Parks in Crisis

For those who care about public lands, the news has been heart-wrenching of late: thousands of employees leaving the National Park Service through coercive tactics; threats of national monuments being chopped up and opened to fossil fuel production or mining; a proposed federal budget that would strip more than $1 billion from the Park Service and could result in the shuttering of hundreds of parks; playing fast and loose with historical facts on park webpages.

It’s a lot to absorb, and it may be tempting to look away, but now — maybe more than ever — we need to stay informed and stay engaged. And if you’re tuned in, you’ll see that as dark as the landscape seems, there are reasons to remain hopeful. “The public outcry right now has been amazing,” said Kristen Brengel, NPCA’s senior vice president of government affairs. “I think we have confirmed the fact that Americans love the national parks and don’t want to see them understaffed, underfunded, destroyed in any way.”

Read on to learn more.

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A Season of Park Threats

A timeline of the Trump administration’s orders and decisions that have harmed national park sites and the staff members who care for them.

January 20

A federal government hiring freeze goes into effect. Within days, the Park Service rescinds 2,000 job offers, and hundreds of vacant positions remain open indefinitely. 7,700 seasonal Park Service jobs are exempted from the hiring freeze a month later, but the delay causes complications as spring break crowds arrive and parks scramble to prepare for summer.

President Donald J. Trump signs an executive order to begin withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement.

January 28

Federal employees receive emailed buyout offers. Other proposals, including for early retirement, follow. More than 2,500 Park Service staff accept the offers by the March deadline.

February 3

Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum issues “Unleashing American Energy,” a secretarial order that calls for a 15-day internal review to maximize mining and oil and gas production on public lands, including national monuments. Read more.

February 4

Federal agencies are ordered to identify which of their leases can be terminated without incurring a penalty. By March 4, 34 Park Service leases are slated for cancellation, though the number eventually falls to 11 after advocates push back. Read more.

February 13

All instances of the abbreviation “LGBTQ+” on Stonewall National Monument’s website are altered to “LGB.” Some three weeks later, NPCA audits the Park Service’s website and discovers the agency has deleted or scrubbed at least a dozen pages related to LGBTQ+ history. Read more.

February 14

The administration fires 1,000 probationary Park Service employees who are either new to the agency or new to their roles. After a federal judge finds that the firings were unlawful, staff are offered their jobs back, though for many, the mid-March reversal comes too late.

February 24

The administration bans overnight travel as well as trips exceeding 50 miles for federal employees and places a $1 cap on credit card spending. Previously, staff with credit cards had authority to pay utility bills for facilities, purchase replacement parts for equipment and buy necessities including toilet paper.

March 5

The Park Service reports that there were 331,863,358 recreation visits to park sites in 2024, the most in the agency’s 108-year history.

March 13

Agencies are asked to submit phase one of staff reorganization plans, which are intended to help the administration reach its reduction-in-force goals.

March 14

News stories indicate the administration plans to undo protections for newly designated Chuckwalla and Sáttítla Highlands national monuments, triggering bipartisan pressure to stop these actions.

The administration revokes an executive order signed by former President Joe Biden that was designed to strengthen Tribal sovereignty and expand self-determination for 574 federally recognized Tribes.

March 20

The Interior Department announces its intention to open millions of acres of Alaskan land to mining and oil drilling and to transfer federal land to the state to pave the way for a new pipeline and the Ambler Road, which would cut through Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve.

March 27

President Trump issues an executive order entitled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” that directs the Department of the Interior to conduct a review of historic monuments, memorials and similar properties for “partisan ideology.” This order effectively targets efforts by the Park Service to broaden its representation of the nation’s history. Read more.

April 3

Secretary Burgum issues an order requiring Park Service facilities and services to remain open unless closures are approved by the agency director and an assistant secretary within the Department of the Interior. NPCA’s Kristen Brengel describes the order as “more red tape when park staff are already stretched dangerously thin.” Read more.

