Closed visitor centers, more trash and longer lines: Those are just some of the problems arising felt at United States national parks in the wake of the Trump administration’s firing of thousands of National Parks and Forest Service personnel.
On Feb. 14, 1,000 National Parks Service employees and 3,400 U.S. Forest Service workers learned that they were being fired as part of President Trump's effort to shrink the federal workforce.
Here’s a look at how those job cuts are affecting the nation’s national parks.
Specific impacts
With fewer workers on the job to handle the needs of visitors, national parks across the country have scrambled to adapt. Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Ariz., closed two visitors centers on Mondays. California's Yosemite National Park has stopped taking reservations for summer camping spots and Effigy Mounds National Monument in Harpers Ferry, Iowa, will shutter its visitors center two days a week, USA Today reported.
Since the layoffs, long lines have greeted visitors at Grand Canyon National Park, and visitors to Pennsylvania's Gettysburg National Military Park received notifications that their reservations had been canceled indefinitely, the Washington Post reported. In Washington state, trails have been closed and tours have been canceled due to staffing shortages.
"If a visitor is involved in an automobile accident in Badlands National Park in South Dakota, or has their car broken into at a trailhead in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, there will be a delay in the response by a ranger to investigate — or perhaps no response at all. If a visitor suffers a medical emergency while hiking in Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, ranger response could be delayed," Rick Mossman, president of the Association of National Park Rangers, said in a press release.
Forest Service layoffs mean that measures to help lower wildfire risks in western states will now be stalled.
"Every single one of us did the work of three people, and we were fired like that," Benjamin Sears, a laid-off Forest Service employee in New Mexico, told KOAT News, adding, "If there's a fire this summer, I don't know what's going to happen."
Distress signal
On Saturday, an American flag was hung upside-down from the summit of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park to protest the layoffs of parks personnel.
Hanging a flag in that way signifies "dire distress," according to the U.S. flag code. Gavin Carpenter, a laid-off maintenance worker at Yosemite, told the San Francisco Chronicle that he supplied and helped hang the flag on Saturday.
“We’re bringing attention to what’s happening to the parks, which are every American’s properties,” Carpenter said. “It’s super important we take care of them, and we’re losing people here, and it’s not sustainable if we want to keep the parks open.”
Yosemite was the sixth most-visited national park in the country in 2023, CNN reported, with 3.89 million guests.
"I spend a lot of time squeegeeing the toilets, the bathroom floors out. So after one day of me not being there, it's already pretty visually disgusting," Olek Chmura, a former custodial worker at Yosemite, told NBC News.
Why cut the staff at national parks?
An executive order issued by Trump on Feb. 11 stated that "Agency Heads shall promptly undertake preparations to initiate large-scale reductions in force." Billionaire Elon Musk, a senior adviser to Trump, has overseen the effort to cull the federal workforce, including the eliminated positions with the National Parks Service and the Forest Service.
The firings come as the staffing at the National Parks Service had already fallen by 13% since 2010, and the number of visitors has risen dramatically from pandemic-era lows.
A laid-off park ranger at California's Sequoia National Park, Josh Barnes, 25, shared his story of being fired in an Instagram post.
“Yesterday, myself and thirteen of my wonderful, hardworking colleagues were fired from our jobs with the National Park Service, as part of a mass firing of federal public servants, courtesy of some VERY specific, famous billionaires,” Barnes wrote. “I cannot begin to describe the anguish I feel now, and the anguish I felt watching my colleagues pack up their things less than two hours after being laid off. The tears, the hugs, the apologies. Watching people who, like myself, love their job dearly, and are forced to walk away from it, quite literally sobbing.”
While the layoffs have had an immediate impact on workers who have lost their jobs and on the parks where they were employed, another test will come as spring arrives and more visitors head to the nation’s beloved national parks.
"We could be putting several park units in very bad, sticky situations where they can't manage visitation," Kristen Brengel, senior vice president of government affairs for the National Parks Conservation Association, told USA Today.
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