(CNN) Only months after President Donald Trump took office, hikers who visit America’s national parks are already experiencing the changes.
In a National Park Service public review that CNN was able to get, a visitor to Zion National Park wrote, “I’ve been going to national parks for 30 years, and never have the rangers been so absent.”
At the famous Utah park, the visitor reported seeing only one trail crew. During their tour, they visited five parks, none of which provided educational programming.
Employ park employees. “They are essential,” the visitor wrote.
Another traveler reported that guests were unable to pick up wilderness permits at Yosemite because there were no rangers at the Hetch Hetchy reservoir entrance station.
The visitor commented that having more employees would be a HUGE and IMPORTANT improvement.
Trump’s government-shrinking cutbacks are putting a strain on America’s most beloved national parks as the summer tourism season begins to heat up.
Following the dismissal of around 1,000 NPS employees by the Trump administration as part of a wider federal firing spree dubbed as the Valentine’s Day Massacre, top officials pledged to hire thousands more seasonal workers to cover the slack. In a February communication, Department of the Interior officials stated that they would post job openings for 9,000 positions and seek to hire 7,700 seasonal workers at NPS.
However, such figures haven’t shown up before the July 4th weekend, which is the park’s biggest time of year. Approximately 4,500 seasonal and temporary employees have been employed, according to internal National Park Service data that CNN obtained from the National Parks Conservation Association.
There are also fewer full-time employees; as of June, the parks department employed 12,600 full-time staff, a 24% decrease from the start of the year.
According to Kristen Brengel, senior vice president of government affairs for the National Parks Conservation Association, that is the lowest staffing level in more than two decades.
This year, several parks, including Yellowstone, have hired more employees. However, Kym Hall, a former NPS regional director and park superintendent, told CNN that she is concerned that park rangers and other workers may reach a breaking point later this summer because poor staffing levels at other sites are unlikely to significantly improve this year.
“You’re going to have extremely burned-out staff by mid-August,” Hall warned. There will always be someone who makes a mistake and gets wounded. There aren’t enough people in the parks to tell people, “Don’t get that close to a grizzly bear that’s on the side of the road; that’s a terrible idea.” Instead, you’ll see people interacting with animals in ways that are inappropriate.
CNN’s request for comment on the National Park Service’s staffing levels was not answered.
Meanwhile, tourists are pouring in. Nearly 332 million recreation visits were made last year, breaking the previous record set in 2016.
It takes months, usually beginning in the preceding fall or winter, to hire thousands of seasonal workers for the summer, according to Hall.
“It takes months and months to get a crew of seasonal (workers) recruited, vetted, hired, boarded into their duty stations, trained, and ready to serve the public by Memorial Day,” Hall said, even if the parks got authorization and some cash.
Many park superintendents, some of whom are in charge of the most famous sites, such as Yosemite, have retired or accepted the Trump administration’s deferred resignation offers, which has made the staffing shortage worse. According to Brengel, this means that more than 100 parks are now without a top supervisor.
In order to keep up with the summer season, staff members who were previously assigned to park programming, construction, and trail maintenance—as well as a group of park scientists—were transferred to visitor services.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum dismissed concerns about the low staffing numbers when questioned by both Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill. He stated in May that while some staff members work at regional offices or at DC headquarters, slightly less than half of permanent NPS employees work on the ground in the parks.
Burgum stated, “I want more people in the parks.” Less overhead is what I desire. There is a chance to reduce the number of National Park Service employees and increase the number of people working in our parks.
However, Brengel said that internal NPS data, which indicates that about 80% of National Park Service employees work in the parks, paints a different picture. Additionally, regional offices play a crucial supporting staff role by employing scientists to help preserve delicate park ecosystems and experts to keep an eye on geohazard safety concerns like landslides.
Burgum was recently pressured by Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska to submit a comprehensive list of all staff positions that have been eliminated at the US Forest Service, the National Park Service, and the Bureau of Land Management since the Trump administration took office. According to a Senate staffer, the list has not been made available by the Interior Department.
A National Park Service employee in a Western state told CNN that the park service’s regional offices are anxiously awaiting the outcome of a court ruling on a Trump administration proposal to reduce force that they worry might destroy their workforce.
“It will be a bloodbath if they approve the RIF plan,” the employee stated.
The agency’s ranks are being whittled down by early retirements and probationary employees who were let go in February. The employee also noted that field work in the parks is becoming very challenging due to the $1 spending cap on federal employees’ credit cards, which requires requesting a simple overnight trip ten days in advance.
They said that the absence of NPS supervisors and superintendents makes things more difficult.
“You really need those upper-level people with clout working the system these days, when it’s all about fighting for scarce resources,” the employee stated.
Losing rangers, maintenance staff, and park superintendents may significantly change American landmarks, according to Hall, the retired regional director of the National Park Service.
“With all of this attrition, you’ve lost all of this knowledge that will take years to rebuild,” Hall added.
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