It appears the Trump administration has rethinked it after massive public protests about job cuts at the National Park Service and a relentless media campaign from outdoor enthusiasts around the country.
Plans to eliminate thousands of seasonal workers at their beloved federal agency seem to have been reversed.
Last month, seasonal future employees – people who collect entrance fees, clean trails and toilets, and help rescue injured hikers received an email saying their job offers for the 2025 season have been cancelled I did.
A memo sent by the Home Office this week to Park Service officials said it could hire 7,700 seasonal employees this year, starting from around 6,300 people hired in recent years.
If fully implemented, it would be when the Trump administration threatens to crack down on the federal bureaucracy, remove the entire agency, provide “deferred resignations” to almost all federal workers, launching tens of thousands of people , a notable exception to the government-wide employment freeze. of career employees.
The park’s reprieve is “a sure win,” said Kristen Brengel, senior vice president of government affairs at the Nonprofit National Park Conservation Association, who obtained a copy of the memo shared with the Times.
And that’s testimony to “supporters, park rangers and everyone else screaming that these positions need to be restored from the summit.”
This memo addressed only temporary seasonal employees. He said nothing about the approximately 1,000 members of the National Park Service’s permanent workforce that were fired Friday. They were included in the administration’s multi-bank purge of tens of thousands of probation federal employees in the first few years of careers with less employment protection than more skilled employees. Probation employees make up about 5% of Park Services’ full-time staff.
“You need to restore all your Park Service positions and continue to push until you get a Park Service exemption in general,” Brengel said.
Parks Bureau officials did not respond to requests for comment.
Following the shootings on Friday, dubbed the “Valentine’s Day Massacre,” Parks employees and outdoor enthusiasts joined social media, calling council representatives and buttonholes listeners in a collaborative campaign. And definitely buttoned someone who will recover their work with federal government. Most popular agents.
American national parks, including Yosemite, Joshua Tree and the Grand Canyon, attracted over 320 million visitors in 2023, setting for vacations with countless family members of an American generation.
After he was fired on February 14, Yosemite maintenance worker Olek Chumura said he and his modest paying colleagues were the ones who were involved in Trump and his appointed efficiency expert Elon Musk. I went to Instagram to ask if it’s an example of a kind to eliminate.
“I go over $40,000 a year. Scrape S-I turn off the toilet with a putty knife almost every day,” writes Chmura. “For some reason, I’m a target.”
Like many other social media Chris de Coeux, Chumura gave thumbs from a few sympathetic friends before thinking that she would get lost in the vast ocean online.
He was wrong.
By the beginning of this week, he had become an unexpected poster child and de facto spokesman for the rage that millions of people felt from both sides of the aisle of American parks.
He was suddenly juggling interview requests from seemingly every media organization he had heard. Fox, NBC, local newspapers, and even Scine from the UK. Photogenic patches of the Yosemite Valley, with rock faces of El Capitan dancing in the background, have become his personal television studio.
Arrived Wednesday afternoon and said he had already done some interviews that day. “I’m unemployed,” he joked, “This seems to be the busiest day of my life.”
Originally from Cleveland in Kumura, 28, he caught a rock climbing bug, made a pilgrimage to classic rock mountains all over the United States, saving the best for the last: Yosemite.
“This is where I want to live, you know. This is where I want to get older and this is where I spend the rest of my life,” says Chmura. I did.
Like so many self-proclaimed “dirtbag” climbers in Yosemite, he ended up doing some odd jobs for several years to achieve his goals before being hired by Park Services. It meant rubbing the toilet, picking up used diapers and picking “squeezing urine” from the bathroom floor, he said. But it was still the holy grail of work for passionate climbers.
“It literally made my dream come true,” Chimura said.
So when the Trump administration arrived with a novel crusade against the federal workforce, he was uneasy and heartbroken.
“I really don’t understand why they are attacking working-class Americans who have never taken these jobs to get rich,” he says. Ta. “It’s very confused. Why us?”
A conservative Ohio friend who saw him on Instagram and on TV reached out to him and said, “This isn’t what I voted for, this is… insane.”
He was a full-time probation employee, so Chmura’s job is not among those recovering. But he holds back hope that pressure from the public and from elected representatives may also change the tide in his favor.
Meanwhile, uncertainty continues for park supervisors. The two asked for anonymity because they feared that retaliation had said they had been allowed to begin rehiring seasonal employees. They said they were trying to act fast because no one knows that guidance from the administration could change again.
“Federal agencies, particularly the human resources officers at parks, are probably the worst jobs in America right now,” said Tim Whitehouse, executive director of nonprofit civil servants for environmental responsibility. “They deal with an unprecedented level of chaos.”
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