Trump Administration Plans Mass Cuts To National Park Service, Public Land Agencies
“For the NPS, that means pretty much all employees,” explains former NPS Director
Reports indicate that the Department of the Interior is planning mass reductions in force (RIFs) in the very near future. These will occur regardless of a government shutdown, but should that occur, the Trump administration plans to use it to expedite its plans to gut agencies like the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and more.
“The future of the parks is rather grim,” former NPS Director Jonathan B Jarvis just told me.
DOI manages the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Geological Survey, the Bureaus of Indian Affairs and Education, and several other agencies charged with important infrastructure like western water supplies and economic sectors like oil and gas production.
Government Executive reports that DOI is using an artificial intelligence tool to calculate employees’ “retention standing,” and plans to use it to layoff thousands of employees in coming weeks. DOI has already lost around 7,500 employees since Trump took power in January, around 11 percent of its total workforce. Government Executive reports that individuals briefed on the new plans say this round of RIFs could double that number, “bringing the total reductions at the department to more than one-third of staff that were on board when President Trump took office.”
Even while that’s going on, Politico obtained a memo (embedded below) created by Office of Management and Budget Director Russel Vought that has orders agencies to draw up plans to fire employees who may be furloughed as part of a government shutdown that could begin as soon as October 1.
“In the memo, OMB told agencies to identify programs, projects and activities where discretionary funding will lapse on Oct. 1 and no alternative funding source is available,” explains Politico. “For those areas, OMB directed agencies to begin drafting RIF plans that would go beyond standard furloughs, permanently eliminating jobs in programs not consistent with President Donald Trump’s priorities in the event of a shutdown.”
Politico goes on to report that Vought is doing this in order to pressure Democrats in Congress to fund the administration’s priorities, without attempting to extract concessions to continue to fund Americans’ healthcare. That the firings would also accelerate the administration’s plans to gut the federal workforce seems to be something Vought considers good luck.
Past government shutdowns, especially the one that spanned 35 days between 2018 and 2019 in which National Parks were kept open even while 80 percent of employees were furloughed, resulted in billions of dollars of damage to America’s natural treasures, and the deaths of multiple visitors.
I reached out to Jarvis, who ran NPS from 2009 to 2017, to ask how bad Vought’s plan could be for park rangers.
“This is a different kettle of fish than previous shutdowns, in that the OMB memo couples RIF with furlough,” he explains. “So if employees were furloughed in the past shutdowns, then they are now subject to RIF as well. For the NPS, that means pretty much all employees except those who were deemed ‘essential.’
“Last time about 3,000 employees were retained out of 15,000,” Jarvis continues.”They were law enforcement, fire fighters, emergency medical, and a few key facility staff who maintain water, sewer and other primary utilities.”
So far, the Trump administration has fired about 24 percent of the full-time NPS workforce, and only managed to fill 56 percent of seasonal positions. About 100 of the 433 NPS sites are currently going without a Superintendent. And that’s combined with an order from Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum that all trails, features and attractions in national parks must remain open, regardless of staffing, to already threaten visitor safety.
Jayson O’Neill, spokesperson for Save Our Parks told me during a phone call this morning that, “National Parks are already being held together with duct tape and bubble gum, thanks to the professional of the service’s dedicated staff.” He says any further cuts to staffing could be devastating. Jarvis concurs.
“If they [shutdown], then the second question will be whether the parks are left open, without services, as was done last time, or closed as I did when director,” Jarvis tells me. “If they are left open and the furloughed employees are then fired under a RIF, the NPS will have lost its core workforce, families will bear the loss of jobs, and the future of the parks is rather grim.”
In its FY2026 budget, the White House proposed slashing the NPS budget by 38 percent. And while Congress has so far ignored that request, final funding levels for DOI and NPS have not yet been set. Should a shutdown occur, it may allow the administration to move forward with that budget reduction, terminating employees and reducing or cancelling programs all in one go. But, even if the shutdown is averted, it looks as if thousands of DOI employees are about to lose their jobs.
Art: Frank J. Haynes
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I was fucking afraid of this