Over 700 National Park Service employees have been repurchased throughout the year, according to an internal email sent to supervisors later last week as the Trump administration continues its campaign to cut federal labor sharply. Ta.
This will bring at least 1,700 people with the number of permanent staff members per year that the service (probably America’s most beloved federal agency) has lost this month. This number corresponds to about 9% of the agency’s workforce.
Additionally, the remaining staff are prohibited from traveling for work purposes to assist with national security or immigration enforcement. Some staff have discovered that they will purchase basic items such as credit cards and toilet paper, which they use to purchase gas for service vehicles. The toilets are disabled, according to interviews with Park Service employees and internal documents shared with The Times. It is not clear how long these measures will be in place.
If the cuts are not restored, “this is not going to be the same Parks Bureau,” said Kristen Brengel, senior vice president of government affairs at the nonprofit National Park Conservation Assn. “All of these places are very beautiful and have been very well protected for a long time. It’s illogical to keep the staff tipping.”
National Park Service officials did not respond to requests for comment.
A memo sent last week to Rita J. Moss’ Park Service supervisor, Associate Director of Labor and Inclusion Agency, said “we are participating in a deferred resignation program” and “we have over 700 people across the service.” He said.
It is the name given by Elon Musk’s so-called government efficiency for the buyout program. Such programs generally attract older employees who are close to retirement.
At the other end of the spectrum, approximately 1,000 probation park service employees (in general, those in the first two years of service where employment protection still does not provide more experienced workers) , a multiple purge employee who was fired on February 14 along with tens of thousands of other probation federals.
Permanent staff who have been fired or have been taking over include people collecting fees at the entrance to the park, maintenance workers cleaning park facilities, and rangers patrolling the backcountry and rescuing lost and injured hikers. Included.
In January, the Trump administration has staffed thousands of seasonal laborers in 433 national parks and historic sites in the United States during peak season, in addition to operational disruptions for Park Service supervisors. We have notified those that their work for the 2025 season has been “revoked.” The move has panic in the ranks of park employees and has thwarted holiday plans for hundreds of millions of people visiting the park each year.
The Trump administration last week said that iconic national parks like Yosemite and Grand Canyon may be unsafe for staff, and iconic national parks like Yosemite and Grand Canyon may be too short I faced a serious warning that there was none. It has supported plans to eliminate seasonal employees, increasing the number of temporary workers that the park will be allowed to employ between about 6,300 and 7,700.
The changing goal post keeps the supervisor’s mind spinning.
“It’s so crazy because they don’t give us warnings and randomly close things like a 12-hour notice,” one park service supervisor who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation. I said that. “We never make it public.”
The disruption comes almost 15 years after no significant funding for the National Park Service’s operating budget, Brengel said. “That means a lot of employees have already done multiple jobs and have been doing that for years,” she said.
The manager of Molibund Enterprises is putting pressure on the rest of the employees to “do more” as the park itself has never been more popular than ever before.
In 2023, over 325 million people visited American national parks. This is a considerable number of people (136 million) who participated in professional soccer, baseball, basketball and hockey games.
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