National Park Service Has Lost At Least 12.5 Percent Of Full-Time Employees In 80 Days

Thousands of NPS staff leave voluntarily ahead of mass reductions in force

The National Parks Conservation Association estimates that 2,400 to 2,500 staff at the National Park Service have accepted voluntary buyouts or early retirements offered by the Trump administration. Those losses add to the 1,000 NPS staff with probationary status who were fired on February 14 (an unknown number of which have returned to their jobs). Just three months ago, full-time NPS staffing stood at 20,000 people. Today, that number may already be lower than 17,000. Those numbers are significant enough that they will be felt by park visitors this summer, and will also impact the totality of park operations, even as the interior secretary orders that all park attractions must remain open.

“The National Park Service is an operational agency requiring a full staff to ensure the public have a safe visit, facilities are maintained and the resources are protected,” Jonathan Jarvis, who served as NPS Director during the Obama administration, explained when I told him the news. “Remove 10-15 percent of those staff and something has to give: either the resource or the visitor safety.”

Reports indicate a mass reduction in force is next, with a target of reducing NPS payroll by at least 30 percent.

NPCA asked me to stress that the 2,400 to 2,500 voluntary buyouts or early retirements number is an estimate only. They hope to confirm that number by the end of the week, and I’ll update this article at that time.

I’ve also asked NPCA, still-employed park rangers, and other sources for an estimate of how many of the 1,000 fired probationary workers at NPS have returned to their jobs after a federal judge ordered that their positions be reinstated on March 13. Department of the Interior is not releasing that number and no one I’ve talked to is willing to guess at it, but it does seem as if some of those employees have taken their old jobs back.

The news also follows an order Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum issued last week, ordering that all parks and services must remain open until further notice. Any closures, even to individual trails or campsites, must be approved by Burgum himself.

The background here is that Republicans are trying to find $5 trillion in savings across the federal government, so they can cut taxes for billionaires. Congress is currently so divided and dysfunctional, that the only major piece of legislation they’ll be able to pass this year will be a budget reconciliation package. And in order to do one of those, they have to offset anything that would add to the federal deficit (the billionaire tax cuts), with equivalent savings.

I should note two further things about those efforts: 1) The math used in budget reconciliation is established by Congress itself, not reality, and is heavily biased. 2) The entire annual budget for the National Park Service is only $3.6 billion, $3 billion of which comes from taxpayers. That’s 0.044 percent of the federal budget.

Cutting NPS payroll by about 30 percent total will save only about $228 million, or 0.003 percent of the federal budget. These actions will do nothing to help Republicans pay for tax cuts for billionaires, but will cause immense damage to national parks and the fragile ecosystems the park service protects.

I attempted to calculate the possible extent of that damage in a previous article by comparing these cuts to previous government shutdowns, in which parks were ordered to remain open at massively reduced staffing levels. Burgum’s order will combine with staff losses to create the worst case scenario I described there: Tens of billions of dollars in damage could occur to parks and their infrastructure each year. The economy will also lose billions in visitor spending. Republicans are including neither number in their budget reconciliation tallies.

And all of the above will interact with other actions taken by the Trump administration to create outcomes it’s impossible to predict. The trade war stands to cost every household in America thousands of dollars per-year, and will increase prices for the clothing and gear we need to visit, camp, and recreate in parks.

Eliminating due process and kidnapping people the administration doesn’t like in order to send them to a dystopian mega prison in El Salvador is already tanking international visitation to this country.

Both factors could depress park visitation this summer and in coming years, but last year saw a record number of people visit parks. Conditions are adding up for a bad wildfire season this summer, even as Trump flirts with efforts to enrich Republican senators by moving all fire suppression operations under the umbrella of a single agency. Who knows what else might occur to the economy, international relations, or the ability for Americans to afford travel between now and summer. Natural disasters like mega fires could add to the chaos.

Stay tuned for more coverage. In addition to tracking the administration’s attacks on the park service and their fallout, I plan to explore the impacts all this will have on your summer travel plans, and show you how you can best prepare for a visit to a national park during these difficult times.

Top photo: NPS

Wes Siler is your guide to leading a more exciting life outdoors. Upgrading to a paid subscription supports independent journalism and gives you personal access to his expertise and network, which he’ll use to help you plan trips, purchase gear, and solve problems. You can read more about what he’s doing on Substack through this link.