A terse email that went out to 1,000 National Park Service probationary employees and other Interior Department staff who were fired this week was abrupt and claimed they were being fired for cause.

"The Department determined that you have failed to demonstrate fitness or qualifications for continued employment because your subject matter knowledge, skills, and abilities do not meet the Department's current needs, and it is necessary and appropriate to terminate, during the probationary period, your appointment to the position of XXX at XXX Park within the National Park Service," stated the email sent by Lena McDowall, the Park Service's deputy director for management and administration.

The notifications followed up on a February 6 Office of Personnel Management email to all federal agencies asking that any barriers that might prevent the agency from "swiftly" firing "poor performing employees who cannot or will not improve" be identified. The memo further instructed agency and department heads to report by March 7 "all employees who received less than a 'fully successful' performance rating in the past three years."

The text of the termination emails seemed to contradict an earlier message from the Trump administration that it would treat terminated employees with "dignity."

In the administration's Fork in the Road memo, which encouraged federal employees to accept a "deferred resignation" under which they could resign now but stay on the payroll through September, part of it read that those who refused the offer could still be fired but that "should your position be eliminated you will be treated with dignity and will be afforded the protections in place for such positions."

The Park Service staff who lost their jobs were still on probation, lacked job protection that permanent employees off probation have, and had been targeted by the Trump administration. 

Some of those who were fired expressed their anquish on a Reddit page for park rangers.

"I know I’m one of so so many, but I got the termination today. I started my dream job about a month ago, and it feels like everything I’ve worked for has been viciously ripped from me with no remorse. While I know I’m not alone in this it still somehow seems so very isolating," they wrote in a posts that generated more than 120 replies.

"I'm with you too. I can't believe this is happening," was one of the responses. "If only people knew what havoc this will wreak on public lands. My daughter is with the [U.S. Army Corps of Engineers] right now and is thinking about an entirely different career now as all the agencies they partner with are being wiped out. I did NOT see this coming. Not the gutting of land management agencies, which have a huge number of conservative people working for them as it is. It's not going to pan out well."

Wrote another: "The added insult is that their justification was that 'I did not demonstrate fitness or qualification because my expertise, knowledge and skills did not meet their needs,' which is a blatant lie…I did not even have my first evaluation at this location, and my previous decade of work/evaluations for public lands agencies demonstrate the opposite. There is no semblance of legitimacy here."

Another who got fired underscored the related impacts tied to the seemingly indiscriminate firings.

"I started my job back in December and just got my termination notice. It was a dream come true to get to wear the NPS uniform and represent the American public’s interests," they wrote. "I guess the $15 million construction project I was hired to oversee will just manage itself now."

Representatives with the National Treasury Employees Union (NTU), which representatives hundreds of NPS employees, said the administration would be sued over the firings. 

"Our national union will file a lawsuit, will do its best to defend all of the probationary employees and say, 'When you do [a bulk] termination of people, it can't be for [poor job] performance," an NTU chapter leader told the Traveler on Friday. "It's purely political. It's without cause. So it should be paused. So maybe we will find a judge that says, 'Hold on a second here,' and make management, make the minions of Musk, have to prove where it was performance." 

New Mexico's congressional delegation echoed the union's position in a letter to President Trump.

"Concerns have already been raised about the legality of these terminations, noting that mass layoffs without individualized assessments violate existing federal workforce statutes. Federal law permits the termination of probationary employees based on performance or conduct," they wrote. "It does not allow for large-scale firings without individualized assessments or adherence to Reduction in Force procedures. Additionally, it explicitly prohibits dismissing probationary employees for partisan political reasons. Federal agencies must be staffed by qualified professionals, not political loyalists.”