain foggy days from grief where I lost my cat for 11 hours, then I left my front door open all day,” said the biologist.
Brouellette, 31, moved from Minnetonka, Minn., to Mays Landing just five months ago for the job that’s now gone.
“I don’t know where I go from here,” she said. Because so many workers with similar jobs and conservation experience are being laid off simultaneously from the U.S. National Park Service, the U.S. Forest Service, and Fish & Wildlife, “we’re all hitting the job market at once,” Brouellette said. “There’s a lot of fear moving forward.”
For the past decade, Brouellette endured unpaid, seasonal, and temp work to get to her position — ensuring that federal agencies and others don’t run afoul of regulations protecting endangered species. Even at $54,000 a year — the lowest salary in her office — it was a dream job.
“I loved it and I loved my coworkers and community,” she said. “It’s hard to have it taken by a whim of DOGE.”
She added, “I really believe the layoffs were targeted to ultimately weaken protections for endangered species, possibly to allow development.”
For now, Brouellette said, she may have to move back in with her parents, and say a sad goodbye to her protectees, including: the bog turtle, the New Jersey state reptile and a threatened species; the Indiana bat and Northern long-eared bat, both endangered; and the red knot, a threatened migratory shore bird.
And, as she wonders if she’ll ever work on the East Coast again, Brouellette is realizing that she’s never had the chance to swim in the ocean just 15 miles away from her apartment.
“It’s all still hitting me,” she said. “It’s just so surreal.”