While the Trump administration is continuing its campaign to reduce the federal workforce, more than 700 employees of the National Park Service took the acquisitions, according to an internal email sent to supervisors at the end of last week.
This brings at least 1,700 the number of permanent staff all year round that the service – undoubtedly the most loved federal agency in America – lost this month. The number is equivalent to around 9% of the agency's workforce.
In addition, the remaining members of the staff have been prohibited from traveling for work – unless it is to support national security or the application of immigration – and some staff members have found that the credit cards they use to buy gas for service vehicles and basic supplies such as hygienic paper for the toilets have been deactivated, according to interviews with the employees of the Parc service and Times. We do not know how long these measures will be in place.
If the cuts are not restored, “it will simply not be the same park service,” said Kristen Brengel, vice-president of government affairs for the non-profit organization National Parks Conservation Assn. “All these places are so beautiful and have been so well protected for so long; Continue to hide the staff is illogical. “
The officials of the National Park Service did not respond to a request for comments.
A service note sent last week to the supervisors of the Rita J. Moss Park Services, Associate Director of the Agency for Empticals and Inclusion, said: “We have more than 700 through the service” which “participate in the delayed resignation program”.
This is the name given by the so-called Elon Musk government's effectiveness department for the buyout program, which allows federal employees to resign now, but to continue to receive their wages and benefits until September. These programs generally attract older employees from retirement.
At the other end of the spectrum, around 1,000 employees of the probationary park service – generally people in their first two years of service who have not yet had employment protections offered to more experienced workers – were dismissed on February 14, as well as tens of thousands of other federal probations in a multi -aging purge.
Permanent staff who are dismissed or take the acquisition include people who receive fees at the entrances to the park, maintenance agents who clean the facilities of the park and the rangers who patrol in the hinterland and the rescue lost and injured.
Adding operational chaos for park service supervisors, Trump administration in January informed of the thousands of seasonal workers The staff WHO 433 national parks and historic sites of America during the peak seasons that their job offers for the 2025 season had been “canceled”. This decision triggered panic in the ranks of park employees and threw the hundreds of millions of people who visit the parks every year.
Faced with a public outcry – and serious warnings that celebrated national parks such as Yosemite and the Grand Canyon could be too short to operate in complete safety – the Trump administration's inversion course last week. He remote from the plan To eliminate seasonal employees and even increase the number of temporary workers, parks will be allowed to hire, from around 6,300 to 7,700.
The changing goal posts left the heads of supervisors.
“It's so crazy, because they don’t give us any warning and closed things at random with 12 hours,” said a park service supervisor that asked not to be appointed for fear of reprisals. “We would never do that to the public.”
The disarray occurs in the heels of almost 15 years without significant increase in financing the operating budget of the National Park Service, said Brengel. “This means that many employees are already doing more work and has been doing it for years,” she said.
Despite the pressure on the remaining employees to “do more with less”, because the managers of moribund companies like to say so much that the parks themselves have never been so popular.
More than 325 million people visited American national parks in 2023. It was considerably more than double the number of people (136 million) who attended professional football, baseball, basketball and hockey matches.
