Editor's note: On Thursday, March 13, a California District Court Judge ordered the Trump administration to reinstate probationary workers who were fired last month at six agencies, including the Department Interior, which oversees the USGS.
Thousands of employees of federal land management agencies have been fired as part of the Trump administration’s stated goals of reducing the federal workforce.
Most of those employees have been probationary employees — in their first year or two in their positions with agencies like the Bureau of Land Management, the National Parks Service, and the U.S. Geological Survey.
Allison Stegner was a paleobiologist working with the USGS in southeastern Utah and western Colorado, before she was fired — along with thousands of other workers — on Valentine’s Day.
For Stegner, the work was personal. She’s also the granddaughter of Wallace Stegner, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and environmental advocate whose writings helped shape modern conservation policy.
Rocky Mountain Community Radio’s Caroline Llanes spoke with Stegner about her experience in the civil service.
Editor’s note: This interview and this transcript have been edited for length and clarity.
Caroline Llanes: All right, so let's get started. Go ahead and tell me a little bit about your background and who you are.
Allison Stegner: I wanted to go into ecology because I care about the environment and I wanted to devote my work to protecting the plants and animals and places that are important to me. I did my PhD in paleoecology because I was interested in how we can use the very long perspective to think about where we're going in the future of conservation. I did all of my dissertation fieldwork in southeastern Utah, and I did that because I love that scenery and that place. Utah's had kind of a big part in my family history. My dad was born in Salt Lake City. My grandfather spent a lot of time growing up there. And so it's always kind of felt like home, even though I don't live there. While I was doing my PhD work, I just became more and more interested in and invested in all of the political and social issues of the Colorado Plateau, and Utah in particular.
So, after I did my PhD, I went on and did a couple of post-docs. The challenge I was having in those roles was that I felt like there's such a disconnect between what I was doing in my research and what people actually need from ecology and conservation. So I was really excited to take a job with the USGS because I felt like — and I think this is true — I think that the USGS and other organizations like it are addressing science needs that people are asking for, you know, the land managers are asking for, nonprofits are asking for, people are saying like, ‘we actually really need this information, can you address it with your work?’
Llanes: And when did you start working for the U.S. Geological Survey?
Stegner: I started working for the USGS, I think it was February 25th of 2024.
Llanes: Wow, okay. So you had been working there for almost a year exactly.
Stegner: Yeah, I had 10 days till the end of my probationary period. It's exactly the same for almost every person who was terminated on February 14th. But basically it was saying that my skills, and my abilities, and my expertise... don't meet the needs of my position or my agency.
Llanes: So what was the kind of work and research that you were doing in your capacity with the USGS before you were fired?
Stegner: Basically, I was doing research on how weather, climate, and land use affect vegetation and soils. And I was also doing some work on trying to kind of summarize, ‘what are the big research questions that agencies really need addressed now?’ So that was kind of like a science needs assessment. Some of my work was based in southeastern Utah, and some of the projects that I was transitioning into were based in western Colorado. It was going to look at all of western Colorado, but different soil types that are found throughout that part of the state.
But the way these mass terminations were done — of probationary employees — meant that a ton of work was cut off just right in the middle. So nobody was given a chance to say, ‘okay, you got one month to go, please just finish up what you're doing, write your reports so we can still use what you've done.’ Yeah, everything was just cut off mid-stride. And so stuff that I had been working on for almost 12 months is just not done. So the work that I was paid to do, that the American taxpayer funded, that's like 12 months of unusable labor, that nobody's getting anything back for.
Llanes: Wow, okay, that's really incredible. So when the federal workforce, and especially these federal land management agencies that are very prevalent here in the West, what exactly are they losing when they lose positions like yours and workers like you?
Stegner: This is one of those easy questions that’s so important and so big that I feel like people get really tangled up on that, when you're trying to justify why you exist. Why is the research that people like me do important? Well, land managers and ranchers and all kinds of people need to make decisions about how to use and steward the land into the future. Like, how can we graze cattle and have productive vegetation next year, and the year after, and the decade after? Because we want that.
How do we make sure that people can still recreate on the landscape, but that they're still going to be visiting a place that has soils that haven't eroded off into the rivers, and has campgrounds with trees and all that kind of stuff. I mean, that sounds sort of trivial, but you (can) apply that across all kinds of questions. And so the kind of work I did and the kind of work I'm interested in doing is, ‘how do we make sure that we can treat public lands sustainably so that we can continue to enjoy them for all kinds of reasons?’
Llanes: All that being said, all of this experience you've had, would you work in the civil service again?
Stegner: I definitely would. I loved working in the civil service. It actually was sort of the perfect union of all of the things that I care about. So I definitely would. I recognize that it's really hard for federal workers right now, and that they're facing a climate of just feeling very marginalized and disliked. And so, you know, coworkers, I know, are still getting emails asking for their five bullet points, what they did last week. And, you know, anytime anybody gets an email from HR at OPM.gov, it's like, what fresh hell. So, you know, it's not easy, but I really care about the work, I think it's really important, and I would definitely work in the civil service again.
In terms of what I actually am going to do for next steps: I'm not really sure. There's a lot of rumblings about trying to reverse some of these terminations and I don't know how successful that will be. It seems like some are starting to happen. I definitely want to find a job in the future that still unites that service aspect with my skills, which are research.
Llanes: That was Allison Stegner. She has a PhD in paleoecology, and she used to work for the US Geological Survey in eastern Utah and western Colorado. Allison, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with Rocky Mountain Community Radio.
Stegner: My pleasure, it's really nice talking to you.
Copyright 2025 Rocky Mountain Community Radio. This story was shared via Rocky Mountain Community Radio, a network of public media stations in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico, including Aspen Public Radio.
