With 1,000 full-time employees out, and the fate of thousands more seasonal workers unclear, tours are being canceled and some wonder who will empty the trash.
The abrupt dismissal of at least 1,000 permanent National Park Service employees on Feb. 14 has brought a torrent of “I was fired from the N.P.S.” posts cascading down social media feeds like the luminous Yosemite firefall.
At least 3,000 additional people were fired from the U.S. Forest Service, which often works in concert with the parks. And thousands more seasonal workers were questioning if they would have jobs, despite a memo from the U.S. Department of the Interior, which oversees national parks, approving 7,700 temporary positions, slightly more than usual. The park service usually operates with about 20,000 total employees, including approximately 7,000 seasonal workers.
The turmoil comes just as visitors are planning their spring break and summer travel to national parks. With more than 325 million annual visitors, the parks have been struggling to meet the demand: The total number of full-time National Park Service employees dropped 15 percent from 2011 to 2022, according to figures the agency provided to Congress in 2023. Many worry that the new cuts will harm the visitor experience across some 85 million acres at 433 sites.
“If you’ve planned your bucket list trip to a national park, you may have to take into consideration that you won’t have the full experience and reschedule for next year in the hopes it gets better,” said Kristen Brengel, senior vice president for government affairs at the National Parks Conservation Association, a nonpartisan organization.
Parks around the country were already feeling the effects. When Spencer Glenn, 39, from Seattle, called the Carlsbad Caverns visitor center this week to inquire why the park’s ranger-led cave tours had been canceled, he said, the ranger told him “that because of the current federal guidelines, the national park had to fire half of its staff.”
At the Grand Canyon, a depleted staff of fee collectors resulted in lost revenue for the park over the weekend, and because of a lack of staffing at Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument in Colorado, the park announced it would be closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.