National Parks Are in Crisis. Here’s What You Need to Know About the Layoffs.

America’s National Parks System is facing an emerging crisis. The parks were already in a fragile state, being drastically understaffed and underfunded. And now, with the recent purge as a result of the new administration’s executive orders and directives, over 1,000 vital employees have been laid off. Those staff members include forestry workers, firefighters, EMTs, and rangers, all of which will severely affect park operations, visitor experience, and both the local and national economy. According to the National Park Service report, 325.5 million visitors spent $26.4 billion in communities near national parks. This spending supported 415,400 jobs and provided $19.4 billion in labor income and $55.6 billion in economic output to the U.S. economy. 

All of this comes at a time when there’s never been a larger attendance to these public lands, increasing pressures on the park system and its limited resources. In 2023, parks saw a 16 percent increase in visitation from 2010. Over the same period, staffing has dropped by about 13 percent, and in some parks, the decline is even steeper. With the agency’s budget failing to keep up with rising personnel costs, the result has been fewer staff members to oversee more visitors, creating mounting pressures on the park system and its resources.

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The recent layoffs amount to a cut of approximately 5 percent of the National Park Service’s workforce. These cuts targeted employees in probationary roles, who were often new hires or employees who had recently transitioned to new positions. Many have spent their careers preserving the nation’s most treasured sites and had just transitioned to new positions.

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These layoffs heavily impact the West, where many of the country’s most visited parks reside. According to the Associated Press, 16 of the 17 supervisory positions at Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park were eliminated, leaving just one person to hire, train and supervise dozens of seasonal employees expected this summer, for instance.

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Meanwhile, the Department of the Interior has reinstated 5,000 seasonal job offers that were previously rescinded under a government-wide hiring freeze. However, many within the system are concerned that seasonal employees—while crucial for visitor services—cannot replace the permanent staff that oversee the parks and safeguard entire ecosystems year-round. The results of the cuts could mean that park hours may be reduced, guided tours could be canceled, trails may not be maintained, and basic amenities like restrooms and trash pickup could become unavailable.

Adding to the crisis is the fact that the reservations system, which limits the amount of foot traffic to popular sites like Yosemite, Zion, and Yellowstone National Park, has been shut down, putting the parks into further risk from the increased foot traffic of visitors with a limited number of rangers to supervise. Without enough staff to manage the influx of visitors and ensure the protection of these irreplaceable landscapes, the consequences of the layoffs could be far-reaching and long-lasting.