The Trump administration is moving quickly to reduce the government workforce. Many in Wyoming are affected by the layoffs. This became clear on Valentine’s Day, when the National Park Service, National Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management let many employees go.

Wyoming Public Radio asked our listeners to share with us how they’re impacted by the latest orders by the Trump administration and how they think this will impact the Cowboy State.

Messages from people streamed in as people shared their experiences. They're worried about losing employee housing, being able to find work in Wyoming, and what this all means for public lands and their communities.

This story was reported by Caitlin Tan, Olivia Weitz and Hanna Merzbach The audio postcard was produced by Melodie Edwards.

Editor's Note: These interviews have been edited for clarity and brevity.

Stephanie Flinders: “I work for the Forest Service and my duty station was in Mountain View, Wyoming.

I learned I was terminated on Sunday the 16th [of February].

I have a ten-year-old and a six-year-old, and I ran in my room crying so that they didn't see me because I didn't know what I was going to do. I live in the middle of nowhere with few employment opportunities as it is, and as a single mom, I was completely terrified.

 I felt like the ground had been ripped out from under me. I had done everything I could to prove myself indispensable to my district, my forest, I thought my country. I was in total shock.

 I no longer have benefits and I no longer have health insurance. I'm scared sick because I can't just relocate and find other employment because as well as I get along with my ex, relocating would mean a whole new negotiation as far as parenting. And this limits complete access to my children.

Courtesy of Stephanie Flinders

 I was in charge of all non-motorized, motorized, and cross country trails along the north slope of the Uinta Range. There's over 700 miles of just non-motorized trail. I was in charge of clearing, maintaining those. I also was in charge of wilderness management and conservation. These trails are going to become inaccessible.

I know that everyone that’s still there are panicking because they can't do what they've even been asked to do. It’s not possible to accomplish what the public asks and demands. And I feel like the public ought to know. It's tragic for those that enjoy the mountains and it's tragic for the mountains themselves.”

Richard Midgette: “I am 28 years old. I live in Gardner, Montana. I worked as an IT specialist for Yellowstone National Park.

We have a lot of key projects that I can't speak of in terms of modernizing, Yellowstone's communications and network infrastructure  that might be delayed or put on the back burner due to funding and staffing concerns.

It started a week before I was actually let go. It was on February 5th. My boss had called me into an office with his boss and informed me as well as other probationary employees and colleagues of mine that they were demanded to provide a list of all probationary employees, their job status, role and also explanation of what I do and why I should not be fired basically.

The day before Valentine's Day my boss had called me about 10 minutes after my shift ended to inform me that they had been sent an email essentially warning us of termination within 24 hours, that within the next 24 hours I would potentially lose my employment. And so I had to go to sleep that night and only got 3 hours of sleep and had to go to work that morning on Friday morning on Valentine's knowing that at any moment in the day, I could receive an email effectively terminating my employment.

I went in and did my job as normal. My boss came in around 3:30, four o'clock in the afternoon to let me know he had received an email terminating my position and that I was to clear out my desk and the termination would be effective by the end of day.

Everyone's afraid of their jobs even if they've been working there for years and are well beyond their probationary period, even if they received nothing but exceptional or fully successful performance reviews. People are scared that their job is no longer stable, the job that they've done for years.

My fear with this is that they are going to defund our land agencies, because they're seeing so many poor performance related to now being understaffed so severely that they're not being able to fully meet all the goals that are expected of them.

And if the remaining employees now cannot fully perform their job duties effectively, then they will use that to go back and say, ‘Look, they're not doing their job correctly. Let's now fire them as well.’ And then there's nobody staffing our public lands.”

The next voice is a remote employee of the Department of Energy who lives in Wyoming. He asked for anonymity because he still has his job.

Anonymous Source: “The reason I want to stay anonymous is the fear for repercussions from the government, really, mostly and protecting my future. I mean that is ultimately what it is.

I've only been with the DOE for a little over a year. I switched recently. I worked for the Bureau of Land Management for about 13 years.

When this opportunity came up to be remote because I am ingrained in this community. I have a six year old daughter and married, and we have family here, so being able to advance my career remotely was a big deal for me.

As a NEPA specialist, we review projects from various programs. Some are solar, hydrogen, building technologies, energy efficiency, geothermal. So when the grants are issued we comply with the National Environmental Policy Act.

It started on Inauguration Day with the executive orders and return to office was one of the first ones that came through, so that kind of set in panic or disappointment.

Then all the probationary and reduction in force executive orders were signed, and so then you're wondering whether some of the people that are on your team are going to get fired or if you’re going to.

We can't sign documents, and up until about a week ago, we were not allowed to communicate externally, so we couldn't even really work on the projects. There's no finishing projects right now. We don't have the ability to. That ability has been stripped by the administration.

And I don't know what that means for me. I haven't got an official date yet, but it's coming.

I’ll leave federal service. I will not be working for the DOE anymore, and that’s heartbreaking. I think I'm only about a week short of 14 years in federal service.”

Music attribution: Clothe the Fields With Plenty by Axletree is licensed under a Attribution 4.0 International License.