Following a strong public outcry on the job cuts at the National Park Service – and an implacable media campaign of outdoor enthusiasts across the country – it seems that the Trump administration has reconsidered.
A plan to eliminate thousands of seasonal workers from the beloved Federal Agency seems to have been reversed.
Last month, future seasonal employees – people who receive the entrance fees, clean the trails and toilets and help save injured hikers – E-mail received Saying that their job offers for the 2025 season had been canceled.
This week, a service note sent from the Interior Department to Park Service managers said that the agency could hire 7,700 seasonal employees this year, against around 6,300 who have been hired in recent years.
If it is fully implemented, it would be a notable exception to the job frost on the level of the government imposed when the Trump administration has repressed the federal bureaucracy, threatening to eliminate entire agencies, offering “delayed resignation” to almost all federal workers and dismiss tens of thousands of career employees.
The stay of the parks is “definitely a victory,” said Kristen Brengel, main vice-president of government affairs for the non-profit organization Conservation of national parks., which obtained a copy of the note which was shared with the Times.
And it is a testimony of “defenders, park guards and all the others who shouted from the mountain summit that we need these positions to be restored,” said Brengel.
The memo only approached temporary seasonal employees. He did not say anything about the approximately 1,000 members of the permanent workforce of the National Park Service which was dismissed on Friday. They were included in the multi-agencies of the administration of tens of thousands of probationary federal employees, mainly people in the first two years of their career who have fewer employment protections than more experienced employees. Probation employees represent around 5% of full -time staff at Park Service.
“We have to continue to push until we are resting all the positions for the Park service and obtain an exemption from the Park service in general,” said Brengel.
Park service officials did not respond to a request for comments.
After the layoffs on Friday, which some nicknamed the “Valentine's Day massacre”, parks and outdoor enthusiasts took on social networks, called their Congress representatives and who were buttoned who would listen to in a coordinated campaign to restore jobs in what is undoubtedly the most popular agency of the federal government.
The American national parks – including Yosemite, Joshua Tree and Le Grand Canyon – attracted more than 320 million visitors in 2023, and were the establishments of countless family holidays for generations of Americans.
After being dismissed on February 14, Yosemite’s maintenance worker Olek Chmura continued Instagram to ask him if he and her modestly paid colleagues were really an example of the kind of expenditure Trump and his named efficiency expert, Elon Musk, say they are trying to eliminate.
“I earn just over $ 40,000 a year; Scrape the toilet with a sealant knife almost every day, ”wrote Chmura. “In one way or another, I am the target.”
Like so many other social media cries of heart, Chmura thought that hers would be a boost of a few sympathetic friends, then would get lost in the vast sea of anxiety online.
He was wrong.
At the beginning of this week, he had become a child of the unexpected poster and the de facto spokesperson for the indignation felt by millions of people, on both sides of the aisle, which cherishes the American parks.
He suddenly juggled with requests from an interview with all the media organizations he had ever heard of, and some that he probably did not have. Fox, NBC, local newspapers, even Skynews in Great Britain. A Photogenic Patch by Yosemite Valley, with the rocky face of El Capitan in the background, had become his personal television studio.
Reached Wednesday afternoon, he said he had already done several interviews that day. “I am unemployed,” he joked, “and it is, as, the busiest day of my life.”
Originally from Cleveland, Chmura, 28, caught the scam bug and made a pilgrimage to classic rocks in the United States, saving the best for the end: Yosemite.
“This is where I want to live, you know. This is where I want to age, and it's a bit like the place that I will spend the rest of my life,” said Chmura.
Like so many “Dirt Bag” climbers self-written in Yosemite, he spent a few years doing odd jobs to reach both ends before being hired by the park service. This meant scraping the toilet, picking up used layers and “raclette-insurer” from the bathroom floors, he said. But it was still roughly the Holy Grail of jobs for a passionate climber.
“It was, literally, a dream come true,” said Chmura.
Thus, when the Trump administration arrived with its oblique bar crusade against the federal workforce, it was amazed and the heart broken to be carried away.
“I really don't understand why they attack the Americans of the working class who have never taken these jobs to become rich,” he said. “It's just extremely confusing. Why? “
Conservative friends of Ohio, who saw him on Instagram and TV, stretched out and said: “This is not what I voted for, it is … Force,” said Chmura.
Because he was an employee full of probation, Chmura's work is not among those restored. But he hopes that public pressure and elected officials could also turn the trend in his favor.
Meanwhile, for parks supervisors, uncertainty continues. Two who asked for anonymity because they fear that reprisals have declared that they have received permission to start rehiring seasonal employees. They said they were trying to act quickly, because no one knows when the administrative advice could suddenly change again.
“Human resources agents in federal agencies, and in particular parks, probably have the worst work in America at the moment,” said Tim Whitehouse, executive director of the non -profit organization Public employees for environmental responsibility. “They are dealing with unprecedented levels of chaos.”