April 6

The Washington Post reports that dozens of Park Service webpages have been edited to soften the descriptions of shameful periods of history from slavery to Jim Crow. After an onslaught of negative press, the content on several pages is restored. Read more.

April 7

The Bureau of Land Management issues a press release promoting the continued operation of an open-pit mine within Mojave National Preserve despite the bureau’s lack of jurisdiction. Read more.

April 8

The Supreme Court halts a federal district court order requiring the rehiring of fired probationary employees from six agencies, including the Department of the Interior. Confusion over the implications of this ruling reigns.

April 14

The Park Service submits phase two of staff reorganization and relocation plans, as mandated by the administration. Read more.

This is a developing story. For the latest news, including how President Trump’s proposed budget would strip protections for hundreds of park sites, please visit npca.org/news.

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Q & A: Kristen Brengel

NPCA’s senior vice president of government affairs sounds off on the state of park affairs.

If you’ve been following news about national parks lately, you may have seen a quote (or two or three) from Kristen Brengel, NPCA’s head of lobbying. These days, she has been devoting a lot of time to media interviews, but she’s also doing all her usual business: working on legislation, talking to Capitol Hill politicos, disseminating information and raising alarms when alarms need to be raised. In short, she’s got her finger on the pulse of what’s been happening to public lands under the new administration, so we sat down with her at the end of April to learn how bad things really are and where we go from here.

What scares you the most right now? My biggest concern is losing a generation of people who want to work for the Park Service and want to grow Park Service interpretation, science and research, and take care of our incredible sites from Yellowstone to Gettysburg to Everglades.

The first Trump administration tried to downsize two national monuments illegally. What will happen if this administration attempts to shrink monuments again? It’s not clear to me what the legal strategy would be until it happens. The great thing is, we have so many scholars and fabulous attorneys that we work with who are experts on conservation and conservation laws. And we will absolutely take legal action the second anything happens to one of these national monuments.

Does NPCA still believe in creating new history-focused parks given the way historical facts have been removed and whitewashed on park webpages? We absolutely want to continue to expand the park system. Just because we’re in an administration that may not value those stories, we don’t want to stop protecting these places.

We had a scare recently about green groups getting their tax-exempt status revoked. It hasn’t happened — yet — but can you talk about that? What I really thought was fantastic is how quickly a coalition of green groups jumped into action, and how thoroughly our attorneys were able to dissect what could happen and prepare us. So I feel like we are well positioned to fight any attack on us as an institution or on anyone else in our community.

Aren’t these attacks on parks going to backfire given that Democrats and Republicans alike love national parks? We don’t need a poll to tell us that people love our national parks — 332 million people visited national park sites last year. So the parks speak for themselves, and I do believe the administration has struggled to justify cutting park rangers and other staff. The American public is rejecting their indiscriminate, reckless slashing.

What is your advice to readers who want to do something about threats to public lands? The biggest thing that people can do right now is lean on Congress. Congress is in charge of the Park Service. They fund them, and they govern them. Regardless of who your member of Congress is, we need people to contact them continuously and let them know that you’re concerned about the parks.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

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Resistance Rangers

An underground movement fights back.

Shortly after what’s been dubbed the Valentine’s Day Massacre, when approximately 1,000 National Park Service employees were fired, an informal collective of staffers started an after-work group chat for current and former agency colleagues. Their aim was simple: combat the fear with solidarity.

Originally, the focus was limited to internal support. Members leveraged their disparate skill sets to disseminate guidance, present trainings, raise funds for laid-off friends, share wellness tips and swap morale-boosting pet pics. Within two weeks, the collective’s ranks had swollen to several hundred, and their vision had expanded to include public organizing. “I think we realized that this administration is purposefully taking our voices away and separating us,” said Ranger E., a founding member who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation. “For us to do our job and uphold our mission statement, we needed to bring in the public, who we know love us.”

