By Kendra Owenby
I’m sharing this news with much sadness, disappointment, frustration, and lots of other emotions. On Friday, Feb. 14th, I received notification I had been terminated from my position with the National Park Service (NPS) as part of the mass layoffs. I was listed as in a probationary period, having started a new, promotion position in December 2024.
I was born and raised about two miles from the entrance to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, where some of my ancestors’ cabins and gravesites still remain, protected as historic resources. From the beginning, a passion for the preservation and protection of public lands and the importance of the NPS was ingrained in me.
I went to school for archeology and after a few years in private sector landed my first NPS job as a seasonal at Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico in 2012. Since then, I’ve worked my way up the ladder – slowly but surely – by taking new opportunities that have brought me across the country a few times, working in four states for five different NPS units, finally landing in Yosemite National Park, where I’ve been since 2018.
In 2020 I decided I was ready to really commit myself and my career to public service and started a Master’s of Public Administration. Since then, I’ve continued to work 32-40 hours a week while doing school after hours, all while getting married, moving, buying a house, and having a baby. I finally finished my degree in June 2024, with a four-month old, and my dream job in the works. In December 2024, I took a job with Yosemite as an Environmental Protection Specialist. I felt like I had everything I’d worked so hard for the last 12 years – until last Friday.
I know ultimately things will be okay, I’ll find another job, life goes on, but it probably won’t be with the NPS, where my passion, purpose, and drive has been rooted my whole career. That’s tough to swallow. What makes it even more heartbreaking is I have to watch my friends and colleagues go through the same devastating thing. I plan to appeal and do what I can to try to get my job back, but I ask you to please do what you can – call your representatives and demand better, for us, for public services, and for your neighbors.
This was originally posted by Kendra Owenby on Feb. 17, 2025.