In January of 2017, the first time President Trump was inaugurated, he immediately ordered a federal hiring freeze for civilian employees. The next day, I walked into my US national park office and heard my colleagues’ responses to the change. They expressed shock. Anger. Disbelief. Fear for the future.
“How will we hire seasonals?” “What will we do about the summer rush?” “What about the electrician/law enforcement officer/budget administrator that our park desperately needs to hire to function?”
I had my own concerns: I was a winter seasonal ranger, meaning my job would soon be ending. I needed a summer park job to make ends meet.
Fortunately, the 2017 federal hiring freeze ended in time for many park seasonals to be brought back to national parks before the summer tourism season. I got my next job.
Let’s hope that–with enough pressure from people who want their national parks to be able to stay open–this freeze will end before the next summer season as well.
But with Trump and his allies this time bolder, better funded, and more powerful, there is no assurance that the freeze will end at all. In fact, there are even more troubling signs.
Trump’s additional action of demanding federal workers return to offices 5 days a week sends a clear message: he is trying to make federal employees so unhappy they quit.
This is another tactic from his previous Administration: ending federal jobs through attrition. His goal is to make their work environments so untenable that they quit, and then once they do, due to the hiring freeze, they won’t be replaced, eliminating entire and sometimes vital positions.
An example: during his last tenure as President, Trump transferred the headquarters of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which oversees one-tenth of America’s public lands, from Washington, DC to Colorado, a change that required BLM headquarters employees to move across the country or lose their jobs. Many quit rather than pick up their lives, and then Trump eliminated many of their positions.
President Biden restored the headquarters back to DC when he took office, but Project 2025 declares Trump’s intention to move it back to Colorado. A new round of employees and their jobs will be gone.
The land management jobs that have been and will be lost are not only those of high-ranking headquarters officials; they are also the ground level jobs that keep America’s national parks operating.
Between 2010 and 2023, the National Park Service (NPS) lost almost half (48%) of its law enforcement rangers, much of those loses coming during the first Trump Administration. These are the rangers who keep parks and their visitors safe.
And from 2011 to 2019 the NPS lost around a quarter of its maintenance workers, the key staff who maintain parks and their infrastructure.
Our national parks are already running on shoe-string budgets and with limited staffs that hinder their abilities to maintain parks to the proud standard that Americans expect and deserve.
By the end of 2023, the deferred maintenance backlog (the massive and growing amount of infrastructure repairs that US national parks need) had ballooned to $23.3 billion dollars. That’s nearly double what it was in 2017 ($11.6 billion), when President Trump first took office and began intentionally eliminating park maintenance jobs.
It is not surprising that America’s national parks are falling apart without the workers who maintain them.
For those confused about why Trump and his party are trying to dismantle our very popular national parks by eliminating their workforce, understand that this is another old Republican Party tactic.
For decades the Republican Party has sabotaged government agencies with budget and hiring cuts so that they will inevitably function poorly and the American people will mistrust them. Then these same Republican leaders can swoop in and offer a solution: sell off this or that piece of America for profit. And the Republicans leadership gets paid for it.
It is organized theft. Trump and his cohorts are intentionally sabotaging the functioning of government, then claiming government doesn’t work, then stealing it in pieces and giving it to their friends.
This is what they plan for national parks. This is what “privatization” means. They are trying to steal America’s national parks from the American people and give them to the rich.
The employee numbers I’ve given so far are for permanent NPS employees, the ones who have year-round jobs (or who did). This new federal hiring freeze will once again, as the last one did, keep parks from hiring the seasonal workers who are vital to keeping parks running during their busiest months.
The seasonal workers in America’s national parks do much of the frontline work; they clean toilets, remove trash, uproot invasive species, take entrance fees, and maintain the safety of park resources and park visitors. They answer visitor questions and educate while wearing the iconic ranger hat–an interaction which is for some folks the highlight of their national park experience.
But with continued budget cuts these seasonal positions are greatly reduced as well–for example there were only 43 NPS seasonal law enforcement positions in 2023, compared with 323 just two years prior and 825 back in 2010.
And this summer, with the latest federal hiring freeze, there may be none.
So if the hiring freeze doesn’t end for seasonal national park rangers, when you visit a US national park this summer and see that facilities aren’t being maintained, that entire areas are closed off, that there are no ranger programs for you and your family to enjoy, don’t blame the parks. Blame President Trump and the Republican Party.
America’s national parks do not exist without the people who protect them. They will not exist without these employees, not in the ways that we have come to expect for over a century.
If Americans want to protect their national parks, they will need to protect the jobs of their national park rangers.
We’ve been volunteering for the National park service for the past 8 years. We have seen how the park suffers when staff is less than minimal. Visitors come to enjoy Ranger talks and special events at our Amphitheater… have t happened for a few years.
long lines, high visitation, lack of Law enforcement and resource Managers at the minimal.. let’s support our National Parks and fund more staff positions
I couldn’t agree more–we need to fund our parks and that means funding our rangers! Thank you for volunteering; your work is helping national parks at a challenging time.
Our national parks are the last great wild places – environmental and wildlife havens. Resist.
Yes they are. Thank you for supporting them!