Wyoming
‘I lost my job, my housing and health insurance all in one day’: Federal workers say cuts go deep
Couch Surfing
Out on the snowy prairie near Pinedale, Samantha Marks gave a Zoom tour of the log barn she built herself last summer. There’s a sleeping loft, a wood stove and big views of the Wind River Range.
“My wonderful boyfriend is helping me move all of my stuff into the barn because, with the federal employee thing, I was living in federal housing. So don’t have that much longer,” Marks said with a laugh.
Her boyfriend carted stuff in on his mountain bike because her driveway isn’t plowed. Outside the wide double barn doors, he piled up camping gear and pots and pans.
Marks got laid off as a probationary physical science technician from the Bridger-Teton National Forest. Now, she only has a few days left to get moved out of employee housing. Marks said there’s no way she can find an apartment in Pinedale – they go too fast. Plus, she said they cost around $2,000 a month. But she can’t move into this barn either. It isn’t heated or insulated.
“I’ll just be couch surfing until we can get the camper here.”
Her plan is that when the snow melts, she’ll pull a friend’s camper out here and live in that until she can build a house.
Marks thought she was being smart when she bought this land. She waited until the Forest Service offered her a permanent position. It was her dream job.
“On paper, I did everything right,” Marks said. “I don’t know if I would have made the same choice. I probably would have waited another year or two to pick this place. But now I’m also kind of glad that I did because I need some sort of stability in my life.”
Marks has decided to stay in Pinedale since she’s built a community here. This summer, though, she’ll have to hustle to find work and build a house.
“I’m pretty overwhelmed, honestly,” Marks said. “I lost my job, my housing and health insurance all in one day.”
Wyoming’s Affordable Housing Problem
These federal layoffs are hitting Wyoming in the middle of an affordable housing crisis. The state will be short as many as 38,000 homes by the end of this decade. And that much competition means that about 50,000 Wyomingites barely make enough to afford their rent or mortgage, according to a 2024 study by the Wyoming Community Development Authority.
“This is a hard statistic to even fathom, but it’s real,” said Chris Volzke, the organization’s deputy executive director. “The median household income in Wyoming, which is a little over $70,000 a year, cannot afford the median priced house in every county in the state without being cost burdened.”
Cost burdened is when you have to pay more than a third of your income for your home. Volzke said their study shows that more Wyomingites are packing themselves into shared housing or even becoming unhoused.
“ The majority of homeless people in Wyoming are Wyomingites,” Volzke said. “It’s primarily our neighbors and people in our community that had a series of events that forced them out of their rental into a car, into the street, whatever the scenario is.”
One of those scenarios could be getting fired from a federal agency.
Full-time RVing
Alan Willes and Teri Gilfilen are both in their 70s and live full-time in their RV. They talked on Zoom from their RV couch, their cat Petra curled up next to them.
“ We’re at a RV resort in Camp Verde,” Willes said.
Each winter, they lead tours and man a visitor center at Palatki Heritage Site outside Sedona, Arizona. They get paid a stipend of $20 dollars a day. But because of the federal funding freeze, they haven’t gotten paid yet and the check is now two months late.
“If we could get [our stipend] without us costing an arm and a leg,” Willes said. They know hiring an attorney and fighting for the money in court is outside their budget. “It’d probably cost us $20,000 to go get $3,000. No, we can’t do that. They got us over a barrel.”
Right now, they’re paying $1,500 dollars a month for a lot in an RV park.
“Our next plan is waiting for the weather to break and go back up to Jackson, Wyoming, if we don’t freeze ourselves. And wait ‘til May, [which] is when the float trip season starts for me,” Willes said.
Every summer, Willes works as a shuttle driver for a rafting company. He’s worried the recent and expected future firings of National Park Service employees will hurt business.
“We’re very nervous about that,” he said. “If the park service closes down, I don’t know if we’d be closed down. I would think so.”
That would put their housing at risk, since the company lets them park in a pasture for free.
“Plan A, B, C, D. With today’s accelerations that are happening, I don’t think one plan cuts it,” said Gilfilen.
One of those plans is getting off the road and settling down in Wyoming.
“ Never in my life would I have thought I would be living in an RV in [my] 70s,” said Gilfilen. “Yeah, it just totally surprises me. But we do have an adventurous life.”
Wyoming Public Radio reached out to Coconino and Bridger-Teton national forests but both declined to comment. However, Coconino National Forest did send Willes and Gilfilen an email the same day Wyoming Public Radio reached out for comment. It said they could expect their money within the week. As of March 7, no check has arrived.
Summer is Wyoming’s season for turning over rocks, poking into holes and walking with a perpetual hunch looking for snakes.
Herpalogists, the zoologists who study amphibians and reptiles, are out scouring the landscape and herping, the term used when they are actively flipping rocks and searching stream beds to find Wyoming’s elusive snakes in their native habitats.
Sometimes those finds can be unexpected. The fork-tongued reptiles appear on a trail when least expected.
Recently, a foot-long “nightcrawler” suddenly moved like a snake and slithered into the rocks, its tail disappearing into the shadows. Rather than a shapeshifter, this was an elusive rubber boa, Wyoming’s tiny constrictor snake that can look like a giant worm at first glance.
These rarely seen creatures are more common in the Cowboy State than most people realize.
“I personally don’t feel that any of our snakes in Wyoming are terribly rare,” said Matt Rasmussen, vice president of the Wyoming Herpetological Society. “However, a lot of them are very rarely encountered because they spend most of their lives either underground or under rocks.”
