Eight United States Forest Service employees in Sitka were among thousands of federal workers fired by the Trump administration last weekend. The Sitka employees worked in roles including tribal relations, trail work, and subsistence fish monitoring. Anna Eischen was one of them. Eischen led fish monitoring for two years at Redoubt Falls, the site of a major subsistence sockeye run near Sitka. KCAW’s Meredith Redick spoke with Eischen about how she’s handling the news.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity.
KCAW: Maybe, let’s start with – how did you end up in Sitka?
EISCHEN: I think it was five days after I graduated. I found an internship through the Student Conservation Association that was through the Sitka Ranger District, and it was working the Redoubt Project. And so I dropped everything, moved and never left. I was lucky – I was fortunate enough to get a permanent position after my internship.
KCAW: For someone who doesn’t know what fish weir monitoring is, or what it means to go to Redoubt, can you explain a little bit about what that day-to-day is like?
EISCHEN: I would say that we are doing on-the-ground, day-to-day, physical labor and scientific data monitoring to continue to produce healthy runs of wild sockeye salmon. So I was co-crew lead this past year, so we’d work eight days on, and I think five days off? And you’re out there in the fields, we’re out at the cabin, we’re maintaining the weir. I mean, we have to deal with the local bear family and condition the bears so they’re not used to humans, they’re not messing up the weir and our cabin and stuff up there. We’re doing physical labor.
KCAW: Can you tell me a little bit about the memo you got and sort of how the news was broken?
EISCHEN: On Sunday, my supervisor texted me and was like, “we have to have a phone call.” They called me and they terminated me on the phone first, and then I immediately received an email. And the email is a copy and paste of every other email that you could – like, if you just look up “termination email,” every single one is the exact same, and it says that I’m being terminated for performance-based reasons. My performance reviews for the entire two years I’ve been there have been “exceeded.” I’ve received awards. Like, my performance has been nothing but stellar. So it was, it sucks. It’s been traumatizing.
KCAW: What are the effects of this for you?
EISCHEN: That’s been the most difficult part about this, because it’s like, “okay, we waited for the shoe to drop.” The shoe dropped. Me and my partner, he actually also works at the Forest Service, and he’s not probationary, so he’s retained his job for now. But it’s like, “Okay, what’s going to happen for us?” We just bought a trailer on Jan. 20 in Forest Service housing. We just bought it. So you can — it’s been a struggle, and now it’s like, “do we roll the dice? Do we pull out of this? Do we sell the house? Is it even worth going back up there? What’s going to happen?”
KCAW: Because your partner is still employed, you’re not going to get kicked out of that land. But if say you had bought the trailer independently and then been terminated, would you have to leave?
EISCHEN: I think that is a question that we’re all asking. I think that’s a main concern for people who are occupying the Forest Service housing is like, “What? What the hell will happen?” Because there’s a lot of people up there who are the main breadwinners, Forest Service employees, and they’ve got two kids. Oh my gosh, I can’t, I can’t even imagine. I don’t know. That’s the scariest part is like, not only are you losing your job, like, you’re losing everything. You’re losing everything.
KCAW: What does Redoubt look like if it’s a bare-bones crew or there’s no one out there? What do you think it could look like this summer?
EISCHEN: I have no idea. I wish I had an answer to that question. I don’t know. I think it’s something that our community should be fearful about.
KCAW: Anna, anything else you want folks to know or that you want to make sure is clear?
EISCHEN: I guess the one thing that I want to clarify is that I’ve been seeing in the press that we were laid off. We were not laid off. In no way is this a layoff. We were fired. So I’ve been seeing that “oh, layoffs.” No, it was not a layoff. And I don’t think it should be said gently. And also that I — federal workers are just, like, not a waste. We aren’t fat that needs to be trimmed. We are an important, essential part of this community that loves our natural resources, just like the community does.
