STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

Honking reverberated across Main Street Hailey Wednesday evening as commuters making the drive home showed their support for those protesting the firing of thousands of civil workers, including Forest Service workers who call the Wood River Valley and Stanley area home.

About 150 men and women stood on the sidewalks lining Main Street waving signs that said, “I Serve the Public—Not Elon Musk,” “A Billionaire Bought Trump Cheap,” “Protect Our Parks—Not Oligarchs” and “Dump Trump—Not our Work Force.”

People came out of shops to watch the rally, some taking pictures with their cell phones.

“I have a lot of friends and neighbors involved with the Forest Service and other agencies who are being fired arbitrarily, and it’s not right,” said Lisa Behr, who carried signs that said “On Nation Under Duress” and “The Problem is at the Top—Not in the Trenches.”

“Forty of the Sawtooth National Forest employees up north have been fired from doing work they already didn’t have enough workers to do. They feel like they’re being blamed, like the country’s turning on them, and they don’t know how they’re going to continue to live here. I grew up here so I know how important the Forest Service is. I want to be out hiking and fishing this summer and I don’t know what’s going to happen to the land I love.”

Carol Cole, a longtime Forest Service employee, kicked off the Save Our Civil Servants rally by singing  Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is your Land,” the words “Sawtooth Forest” swapped for “redwood forest.”

The song brought tears to the eyes of some as they contemplated how they were being steamrolled without anyone to block the chaos like the man blocking the tank in Tiananmen Square.

Audra Serrian, who works for the Forest Service, told the crowd that she’d heard Idaho’s Congressmen were getting 6,000 calls a day from angry constituents: “Keep up that momentum. You’re doing a huge part showing up to save our democracy and our public lands.”

Coni Foster held a sign that feature DOGE, the initials standing for “Department of Grift and Exploitation.”

“Fire DOGE, Keep Civil Servants,” she said.

Poo Wright Pulliam held a sign that asked “Worried about this Year’s Fire Season? You should be! Forest employees who were illegally fired supported firefighting efforts last summer in Stanley.”

Pam Feld carried an upside-down American flag, inspired by the sign of distress workers at Yosemite National Park had hung on El Capitan a week earlier.

“I’m just incensed, angry,” she said. “This is something I can do, along with writing and phoning our Idaho representatives. We’re losing our country, our democracy, and we will lose it unless we fight.”

A federal judge ordered the Trump administration on Thursday to retract orders that fired some 200,000 federal workers, saying the orders were illegal. The order came even as hundreds of NOAA and National Weather Service employees—or 10 percent of weather forecasters--were laid off in the latest round of workforce cuts. And Social Security Administration announced that significant workforce reductions would be coming, potentially putting Social Security benefits for 50 million Americans at risk.

Idahoans have been particularly distressed by the layoffs of Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and national monument employees in a state where about two-thirds of the land is public.

The Forest Service laid off 3,400 workers nationwide—employees who clear trails, clean campgrounds and outhouses, offer forest fire mitigation and avalanche prevention.

Frank Rowland a retired Sawtooth National Forest manager noted that the Sawtooth National Recreation Are’s budget has been reduced for years—ever since the 1980s.

“The last several years we’ve had one law enforcement officer for the entire 756,000-acre SNRA,” he said. “The people who educated people about being responsible stewards of the forest are all gone. And there’s no one left to answer phones and questions.”

Jay Doerr used to work as trail manager for the SNRA: “I’m ticked off. There’s one person left to cover 750 miles of trail for the SNRA, three designated wildernesses and the backcountry. And we don’t know what’s going to happen with grants with our partner organizations. This is being done by people who absolutely don’t know the ramifications. If roads wash out, we may have to just close them.”

Cole said it’s all so crazy: “There are better ways to identify and address problems with federal policies and agencies. I don’t think this effort is meant to improve anything--just to create chaos and break things with no understanding of or concern for the consequences for US citizens, federal agencies and services, or our international partners and allies.”