I was in my 20s and working for the Bureau of Land Management when the second longest shutdown of the federal government occurred. It lasted three weeks and was punctuated by “a storm like no other,” so I spent much of the three weeks shoveling neighbors’ sidewalks and helping push out snowbound cars.
When the shutdown ended, I called Mom and shouted, “I get to go back to work!” To be clear, I was not doing the work of the BLM during that three-week furlough. What I was doing was helping friends, neighbors and strangers from my community.
In that I was not unique, then nor now. This is what the public servants who are furloughed today, and could be fired tomorrow, do. They help people.
Federal employees helping
I witnessed this firsthand as a seasonal employee at the Forest Service in Idaho. I did not have a place to live, and Jack King, one of the leaders at the research station, opened his home and let me stay there until I could find a place of my own.
Later, as an employee of the fish and wildlife program of the BLM, I watched career professionals build community in thousands of towns across the West by setting up resource advisory councils where neighbors would resolve complicated problems, and in so doing balance local needs against national interests.
When I served with the Forest Service, I benefited from the generosity of seasoned professionals who helped a green young man to better understand the vagaries of why roadless areas on national forests matter and how 100 years of fire suppression changed forests that had natural evolved with frequent fire.
Federal agencies are great partners
Over the years, the Forest Service has become one of Trout Unlimited’s (TU) best partners as we work together to help replace culverts and reknit communities devastated by hurricane-induced flooding in the Southeast. Forest Service and TU employees are helping to protect communities in the Southwest and California from unnaturally intense fires by removing excessive vegetation. Across the Rockies, TU is working with Forest Service employees by using process-based restoration techniques to create natural fuel breaks that block the spread of wildfire, guard against drought and help secure clean water sources. Forest Service employees work with TU to help clean up the scourge of abandoned mines from West Virginia to Alaska.
I could write similar sentences about the public servants at NOAA Fisheries, the Natural Resource Conservation Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Reclamation and other federal natural resource management agencies with whom TU works.
Servants of public lands and waters
For many people, the shutdown of the federal government is a political chess game. “Who will get the blame? The Democrats or the Republicans?” It is simply part of the news cycle, something we hear about on the radio or watch on TV.
Lost in that assessment are the lives of the men and women who go to work every day trying to pass on a healthier and more productive land and water legacy. Almost every natural resource focused federal employee I know could have made more money in the private sector, but the “service” aspect of public service is a call that is hard to ignore. Most of my mentors are or were public servants.
Public servants give back well beyond the mission of their agencies. Two of my neighbors who are federal workers spend the weekend picking up trash in ou neighborhood; another volunteers for a local church helping to deliver food to elderly people shut in their homes. Several federal employees volunteer at my church and help feed 100 homeless or near-homeless people every night.
In time, cooler heads will prevail, and the federal shutdown will end, and I do hope that our public servants will be able to crow to their Moms that they, too, are able to get back to work. In the meantime, look around for a federal employee during the next Snowmageddon—they will likely lend a hand.