Kenan Chen worked at Channel Islands National Park for nearly a decade as a marine biologist monitoring the health of the protected area’s underwater environment and collecting data that will help inform scientists and policy makers. Nate Vince apprenticed for the past four years at Yosemite National Park to become the lone locksmith responsible for keeping the federal lands safe and secure (which ranges from helping with jammed bathroom handles to making sure the countless doors and gates within the park can be locked and unlocked). His colleague Alex Wild spent the past six years serving as the only emergency medical technician at Yosemite, which is known for its often dangerous rock-climbing routes.
All had recently started new, permanent roles within the National Park Service and therefore were required to do a probationary year, during which they do not receive the same protections as other federal employees. And all shared, in widely circulated social media posts, that they were among the more than 1,000 NPS employees abruptly fired on February 14 (most of whom, if not all, were amid a one-year probation following a position change).
The layoffs, part of the Trump administration’s effort to downsize the federal workforce, amount to approximately 5 percent of the year-round NPS staff. Also terminated were 3,400 U.S. Forest Service staffers, on February 13. Three weeks earlier, job offers to an estimated 8,000 seasonal NPS hires were rescinded. These staffing decisions have raised concerns about the future maintenance and operations of the nation’s cherished and already short-staffed protected lands, especially going into the busy summer travel season.
“At risk here is the safe and functional operation of our national parks, the integrity of the visiting experience, the protection of these irreplaceable cultural and natural resources, and the stability of the local economies who depend on functioning parks,” John Garder, a senior director at the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), an independent, nonpartisan group that advocates for the National Park System, told Afar. “And that’s just the beginning.”
The mass firing is part of a broader initiative led by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to reduce federal spending by cutting staff across the federal government. According to the New York Times, firing employees with probationary status is part of the Trump administration’s plan to quickly dismiss as many as 200,000 federal workers.
However, advocacy groups and former NPS leadership argue that belt-tightening in the parks will only create problems—and ultimately drive up costs—for the country’s federal lands. According to the NPCA, which has been tracking the cuts, all 433 units managed by the NPS have been affected, though it’s too early to gauge how severe the impacts will be from one park to the next.
“The impacts are going to be quite variable from park to park, based on the types of positions removed,” Randy King, a retired Mount Rainier National Park superintendent, told Afar. “There are some key positions you can’t provide access to or operate the park without. It’s not efficient—if anything, it is extremely inefficient in terms of the randomness of the impact.”
Garder added that the eliminated roles weren’t targeted but were part of an “indiscriminate directive that slashes personnel randomly because of their status. That was park personnel that were desperately needed for an agency that’s already understaffed.”
Since 2010, the NPS has seen a 20 percent reduction in full-time staff due to budget cuts, despite a 16 percent increase in visitors, according to the NPCA (and that’s also with the addition of 38 NPS units, including the most recently added New River Gorge National Park). In 2023 alone, there were 325.5 million visits to U.S. national park sites.
Terminated NPS employees across the system were provided with similar notices, citing performance issues. Wild shared in a social media post that his letter read, “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.”
However, Matt Graves, a now-retired NPS employee who worked in 14 national park sites over his 32-year career, pointed out that many of those let go were longtime NPS workers who had just received managerial promotions, indicating that there hadn’t been a problem with their work. Losing that institutional knowledge and the continuity provided by permanent employees, he argues, will have far-reaching ripple effects.
“The mission of the NPS is to protect and preserve these places while providing visitors with excellent opportunities to experience these national treasures,” Graves said. “So both parts of the mission are going to be negatively impacted by the lack of employees.”
In the days since the collective termination, the Trump administration released a memo saying it would lift the hiring freeze to allow the NPS to hire up to 5,000 seasonal workers. Typically, NPS hires about 8,000 seasonal workers to supplement the permanent workforce of about 13,000. Graves said most of the staff that visitors interact with, from fee collectors and maintenance workers to educational programmers and law enforcement rangers, are temporary, seasonal employees.
Don Neubacher, a former superintendent at Yosemite National Park and current executive council member of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, said no guidance has been provided on what the reduced seasonal hiring will look like.
“The problem with that is it takes three months to onboard seasonal staff,” Neubacher said, adding those would-be employees would need to reapply and be rehired. “How do you get them on and ready by May when they’re needed? It may be too late. They didn’t think this through, and now they’re going to put parks in a catastrophic and impossible position.”
