Latest news with #NationalParksConservationAssociation
E&E News
3 days ago
- Business
- E&E News
NPS lags far behind staffing goal for busy summer season
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum promised that more than 5,000 park rangers would be hired this year to staff the national parks for the busy summer season. So far, that commitment to beef up staffing at the National Park Service hasn't been realized. About 3,300 seasonal and temporary staff are currently employed at the service, according to data obtained by the National Parks Conservation Association and viewed by POLITICO's E&E News. Advertisement That's about 40 percent less than the number of seasonal and temporary staff employed during the Biden administration in fiscal year 2023, the most recent public data for actual NPS employment.
Newsweek
7 days ago
- Newsweek
National Parks Face 'Lowest Staffing in Modern History' Ahead of Summer
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. As summer approaches, the National Park Service is facing what has been described as its "lowest staffing levels in modern history," raising concerns about the agency's ability to manage record-high visitor numbers. Kristen Brengel, the National Parks Conservation Association's senior vice president of government affairs, said in a recent webcast hosted by environmental nonprofit Oregon Wild that "this is probably the lowest staffing in modern history for the park service," according to reporting by California-based news website SFGate. Newsweek has contacted the National Parks Conservation Association and the National Park Service via email for comment. File photo: visitors take in the scenery from Tunnel View in Yosemite National Park, California. File photo: visitors take in the scenery from Tunnel View in Yosemite National Park, California. Carlos Avila Gonzalez/San Francisco Chronicle via AP Why It Matters The staffing crisis comes at a time when the country's many national parks are drawing record visitor levels. In 2024, the National Park Service reported a record-high number of people visiting the national parks - at more than 331 million recreational visits. However, federal budget decisions are making it harder for the National Park Service to respond to the increased demand, particularly as it navigates a shortage of staff. What To Know The National Park Service has seen a 20 percent reduction of staff since 2010, and since January it has seen an additional 13 percent decrease in employees, according to the National Parks Conversation Association. The park service has only hired around 3,000 of the promised 7,700 seasonal employees it vowed to take on after its hiring process was frozen and many permanent staff were laid off in February. Earlier this year, President Donald Trump signed an executive order mandating an immediate hiring freeze on the federal government, prohibiting any federal office from hiring new employees until late April. While the president made some seasonal employees exempt from the hiring freeze, the park service is still going "into the heaviest visitation seasons for the parks, and they are completely understaffed with seasonals," Brengel said, according to SFGate. In addition to the staffing challenges, the budget bill passed by the House of Representatives earlier this month proposed cutting all the remaining Inflation Reduction Act funding for the National Park Service. This included $267 million, which the National Parks Conservation Association said could have supported critical park staffing needs. The association said the funding was "essential" for "national park staffing and greenlighting mining development near Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, in the same watershed as Voyageurs National Park." After thousands of park advocates spoke out, the final version of the bill has removed certain provisions, including one which would have seen thousands of acres of land in Utah and Nevada transferred elsewhere. What People Are Saying Daniel Hart, Director of Clean Energy and Climate Policy in the National Park Conservation Association, said in a press release in May on the staffing issues: "As we speak, hundreds of millions of visitors are making their way to America's national parks and nearby communities. And rather than provide support for our overwhelmed park staff, Congress is pushing a bill that will only make matters worse for Americans who not only love their public lands, but pay taxpayer dollars to ensure their protection and care." What Happens Next The so-called One Big Beautiful Bill now heads to the Senate.
