The Trump administration’s funding and staffing cuts are crippling our national parks, forests, and other public lands. Since January, the National Park Service has lost a quarter of its permanent staff, leaving parks across the country scrambling to serve summer visitors. Thousands of U.S. Forest Service employees were also laid off earlier this year, leading to lags in recreation permitting and overflowing toilets. And, more than 4,500 Forest Service firefighting jobs — around a quarter of the agency’s full firefighting force — remained vacant as of July 17.
Parks in crisis
National park rangers are spread thin this summer, doing the work of two or more employees in many cases. Still, it’s not enough to fill all the holes that have emerged due to the Trump administration’s indiscriminate layoffs earlier this year.
“I’ve been visiting national parks for 30 years and never has the presence of rangers been so absent,” a visitor to Zion National Park wrote in public feedback to the National Park Service obtained by CNN. The visitor said they saw just one trail crew at the iconic Utah park, and there were no educational programs offered at any of the five parks they visited on their trip. Visitors to Arches National Park earlier this year were unable to visit the Fiery Furnace trail or take ranger-guided tours due to staffing shortages.
At Yosemite National Park in California, some seasonal employees worked for as long as six weeks without pay this spring and summer. Staff members — including scientists and hydrologists — were reassigned to cleaning tasks such as toilets and acting as gate attendants. A recent visitor to the park said there were no rangers at the Hetch Hetchy reservoir station, preventing visitors from picking up wilderness permits. The park also closed five campgrounds in June and July due to insufficient staff. Finally, the park’s Pioneer History Center was forced to close after several artifacts were stolen, a consequence of low staffing.
At Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park in Colorado, a third of the park’s 74 positions remain vacant. All custodial staff have been terminated, forcing other employees to step in and perform cleaning duties. And four of the 10 campgrounds at Curecanti National Recreation Area in Colorado were closed due to short staffing. At Big Bend National Park in Texas, staffing is down by almost half, leading to a reduction in educational programming and trail maintenance.
The Trump administration has also closed two National Park Service training centers, one in Virginia and one at the Grand Canyon, shifting ranger training online. It also placed burdensome travel restraints on park staff, reducing educational opportunities for rangers, like the ability to go to conferences. Meanwhile, National Park Service firefighters are struggling to contain at least four wildfires burning inside of parks right now.
Forests at risk
National forests are also operating with far fewer staff than usual. The agency has lost around 20 percent of its staff — about 5,200 people — since January. On top of these layoffs, many forests were unable to hire seasonal staff.
Gunnison National Forest in Colorado did not hire any seasonal workers this summer to handle tasks like opening trails, handling deferred maintenance, managing trailheads and pit toilets, and permitting outfitters and guides. Colorado’s White River National Forest — the most-visited forest in the country — lost 43 full-time employees, a 29 percent staffing reduction, and was unable to hire about 50 seasonal workers. Local governments and nonprofits are stepping in to fill the holes left by layoffs and funding cuts. For example, Colorado’s Eagle County raised $160,000 to support the White River National Forest’s frontcountry recreation program, while Gunnison County raised $62,500 for backcountry rangers. Similarly, the town of Mammoth Lakes in California paid to replace two lost forest service jobs and took over maintenance of trails in the Inyo National Forest, which normally hires 50 seasonal workers but this year hired none.
At Montana’s Bitterroot National Forest, between 30 and 40 out of 208 employees have been fired or have taken buyouts. At Lake Tahoe in California, the Trump administration fired a third of recreational staff, including the only permanent wilderness ranger position for Desolation Wilderness, one of the most popular wilderness areas in the United States. And in Utah, local rangers received just $2,500 to manage all 57 pit toilets along Mirror Lake Highway in the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest this summer. An estimated two million people visit the scenic byway each year. In July, several pit toilets in the same national forest were closed, thanks to a failure by higher-ups in the Forest Service to approve maintenance contracts.
While firefighters were exempt from layoffs and barred from taking buyouts offered by the Trump administration, an investigation by ProPublica found that around 700 employees fired in February were red-card-carrying federal employees, which means they have been trained to participate in wildfire response activities, including by providing logistical support during blazes. ProPublica also found that over a quarter of all Forest Service firefighting jobs were vacant as of July 17. This staffing shortage is leading to an inability to effectively handle wildfires as the country enters peak fire season.
“We know the demand for [firefighting] resources outpaces their availability,” Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz told agency leaders on a July 16 call in which he requested that all red-card-carrying employees be made available for fire assignments. “We have reached a critical point in our national response efforts, and we must make every resource available.”
More cuts coming
These problems are likely to get worse, not better. President Donald Trump’s proposed 2026 budget would cut more than $1.2 billion in National Park Service funding, a 36 percent cut and the largest in the agency’s 109-year history. The National Parks Conservation Association warns the funding cut could essentially wipe out budgets and staffing for at least 350 national park units. Trump’s proposed budget would also cut Forest Service funding by 35 percent, or $1.6 billion. These cuts would lead to a 30 percent drop in National Park Service staff and a 40 percent drop in Forest Service staff, according to the Center for American Progress.
These cuts are completely at odds with the wishes of the American public, who love public lands and want to see the agencies that care for them fully funded. Recent polling from Data for Progress finds that over 75 percent of likely voters hold favorable views of both the Park Service and Forest Service, and 83 percent support increasing or maintaining funding for national parks and forests.
Western writer and conservationist Wallace Stegner once wrote, “National parks are the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst.” Cutting funding and staffing for national parks and forests is absolutely undemocratic and robs everyday Americans of the opportunity to enjoy national public lands.
Feature image: Crowds at Yellowstone National Park: Source: NPS photo by Neal Herbert