Trump administration backtracks on eliminating thousands of national parks employees

Los Angeles Times

21-02-2025

Following a loud public outcry about job cuts at the National Parks Service — and a relentless media campaign from outdoors enthusiasts across the country — it looks like the Trump administration has blinked.
A plan to eliminate thousands of seasonal workers at America's most beloved federal agency appears to have been reversed.
Last month, prospective seasonal employees — the people who collect the entrance fees, clean the trails and restrooms and help rescue injured hikers — received emails saying their job offers for the 2025 season had been rescinded.
This week, a memo sent from the Department of Interior to parks service officials said the agency could hire 7,700 seasonal employees this year, up from the roughly 6,300 who have been hired in recent years.
If fully implemented, that would be a notable exception to the government-wide hiring freeze imposed when the Trump administration essentially declared war on the federal bureaucracy, threatening to eliminate entire agencies, offering 'deferred resignation' to almost all federal workers and outright firing tens of thousands of career employees.
The reprieve for the parks is 'definitely a win,' said Kristen Brengel, senior vice president of government affairs for the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Assn., which obtained a copy of the memo that was shared with The Times.
And it's a testament to 'advocates, park rangers and everyone else who has been shouting from the mountaintop that we need these positions restored,' Brengel said.
The memo only addressed temporary seasonal employees. It said nothing about the roughly 1,000 members of the National Park Service's permanent workforce who were fired last Friday. They were included in the administration's multi-agency purge of tens of thousands of probationary federal employees, mostly people in the first couple of years of their careers who have fewer job protections than more seasoned employees. Probationary employees represent about 5% of full-time staff at the park service.
'We need to keep pushing until we restore all of the positions for the park service, and get an exemption from the park service in general,' Brengel said.
Park service officials did not respond to a request for comment.
Following the firings last Friday, which some have dubbed the 'Valentine's Day massacre,' parks employees and outdoors enthusiasts took to social media, called their congressional representatives and buttonholed anyone who would listen in a coordinated campaign to restore jobs at what is, arguably, the federal government's most popular agency.
America's national parks — including Yosemite, Joshua Tree and the Grand Canyon — attracted more than 320 million visitors in 2023, and have been the settings for countless family vacations for generations of Americans.
After he was fired on February 14, Yosemite maintenance worker Olek Chmura went on Instagram to ask if he and his modestly paid colleagues were really an example of the kind of wasteful spending Trump and his appointed efficiency expert, Elon Musk, claim they are trying to eliminate.
'I make just over $40,000 a year; scrape s—- off toilets with a putty knife nearly every day,' Chmura wrote. 'Somehow, I'm the target.'
Like so many other social media cris de coeur, Chmura figured his would get a thumbs up from a few sympathetic friends and then get lost in the vast sea of online angst.
He was wrong.
By early this week, he had become an unexpected poster child and de facto spokesman for the outrage felt by millions of people, from both sides of the aisle, who treasure America's parks.
He was suddenly juggling interview requests from seemingly every media organization he'd ever heard of, and a few he probably hadn't. Fox, NBC, local newspapers, even SkyNews from Britain. A photogenic patch of Yosemite Valley, with the soaring rock face of El Capitan in the background, had become his personal TV studio.
Reached Wednesday afternoon, he said he'd already done several interviews that day. 'I'm unemployed,' he joked, 'and this is, like, the busiest day of my life.'
Originally from Cleveland, Chmura, 28, caught the rock-climbing bug and made a pilgrimage to classic crags across the U.S, saving the best for last: Yosemite.
'This is where I want to live, you know. This is where I want to grow old, and this is kind of like the place I'll spend the rest of my life,' Chmura said.
Like so many self-described 'dirt bag' climbers in Yosemite, he spent a couple of years doing odd jobs to make ends meet before he got hired by the parks service. It meant scraping toilets, picking up used diapers and 'squeegee-ing urine' from bathroom floors, he said. But it was still pretty much the holy grail of jobs for a passionate climber.
'It was, quite literally, a dream come true,' Chmura said.
So, when the Trump administration arrived with its almost gleeful slash-and-burn crusade against the federal workforce, he was stunned and heartbroken to be swept up in it.
'I just really don't understand why they're attacking working-class Americans who never took these jobs to get rich,' he said. 'It's just extremely confusing, why us?'
Conservative friends from Ohio, who have seen him on Instagram and TV, have reached out and said, 'This is not what I voted for, this is [expletive] insane,' Chmura said.
Because he was a probationary full-time employee, Chmura's job is not among those being restored. But he holds out hope that pressure from the public, and elected representatives, might turn the tide in his favor, too.
Meanwhile, for parks supervisors, the uncertainty continues. Two who asked for anonymity because they fear retaliation, said they had received permission to start re-hiring seasonal employees. They said they are trying to act fast, because nobody knows when the guidance from the administration might suddenly change again.
'Human resource officers in federal agencies, and particularly the parks, probably have the worst job in America right now,' said Tim Whitehouse, executive director of the nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. 'They're dealing with unprecedented levels of chaos.'