Rasmussen said most of the secretive snakes in Wyoming only come out at night or when conditions are right — typically warmer, humid times. The rubber boa, for instance, showed up on a day when it had rained and then the temperatures spiked hot.
Rasmussen helped found the new Herpetological Society two years ago to teach others to herp. He said it’s possible to learn more about our state by flipping rocks and seeing what is beneath.
“That’s the great thing with Wyoming,” Rasmussen said. “There is so little known about the herpetofauna — the frogs, lizards, snakes, turtles, etcetera — that live here, and so little known about their distribution.”
He said Wyoming is known for “large charismatic megafauna” such as bison, elk, moose and deer rather than the harder to find animals. As a result, no widespread surveying has been done on smaller non-game species. Wyoming Game and Fish has even asked for community members to help by reporting rarely seen reptiles and amphibians.
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The Great Basin gopher snake is a non-venomous snake found primarily in the western United States and parts of southwestern Canada. You can find these snakes in a wide range of habitats; grasslands, woodlands, and deserts. -
The plains hognose snake can be mistaken for a rattlesnake but is harmless to humans. -
The Eastern yellow-bellied racer is incredibly fast, alert, and primarily hunts during the day using their sharp eyesight. Harmless to humans but feisty and will bite and musky-spray if cornered or handled. -
The smooth green snake is completely non-venomous, quite secretive and rarely seen. The Wyoming Natural Diversity Database said they are mostly found in localized pockets within southeast and south-central Wyoming and the Black Hills area. Their habitat are moist meadows, marshes, stream edges, open woods since they can camouflage in lush vegetation. This snake feeds almost exclusively on insects and spiders such as crickets, grasshoppers and caterpillars.
Elusive, Not Rare
While most people think of the more common bullsnake or venomous rattlesnake when discussing reptiles, Rasmussen said Wyoming is home to many harmless snakes.
According to Rasmussen, a few snakes, such as the colorful pale milk snake and rubber boa, could be considered rare in Wyoming. However, he believes they are just harder to find and most people are not aware of them unless they stumble across them.
“There’s the plains black-headed snake, which we really don’t know much about their distribution in Wyoming,” Rasmussen said. “They’re just not studied and have a limited habitat.”
This tan snake with a black head is small and feeds primarily on centipedes and ant eggs. Rasmussen cautions that when found, rather than kill the strange looking snakes that are harmless, report finding them to Wyoming Game and Fish and leave them in their habitat.
In this way, Rasmussen said, herping can be fun. He encourages people to get into the action.
“There are some other really small fossorial snakes like smooth green snakes, which live along creeks in the mountains and eat caterpillars and spiders,” Rasmussen said. “Then there’s the Black Hills red-bellied snake, which is a very small snake that eats slugs, worms and snails primarily.”
People are often surprised that Wyoming is home to such a large variety of snakes. He especially likes to show off a milk snake, which is harmless and eats lizards and even baby rattlesnakes.
“It is a beautiful, almost tropical-looking animal that lives right here,” Rasmussen said. “They are just rarely encountered.”
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The northern rubber boa is found in the northwest corner of state such as Star Valley and east into the Bighorn Mountains. They are a small, docile, non-venomous constrictors that are rarely seen since they are excellent burrowers and climbers. The Wyoming Game and Fish consider them vulnerable/secretive and track sightings to help build their statewide database. -
The pale milk snake is not a venomous coral snake and is found in the Bighorn Basin, eastern plans and southeastern corner of Wyoming. They are rare to see because they spend their life hiding under rocks, within rocky outcrops, badland scarps, ponderosa pines, and shortgrass prairies according to the University of Wyoming. Since they are so secretive, spotting one in the wild is a rare treat and Wyoming Game and Fish is asking the public to report any sightings for their database. -
The plains black-headed snake is completely harmless because it’s mouth is too small to pierce human skin and its mild venom is for small invertebrates. Due to its secretive nature, it is rare to see one but they are known to be in southeastern Wyoming in the Platte and Carbon Counties. They are very small, secretive, burrowing snakes that spend almost all of their lives underground or hidden beneath rocks and logs, typically only surfacing at night. -
The bull snake or gopher snake is completely non-venomous but does not want you to know that. When threatened, they put on a dramatic show according to the National Park Service. The bullsnake will puff up their bodies, hiss loudly, flatten their head into a triangle and vibrate their tails in dry bush to mimic a rattlesnake. (Matt Rasmussen)
A New Snake & Frog Society
Rasmussen said the new society is trying to educate the community about these fascinating creatures in the Cowboy State that don’t get much attention, such as the skink, a short-legged lizard.
“We’re a group of herpetological enthusiasts who would like to spread the word, educate and do outreach about these animals,” he said.
This outreach includes presentations with live animals, field trips and a conference in November. Wyoming’s reptiles and amphibians remain a mystery, Rasmussen encourages reporting sightings on the app iNaturalist.
“Even if you don’t know what it is, post a picture because there are tens of thousands of experts who will identify that animal,” Rasmussen said. “That’s really important, especially for our herpetofauna in the state.”
He also pointed out that some Wyoming snakes are on the protected list, including the midget faded rattlesnake. They made the list, according to Rasmussen, because people were capturing them and they became popular in among owners who like to keep small venomous snakes as pets.
Rasmussen said awareness is the best protection for Wyoming’s elusive reptiles and he is excited to prove to residents that we don’t have rare snakes, only secretive ones.
Jackie Dorothy can be reached at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com.
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