Shane Kearney had been working in tech for most of his career. But after a battle with cancer and some restorative time in the great outdoors, Kearney, 39, found himself applying last September for seasonal jobs with the National Park Service.

He interviewed on December 16 for a fee technician role at Cape Hatteras National Seashore, which would involve doing camper check-ins and picking up trash and lost property along the North Carolina beach.

The gig came with health insurance and housing arranged by the park service, Kearney told SFGATE, so when he got offered the job on January 8, he immediately accepted.

During the onboarding process in mid-January, he drove across Atlanta to get fingerprinted and turned down a tech job that had been his backup plan, he said.

He heard nothing more from the park service until an email came through the week President Donald Trump was sworn in, from someone he had never spoken with.

“Please be advised that the National Park Service is unable to fill the Recreation Fee Technician, GS-0503-5 position at Cape Hatteras National Seashore in Buxton, North Carolina at this time,” states the email. “As such, your job offer has been rescinded at management request.”

Kearney was crestfallen. And he was not alone.

Minutes later, a Reddit post titled “Seasonal offer rescinded” appeared within the r/ParkRangers subreddit, along with a screenshot of an email nearly identical to the one Kearney received, regarding a custodian worker position in Yosemite National Park.

“Should the bureau be able to fill the position again, another announcement will be posted in due course,” both emails conclude, before encouraging federal employees to view additional opportunities at usajobs.gov.

That Reddit user declined to be interviewed for this story, but comments on the post surfaced nearly a dozen other Reddit users reporting having their job offers rescinded. All say they received emails the same day.

One person wrote that their job was supposed to start next month and they were feeling “so panicked and confused.” Another who identified themself as a National Park Service supervisor in charge of summer hires wrote, “This has been such a strange experience. I feel terrible for everyone that is getting an offer rescinded.”

SFGATE emailed spokespeople at several national parks to find out exactly how many job offers have been rescinded and whether the rescinded offers are connected to newly inaugurated President Donald Trump’s recent federal hiring freeze.

Some of those emails went unreturned, but officials from Death Valley National Park, Redwood National and State Parks, and Yellowstone National Park all directed SFGATE to an email address for the park service’s national communications office. SFGATE emailed that office and received no response.

It certainly seems possible that these rescinded offers are tied to Trump’s executive order. “As part of this freeze, no Federal civilian position that is vacant at noon on January 20, 2025, may be filled, and no new position may be created except as otherwise provided for in this memorandum or other applicable law,” a January 20 White House memorandum states.

In a summary of presidential actions issued on the day of his inauguration, White House officials wrote that the president will “usher a golden age for America by reforming and improving the government bureaucracy to work for the American people. He will freeze bureaucrat hiring except in essential areas to end the onslaught of useless and overpaid DEI activists buried into the federal workforce.”

To learn more about the hiring freeze’s impact on seasonal employees of the national parks, SFGATE contacted several of the users who posted on Reddit. Two agreed to be interviewed after being granted anonymity in accordance with Hearst’s ethics policy, citing a fear of jeopardizing future employment opportunities with the park service.

For a ranger who was about to start work in his third season at Canyonlands National Park in Utah, the rescinded offer “felt like being sucker-punched.”

“We were told that we were safe from this, that our jobs still existed and we would continue to be hired,” he wrote in a direct message on Reddit. “I plan my year around NPS seasons, including renting apartments, putting in notices at my off-season jobs, and making hotel arrangements for travel. I don’t know where I’m going at this point, or even where I’m going to live if these jobs are truly rescinded and not just delayed.”

The ranger added that it seemed to him that hiring managers and supervisors within the system were blindsided, too. They “are probably just as lost as we are,” he said.

When a newly hired ranger at Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks learned that he no longer had a summer job, he was “absolutely gutted and immediately burst into tears,” he told SFGATE.

“I know it sounds dramatic, but it’s really frustrating to dedicate your life to something for so long, make many sacrifices like working jobs with horrible pay and borderline dangerous living conditions just to have everything wiped away with the stroke of a pen by someone who is hundreds of miles away,” he continued, referring to the idea that Trump’s executive order eliminated his position.

The hardest part, he said, is the uncertainty. “I don’t know if I should hold off and wait to hear from the NPS, or if I should begin applying to other positions.”

For Kearney, the tech worker who longed to change careers and work outdoors, waiting around to see if the park service can still offer him a job is not an option.

“I’m now a cancer survivor without health insurance,” he said.