Graves added that the NPS may not find enough applicants, either because previous applicants found other jobs in the interim or decided that working for the federal government may not be the best or most stable career choice.
“Unfortunately, these are people that are relatively new to the NPS and were meant to be the next generation of workers and leaders for the agency,” said King.
How this could affect the national parks and gateway communities
Garder said parks with small staff numbers will feel the strain hardest. At Grand Teton National Park, he pointed out, 16 out of the 17 members of the park’s administrative staff have been let go. The administrative division is effectively no longer functional because it doesn’t have enough staff to hire, process, or train seasonal employees—not even rehire dismissed staff.
He added that Grand Teton and other parks where ranks have been thinned the most will likely see long lines to enter parks due to a lack of fee collectors, closed campsites (if there isn’t a ranger to maintain them), and reduced hours of visitor centers, which will affect access to maps, guided tours, and historical exhibits.
Neubacher said other likely outcomes are filthy bathrooms and overflowing trash cans, the latter of which can prove dangerous because if bears consider garbage a reliable food source, they can become habituated (meaning they lose their natural fear of people), threatening the lives of those bears and the safety of visitors.
Having few park rangers on duty, Graves noted, could increase risks to adventurers.
“When there’s no one there warning guests about wildlife or hot springs or ocean tides or whatever it might be, there’s going to be more people who will get hurt or killed in parks because they didn’t get any guidance,” Graves said.
Tania Lown-Hecht, vice president of communications and strategy at Outdoor Alliance, a recreation advocacy group, echoed that sentiment, saying that “fewer staff could slow search-and-rescue operations and other visitor safety efforts,” especially considering the reduction in wildfire firefighters, seasonal and permanent law enforcement officers, EMTs, and search-and-rescue personnel.
Without certain staff, the parks’ habitats and cultural resources could degrade. Wildlife specialists, for example, research the animal species within the park, some of which are threatened or endangered, and make decisions to ensure a healthy ecosystem for them and the larger park. Similarly, historic preservation specialists help to properly maintain historic buildings. Without them, the sites could fall into disrepair or be irreparably harmed by guests, inadvertently or purposefully.
During the 35-day partial government shutdown in 2018 and 2019, when the parks stayed open but staffing was greatly reduced, there were reports of vandalism, looting, and environmental destruction, such as the cutting down of Joshua trees in their namesake park. Garder called it “a bit of a Wild West environment, where visitors were going places they didn’t belong—where their safety was at risk and where the integrity of the resource was at risk.”
What travelers can do to help
King said if you plan on going to a national park unit in the coming months, try to be aware of what the park is dealing with, adding, “Are they curtailing service, and if so, what are they? Are they having difficulty accommodating visitation? If that’s the case, then avoid peak periods.”
Similarly, if a park is closed, don’t enter it (as many have done during shutdowns), advised Gerry James, deputy director of Sierra Club’s Outdoors for All, a program that works to protect parklands and expands access to nature for youth and veterans.
“Find another open park, like a national forest site or national wildlife refuge, so you’re not putting pressure on a vulnerable ecosystem,” James said. He added that if a park is open, consider bringing a trash bag to pick up litter; always practice “leave no trace” guidelines by leaving places as you found them or better, by packing out what you pack in and staying on designated paths to reduce erosion.
Additionally, employ good safety measures—especially when it comes to fire and trail safety. Make sure you research the protected areas you’re visiting and know what you’re getting yourself into, because there may not be anyone to help you if find yourself in trouble.
You may consider donating to the National Park Foundation—the parks’ charitable partner, which helps fund essential projects that may now face budget shortfalls—or volunteering. However, keep in mind that the NPS needs people to manage volunteer programs, so without sufficient staff, it can’t accommodate tons of volunteers because it doesn’t have the oversight capacity.
Finally, because gateway communities often rely on park tourism (in 2023, visitor spending in these small towns added $55.6 billion to the U.S. economy), try to support locally owned businesses, accommodations, restaurants, and tour operators near the parks to help mitigate economic losses.
While the long-term consequences for the United States’ national parks remain uncertain, Neubacher said he hopes the current challenges will be short-lived, adding, “People across the country really care about the parks and believe they’re America’s greatest treasures. And we’ve got to take good care of them.”
