Elon Musk and his band of budget slashers are unleashing fear and anxiety in West Marin, where the Point Reyes National Seashore has already lost two staffers, including a fisheries specialist. Other agencies and nonprofits on the coast are bracing for cuts or pausing work.
Confusion has reigned as Mr. Musk and his team from the Department of Government Efficiency implement a series of executive orders from President Trump that have radically reduced the federal workforce and frozen funding for a vast array of programs.
The administration has modified some of its orders in the aftermath of lawsuits and widespread complaints, leaving local agency heads and nonprofits confused about the status of their funding and anticipating the worst.
“So much is up in the air,” said Sally Gale, who chairs the Marin Resource Conservation District board. “Perhaps tomorrow we’ll get good news, but we don’t expect it.”
Officials at the Point Reyes National Seashore declined to answer any questions about the situation this week, but Jason Briggs, the acting deputy park superintendent, sent staff an email on Valentine’s Day informing them that two positions had been eliminated. He did not identify the staffers or their positions but said they were both high-performing members of the team.
“Their abrupt departure will impact each of us in different ways,” he wrote. “Please ensure you communicate with your supervisor and peers if you find the impact of these decisions to be too painful or distracting to focus on your daily tasks.”
The positions were among 200,000 probationary government hires targeted by DOGE nationwide, including 780 in the National Park Service. Probationary employees are those who were hired or were moved into their current positions within the last year or so; they could be longtime agency employees with vast experience.
One of the two dismissed staffers, a lead in the seashore’s fisheries program, had worked for nine years for the nonprofit Point Reyes National Seashore Association before moving to the park last year. PRNSA immediately rehired him, said Donna Faure, the association’s executive director.
“The fisheries team works really hard to keep their data sets together and to do restoration work, and losing him would have left a big hole,” she said. “The way the staff were let go was very indiscriminate. It wasn’t based on someone’s performance or the importance of their job.”
The cuts across the park service have been arbitrary and illogical, said Neal Desai, director of the National Parks Conservation Association’s Pacific region.
“Stellar civil servants are being told that their positions are worthless,” he said. “It sends a concerning message to the workforce, and it seems counter to the whole idea of ‘America First’ to just indiscriminately fire thousands of people and attack national parks, which are a uniquely American, nonpartisan institution.”
In protest, people hung an upside-down American flag—a symbol of distress—near the summit of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park over the weekend. At about the same time, a magenta banner appeared at the seashore entrance emblazoned with the words, “Trump will destroy this.”
The seashore relies on a team of seasonal workers to maintain its trail system, and it is not clear how many will be hired this year. Their services became even more urgent last year, after the park announced it would no longer use power tools to maintain trails in its large wilderness area, a shift that resulted in a flurry of complaints about impassible paths.
Within days of taking office, the Trump administration rescinded all seasonal park contracts. But last week, it shifted gears and said it would hire more than 7,000 seasonal workers, although it is not yet clear which jobs they will fill. Given federal hiring procedures, those who previously sought positions and had been certified for employment might have to reapply.
That has left Steve Bunce in limbo. An Olema resident, he has worked on a crew of six to 10 seasonal trail maintenance workers in the park for nearly 14 years. He applies each year, and he typically hears back by January. Last week, he still hadn’t heard anything and had all but given up.
But on Monday, Shawn Maloney, the park’s trails manager, sent him an email inquiring about his availability. It did not include a job offer.
“He’s trying to figure out what’s really happening and doesn’t have a concrete answer to everything,” Mr. Bunce said. “To get his email is encouraging to me, and I’m grateful for it. If it happens, it’d be great. But if it doesn’t, oh well.”
Jerry Meral, an Inverness environmentalist who monitors the park’s budget, said the seashore can’t afford to lose anyone.
“They were terribly understaffed before this,” he said. “They’re gradually losing their core budget, which means that everything in the park that has to do with operations is being degraded. Visitor services, natural resources protection—all that’s just gradually going downhill. Any budget loss or personnel loss just makes things worse.”
Meanwhile, the Marin Resource Conservation District is freezing some of its programs until the dust settles on how much federal funding it will lose. The district works with farmers and ranchers on projects aimed at increasing biodiversity and habitat, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and sequestering carbon.
About a third of its budget comes from the state, a third from the county and a third from the federal government, according to Nancy Scolari, the group’s executive director. Its 10 staffers are paid with a mix of funding from all three sources.
If the freezes Mr. Trump has imposed remain in place, the R.C.D. could lose funding that covers the salaries of three employees. In that scenario, she said, the district would reallocate funding to keep all staffers on board.
The prospects for continued federal funding remain uncertain at best. Mr. Trump has focused his ire on programs aimed at combating climate change, a phrase that has been scrubbed from various government websites.
“Morale in general is pretty low,” Ms. Scolari said. “We currently have almost $3 million worth of federal contracts, and right now almost all of them are stopped. I’ve told my staff to stop working on all federal grants because there’s no guarantee that the government will pay us.”
The paused work includes climate-smart projects, such as installing gutters and other infrastructure to divert clean water from manure-laden areas on dairies.
Uncertainty is also hanging over local nonprofits that receive federal funding for their projects, said Sarah Hobson, executive director of the West Marin Fund.
“There’s going to be a huge impact on nonprofits in West Marin,” she said. “We are all having to spend a vast amount of time and energy to track and understand what’s happening and to determine how to respond.”
Citizens and nonprofits will have to step in to fill any voids in government services, she said, and those in West Marin are in a better position to do so than many others.
“We have so many generous donors who are based here, both individuals and family foundations,” she said. “We have a very strong tradition of looking out for each other.”