Travel Weekly
25-05-2025
- Politics
- Travel Weekly
Proposed budget cuts threaten National Park Service and tourism economy
Over $1 billion in federal funding for the National Park Service (NPS) could be slashed in the proposed 2026 federal budget, in what would be the largest funding cut in the agency's history. Advocates say tourism in and around the 433 parks and sites in the NPS system will suffer, along with the tour operators that offer national park itineraries. The proposed budget would cut almost a third from the $3.1 billion the NPS has for fiscal year 2025. It would remove $900 million from NPS operations alone, much of it targeting sites that the budget request submitted May 2 described as not being parks "in the traditionally understood sense," suggesting that some smaller sites would be "better categorized and managed as state-level parks." Advocates sounded the alarm. "We worry [about] places like Flight 93, presidential birthplaces, Civil and Revolutionary War battlefields and places that preserve and teach Americans about some of the more difficult chapters of history, like Minidoka, the Japanese internment camp," said John Garder, a senior director for the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Association. He said the NPS creates "significant economic value," with $21 in visitor spending for every $1 Congress invests. Garder said "countless" local economies depend on park tourism from visitors spending money in "hotels, restaurants, gas stations, souvenir stores" nearby and along the way. According to the NPS, the 2023 economic output for economies around the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park near Hodgenville, Ky., was $23.4 million. The Blue Ridge Parkway generated $1.8 billion along the 469-mile Appalachian Mountains drive from Shenandoah National Park in Virginia to Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina. The Department of the Interior already terminated 1,000 full-time NPS employees earlier this year, and Garder said its workforce has been reduced by 13% since January. National Tour Association (NTA) president Catherine Prather said putting national parks "on the chopping block" will only further diminish the tourism economy, not only for gateway communities but for tour operators: More than 75% of NTA members operate tours in national parks. Caleb Lawson, vice president of Sunrise Tours, which offers national parks itineraries, said the company has fielded calls from clients about the impact of NPS budget and staffing cuts. Despite the concern, he said, the tours continue to "have very strong reservation numbers." "I'm not sure what to attribute that to, other than that we are all in a wait-and-see situation in so many ways right now," Lawson said, citing everything from park funding to tariffs. Tauck is "cautiously optimistic about the upcoming season," a spokesperson said, adding that one product manager was recently in Yellowstone and had visited Bryce and Zion during spring break and saw no long lines or anything amiss. "While it's still early, we've been running some of our national parks tours [for] the past several weeks now without experiencing any real issues at all," the spokesperson said. Xanterra Travel Collection, which handles concessions and lodging in several national parks, is also the parent company of tour operators Country Walkers and VBT Bicycling Vacations, which offer park tours. Both operators have more guests booked for 2025 than they did for last year. Todd Walton, director of marketing and sales for Xanterra's Yellowstone offerings, said the company's Yellowstone National Park Lodges have seen few cancellations this year. Guests typically book six months to one year in advance, he said, but the company is now noticing a 60- to 90-day window for bookings. Like Lawson, he attributes this to a "wait-and-see" mentality from guests. Walton said that NPS superintendents recently shared at a meeting that Yellowstone and Grand Teton are both fully staffed for the season and that "NPS is doing a fantastic job making sure people have a great experience." But Garder said the impact of cuts are not just what's visible to visitors. "What's critical for people to understand is that it's not just the things they notice, like trash cans and bathrooms and visitor centers, but the work that's being done to protect those resources," he said -- for example, the monitoring of invasive species. "People may not see it, but there's damage." Intrepid Travel's president of the Americas, Leigh Barnes, said he hopes the proposed and previous NPS budget cuts will serve as a "rallying cry" that pushes consumers and other brands to take action in support of the NPS. Intrepid expects impacts to maintenance and scheduling to be visible on its tours but is also waiting to see what happens. The company is hoping to inspire more travel to the U.S. and its parks with a 20% discount on U.S. tours, including to 18 national parks.
E&E News
23-05-2025
- Business
- E&E News
‘Ill-timed blow': Advocates decry funding cuts for park rangers
A few years ago, the National Park Service was given a half-billion-dollar boost by Congress to increase its ranks. But those days of congressional support for hiring are gone — and most of that boost could go, too. The Republican reconciliation bill that passed the House along party lines earlier this week would make deep cuts in the Biden administration's landmark renewable energy and environment law — the Inflation Reduction Act — including what remains of a $500 million appropriation to the NPS to recruit and hire park rangers across the country. Advertisement Advocates are aghast at the cuts. Daniel Hart, director of clean energy and climate policy at the National Parks Conservation Association, said cutting the IRA funding for new hires is an 'ill-timed blow to a struggling National Park Service.'