They created an Instagram account complete with a nom de guerre, Resistance Rangers, and a logo of a flat-hat-wearing skull and crossbones. Mobilizing at warp speed, the leaders of this underground movement then called for a nationwide day of action on March 1. Around 13,000 outraged park lovers converged on 170-odd park sites, bearing signs with messages such as “Make America grateful for federal workers again” and “Fire DOGE not rangers.” The outcry garnered coverage in outlets from the Los Angeles Times to The New York Times. The Resistance Rangers, now over 1,000 members strong, repeated the effort later in March with similar results. “When we put out the call, people have responded,” Ranger E. said.

At one of those rallies, at Great Falls Park in Virginia, around 30 fired-up attendees — including a 6-year-old junior ranger and a Swedish-born artist in his 50s — waved posters and voiced their concerns about the loss of park staff and the potential privatization and mining of public lands. “This is the only inheritance I have,” said a woman leading the group chants.

No one present claimed to be a Resistance Ranger, but many said they’ve been following the group closely. “I’m at the point where I have notifications turned on for Instagram for Resistance Rangers,” said Nicole, a New York transplant. “I need to know everything.”

The group’s master plan continues to evolve, but Ranger E. said it likely will feature more demonstrations once the agency unveils its reduction-in-force plan. In the interim, the members are expanding their website and social media presence and providing avenues for community building and civic engagement. (Their website, for example, pairs park threats with suggested actions, such as emailing the secretary of the Interior to demand a halt to job cuts.) Undergirding everything is the Resistance Rangers’ commitment to caring for their national park family.

“Even when it’s energizing, it’s exhausting,” said Ranger E., who has been devoting 20 to 25 hours a week outside of her full-time job to this project. But “that’s also what makes ourselves feel equipped and ready and like we’re not just victims.”

In true ranger fashion, she invoked the past, referencing the dark epochs — and activism — preserved by the Park Service at sites such as Stonewall National Monument and Brown v. Board of Education National Historical Park. “I have hope because I know, being a steward of this history, that when people refuse to be pushed aside, and when people stand up for what they believe in and stand together and don’t let themselves get isolated and continue to show up and continue to push for change, then change can happen,” she said. “And that’s what we’ve been seeing in the Resistance Rangers.”

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Voices from the Front Line

What has it been like to get caught up in the whirlwind of firing and rehiring and more firing at the National Park Service?

On Feb. 14, around 1,000 National Park Service employees who had recently been hired or switched positions were summarily fired. It was confusing and chaotic: Some workers also lost their homes because they were living in park housing. They were told the terminations were performance-related, but many had received sparkling reviews. Because of the sudden staff reduction, many parks had to dial back visitor services. Even before the firings, one ranger said, the summer was going to be an all-hands-on-deck situation because of understaffing, a chronic systemwide problem. “Every one of us was going to have to walk around with a roll of toilet paper and washcloth and be part of the maintenance team,” he said.

Other administrations have trimmed the federal workforce, but a so-called reduction in force — or RIF — is unlawful if it doesn’t follow certain steps and procedures. That’s the position a court took in a ruling a month later that ordered the reinstatement of the fired workers. Many returned, but for others who had already moved on to other jobs or homes, the reversal came too late. The whiplash didn’t end there: Additional court rulings in April overturned the reinstatement, and as of press time in May, it was unclear what would happen next.

Though some workers declined to be interviewed with their jobs on the line, others are now ex-employees or believe the stakes are too high to stay silent. 

Sam Peterson, 26, ranger at Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area in Washington

Sam Peterson was a high school history teacher when he spent a summer interning at Lewis and Clark National Historical Park. By the end of the first week, “I knew that this is what I wanted to do,” he said.

Competition for full-time ranger jobs is fierce, and newbies usually start with seasonal work. But Peterson applied to every open permanent position he could find and eventually was hired as a park guide at Lake Roosevelt in northeast Washington. His wife was able to secure a teaching job nearby, and last June, they moved into park housing.

“Being a park ranger is just a dream for me,” he said.

In December, Peterson was promoted to a lead interpretive ranger position. He also agreed to direct a project researching the Native American boarding school that had once operated at the site.

