For Madelyn de Manincor, getting the job at Fort McHenry in Baltimore — out of all the national parks she applied to — felt like fate.

She grew up in Ellicott City, and remembered school field trips to the iconic landmark on the banks of the Patapsco.

But that was 10 months ago. So de Manincor was still in her yearlong probationary period with the National Park Service when President Donald Trump took office, and began taking aggressive steps to slash the federal bureaucracy.

On Valentine’s Day, the heartbreaking news came by surprise in an email from agency higher-ups, said de Manincor, a visual information specialist who worked on signage and social media for the park.

“Everything just came to a dead stop,” she said. “I was writing up a social media post at the time, and I just kind of froze. And I immediately called my supervisor, and I was like, ‘Is this real?’”

De Manincor said she is one of six employees terminated from the fort, many of whom also completed work for the Hampton National Historic Site in Towson and the sprawling Star-Spangled Banner National Historic Trail, de Manincor said.

Advocacy groups say that the Feb. 14 terminations, which hit about 1,000 people in the park service, impacted national park sites across Maryland, from Assateague Island National Seashore to the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, leaving some already thinly staffed parks to grapple with a sudden loss of park rangers, maintenance workers, fee collectors and more.

“While certainly it might not be the same numbers of positions that you see at big national parks out West, it hurts more because they just don’t have that many staff to begin with,” said Ed Stierli, Mid-Atlantic senior regional director for the National Parks Conservation Association.

The cuts didn’t simply impact employees new to the National Park Service. Employees who receive a promotion or switch parks are placed back onto probationary status, meaning they were terminated as well, Stierli said.

In addition to rangers and custodians, fired employees included scientists working to protect Assateague and historic sites associated with Harriet Tubman from sea level rise, a biological science technician working to help clear trails at Catocin Mountain Park in Western Maryland, and hosts of others, according to the NPCA.

The employees received termination letters stating that they were being fired for poor performance, Stierli said, but that reason does not seem accurate.

“Many of these staff had exactly the opposite. They had outstanding performance reviews,” Stierli said.

The National Park Service did not respond to requests for comment about the quantity of terminations in Maryland or the reasons.

Last week, NPS staffers learned of another round of cuts, Stierli said: NPS employees whose positions were funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, which included hundreds of millions for National Park jobs.

That funding, which was appropriated by Congress but is being withheld by the Trump administration, was a “lifeline” for many parks.

Now, Maryland parks — along with many across the nation — are trying to figure out how they can make do with the employees who remain, with busy spring and summer seasons fast approaching. All the while, they worry that more cuts could be in store.

“You might start to see big updates to what days that parks are even able to open,” Stierli said.

Taylor Swanson, Assateague Coastkeeper for the nonprofit Assateague Coastal Trust, said he worries that the terminations will worsen the visitor experience on the island, giving it a negative perception and potentially lessening tourism.

“Little things are going to happen to the quality of life and the quality of the experience that people have on that island — and it’s going to leave an impression on people,” Swanson said.

Maybe employees won’t be able to collect trash as frequently, or empty outdoor toilets, Stierli said. Fewer visitors might be able to interact with rangers, and educational events could grind to a halt.

All of it could impact the island’s visitors, which reached a record 2.6 million people in 2021, placing it 33rd among all national park units, beating Mount Rushmore and Shenandoah National Park.

Swanson said he also fears the impact of lost research activities on Assateague, which is heavily threatened by erosion. Swanson said he knows that scientists on the island study sea level rise, migratory species and invasive species, among other subjects.

“The loss of those eyes, and the generation of data, it’s going to be a big loss,” Swanson said.

At Assateague and throughout the National Park Service, the hiring of summertime lifeguards and other seasonal positions was also placed on pause amid the chaos, and some job offers had to be rescinded, Stierli said.

Recently, the Department of the Interior has said that seasonal hiring can move forward, but many parks have yet to receive a clear green light for their positions, raising concerns that they will be able to hire and adequately train the new employees in time for Memorial Day, Stierli said. All the while, hiring for permanent positions is also frozen, Stierli said.

Several employees were also terminated at the C&O Canal National Historic Site, said Lauren Riviello, president and CEO of the nonprofit C&O Canal Trust.

The park includes a 184.5-mile towpath that stretches from Georgetown in Washington, D.C. to Cumberland, Maryland with a number of historic homes, buildings and canal structures along the way.

“Its a really well used, very well-loved park in this region, and it covers a large area, so there are definitely challenges to ensuring that its resources are cared for,” Riviello said.

With this month’s news, those challenges likely increased. Riviello said her group is working with NPS to blunt the impact of the employee cuts on the popular park, which hosted 5 million visitors in 2021, who spent an estimated $104 million in the surrounding area.

With more visitors than Yellowstone and Yosemite, the park ranks 16th in the nation for visitors, according to the Trust’s website.

At Fort McHenry, de Manincor was preparing for the site’s 100th anniversary as a national park, which occurs this year. She was also beginning to plan for the 250th anniversary of the nation, on July 4, 2026, which was likely to bring events to the fort, known as the site that inspired Francis Scott Key to pen “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Now, she worries that some of those events may have to be toned down, or canceled altogether, given the limited staff.

The fort was already understaffed, she said, making some tasks difficult. In particular, surveying the park each evening before it closed at 5 p.m. was a challenge.

“Because we were so short-handed, everybody had to pitch in. We had managers down locking gates,” de Manincor said. “If it’s not part of your job description, that’s like an hour that you have to cut your day early, that you could be finishing up something else.”

Shauntee Daniels, executive director of the Baltimore National Heritage Area, said she fears for programs that bring large numbers of schoolchildren to the fort in the spring and summer, which is the “linchpin” of the heritage area.

With fewer staff members, the park’s ability to host its typical number of large groups may be constrained, she said.

Daniels said that an effort connecting the fort to the Star-Spangled Banner Flag House on Pratt Street is also on hold amid the cuts.

The goal of the program was to send Fort McHenry rangers to the flag house, she said, and inform more students and visitors about the history: that Baltimore resident Mary Pickersgill, alongside her family and enslaved persons (not Betsy Ross) sewed the flag that flew above the fort during the bombardment that inspired Key’s famous poem.

“Any time that we have a cut in resources or a cut in personnel at the fort, it makes it difficult for them to tell that story,” she said. “All that they can do is open the fort and let people walk through and read the signs independently.”

De Manincor said she worries about the uncertain future at the fort. But still, she struggles with the uncertainty for her own future.

“A lot of people have said: ‘Now you can pursue your dream job,'” de Manincor said. “Well, I had my dream job.”

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