USA Today
21-05-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
Hammered by staffing cuts, Alaska's national parks brace for millions of visitors
Hammered by staffing cuts, Alaska's national parks brace for millions of visitors Staffing cuts at Alaska's national parks will save taxpayer dollars. But also likely to limit land management, visitor experience. Show Caption Hide Caption Fat Bear Week lets people vote on their favorite chubby bear Katmai National Park and Preserve will once again allow people to vote on their favorite chubby bear during the Fat Bear Week, starting October 4th. Staffing cuts at the National Park Service in Alaska will mean less oversight of wolves, whales, weather and fast-melting glaciers this summer. The cuts raise questions about the experiences that 3.3 million visitors will have in a state that's home to half of all national park lands as the tourism and cruise-ship season ramps up. But for now, Fat Bear Week remains safe. President Donald Trump has been slashing employment across the federal government as he makes good on his campaign promises to shrink bureaucracy and save taxpayer dollars. And Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has given Elon Musk's DOGE team sweeping powers to cut or reallocate spending at the National Park Service in order to prioritize coal, oil and gas development. Public lands advocates say the cuts imperil important work both on the frontlines and behind the scenes in managing public lands across the country, including in Alaska, which is home to 60% of all land under park service control. When Trump took office, park service staffing was already 20% lower than in 2010, even though 2024 was the busiest year for park visitation in history, with 332 million visitors. Now, a first-of-its-kind analysis shows an estimated 60 staffers from the National Park Service's regional offices in Alaska have departed under the Trump administration via firings, layoffs retirements and buyouts. The cuts represent about 33% of the regional staffing across Alaska, which is home to 54 million acres of park service land. Overall National Park Service staffing changes are not publicly available, in part because the federal government exempted itself from regulations requiring private employers to disclose job-cut data. Alex Johnson, the campaign director for the National Parks Conservation Association's Arctic and Interior Alaska area said he's worried the cuts will impact the public's experience. For many Americans, a visit to Alaska via a cruise remains a one-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Almost 60% of all tourists to Alaska arrive by cruise ship each year, according to state statistics, many of them traveling through Glacier Bay National Park or Kenai Fjords National Park before taking a scenic bus or train ride to Denali National Park. "There are so many people who dream of coming to Alaska for that national park experience, to see the bears, to see the glaciers, to see the caribou, and essentially at this point the park service doesn't have the resources or expertise to maintain those landscapes," Johnson said. Impact of staffing cuts The nonprofit NCPA cross-referenced a list of current employees with last year's directory to help build the list of departed staff. Those approximately 60 departures do not include staffing reductions in the parks themselves, or regional IT or human resources employees whose positions have been centralized to the Interior Department. An Interior Department spokeswoman declined to comment on the staffing reductions. The regional office departures include wildlife biologists, historians, fire ecologists, tribal liaisons and interpretive specialists. Also gone: the employee responsible for overseeing the service's automated weather monitoring stations, which are heavily used by pilots across Alaska to plot safe flights. The tally also does not include the current vacancies in the top spots of six Alaska national parks. In Alaska, the National Park Service manages an area larger than the entire state of Utah ‒ from renowned Denali National Park and Kenai Fjords National Park to the nation's largest national park, the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, which alone is nearly the size of West Virginia. The NCPA estimates that at least 2,5000 park service employees nationwide have left under Trump, in addition to the approximately 1,000 probationary employees who were summarily fired. Congress is currently debating a federal budget plan that could cut up to $1 billion from the National Park Service. USA TODAY spoke with multiple park service employees in Alaska to confirm the numbers of departures and the impact those job losses are having. One regional office staffer in Anchorage said they and their colleagues have been backing up all their data and writing down how they do their jobs. That way, said the staffer, who was granted anonymity because they fear for their job, said they want to ensure park service employees some years down the road will be able to understand the previous work. It's equivalent, the worker said, to writing your own will. Short-term approach 'will have an enormous financial impact on the communities' Trump has promised to hire a more-than-normal number of seasonal employees to help ensure parks remain open for visitors. But current and former park service staffers who spoke with USA TODAY said those seasonal employees won't be taking on long-term projects like tracking bears or monitoring receding glaciers. Earlier this month, five former National Park Service directors, along with multiple other former park service leaders, warned that budget cuts risk violating federal law requiring the park service to protect its properties for future generations. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has ordered current park service leaders to shift staffing to preserve visitor experiences, like keeping open visitor centers and campgrounds. "...We fear that these messages will put NPS superintendents in a difficult situation when confronted with decisions necessary to protect the resources of the units of the National Park System," wrote the former leaders, who served under both Democratic and Republic presidents. "The crippling of our parks and public lands, and the threat to the future of the National Park System, will have an enormous financial impact on the communities that rely on parks and other public lands that support their economies," they concluded. One bright spot is Katmai National Park and Preserve, which appears to have largely been spared significant job losses, several park service experts said. Park officials confirmed to USA TODAY that they will continue running the wildly popular Fat Bear Week competition livestream, which last year drew 10 million viewers. The livestream webcams at Katmai's Brooks Falls area show brown bears ‒ the correct name for grizzlies living in coastal areas ‒ as they gorge on spawning salmon each fall in preparation for winter hibernation.