Then everything unraveled: The hiring freeze put his promotion in limbo, and in February, he was fired. He and his wife were given 60 days to clear out of their house.

Within a few weeks, Peterson got a new job at a museum in Oregon. So while he feels lucky in some ways, he also is experiencing a lot of grief and frustration.

“This whole ‘Let’s run the government like a business’ attitude does not make sense to me,” he said. “It means you’re trying to extract profit — but from the American people.”

Though Peterson — a plaintiff in a separate legal appeal before the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board also arguing that agencies didn’t follow legal procedures in terminating workers — was offered his job back, by then he’d  upended his life and signed a lease on a house. But one day, he plans to work for the Park Service again. “My goal is to serve the American people, to serve our nation’s treasures and to share them with the American public,” he said.

Stephen Robbins, 70, ranger at Jimmy Carter National Historical Park in Georgia

“It just feels so mean-spirited, the whole thing,” said Stephen Robbins, who lost his job in the mass firing. “This wasn’t really thought through.”

Teaching about Carter and his legacy is a passion and joy, said Robbins, a retiree who began a second career as a ranger following a stint traveling and volunteering at parks around the country. He and his wife bought a house in the area after they were offered park jobs, one more reason he’s relieved to be back at work now. But what will happen next? “It makes me fearful about the repercussions of that trauma and what’s going to come out of it,” he said.

Betsy Walsh, 27, career seasonal at Thomas Edison National Historical Park in New Jersey

Betsy Walsh followed her parents into public lands work — they’d had experience on fire crews, in park concessions and so on — though Walsh herself fell into a Park Service career via an interest in public history. She held positions at three historical parks before finally getting her big break — a permanent job — at Thomas Edison. 

Moving away from her friends and family in Boston was hard, but “it felt like a very farsighted, practical decision,” she said.

Walsh, whose job entailed everything from working the register to leading tours, was on a planned furlough, a feature of all career seasonal positions, when she was fired. Initially, the stress took a toll: She was exhausted, she broke out in hives. “I really believe in public service,” she said. “It feels very insulting to be told that I’m like a waste or not important.”

But after a week, she began to move forward with her life. She broke her lease and returned to New England. Then she got the call about reinstatement. “I want my position back,” she said, “but I can’t justify moving back when I already moved out, and also when it’s possible I’d be subject to a RIF again.”

Staffing cuts will have costs that this administration hasn’t accounted for, she said. She believes that visiting parks will be more hazardous without enough rescue workers and rangers, and she’s concerned about local economies, privatization, drilling, white-washed history, censorship, archive mismanagement and the loss of institutional knowledge.

“I’ll be OK,” she said. “I worry about the Park Service not being OK.”

Olivia Ford, 30, park guide at Great Basin National Park in Nevada

When Olivia Ford was working as a software engineer in New York City, she sometimes spent 14 hours a day planted in front of her computer. One day, feeling burnt out, she typed “outdoor jobs” into a search engine — and that’s how she ended up becoming an AmeriCorps volunteer and a year later, a park guide, at Great Basin.

“I found the thing I want to do for the rest of my life,” she said.

She was underground giving a tour of Lehman Caves when word of the firings came down. Walking into the visitor center afterward, she immediately understood what was happening from the forlorn looks on her colleagues’ faces. By the end of the day, she had turned in her badge and keys. That evening, people gathered at the general store in the tiny town of Baker to commiserate. “I think if I just went home alone and had to sit with just being fired from my dream job, it would be really tough,” she said.

Initially, the park had to cancel programs and reduce visitor center hours because of the sudden staff shortage, but the Great Basin National Park Foundation stepped up to pay for fired employees to return for a month. Ford lined up a job she could do after that, but before she started, the court ordered the rehiring, and she went back to being a ranger.

It’s been deeply demoralizing, she said, to see how distrust has been sown toward agencies from the Department of Veterans Affairs to the Department of Education. “People have these jobs for a reason,” she said. “All of these things touch the lives of Americans every day, whether they know it or not. To me, that’s been the most heartbreaking part of all.”