Trouble Ahead: How Staffing Cuts Threaten Air, Water and Wildlife at Your Favorite Parks

The serene rivers, thriving wildlife and fresh air that define America’s national parks are more than what meets the eye — they are also ecosystems that rely heavily on the expertise of public servants and stewards for protection. Many staff responsible for the health of parks work under a National Park Service unit called the Natural Resource Stewardship and Science Directorate, which provides technical and administrative support for the management of natural resources. NRSS develops, uses and shares tools to help the Park Service fulfill its core mission to protect park resources.

For example, its Air Resources Division collects data from a diverse array of parks and provides a comprehensive understanding of air quality conditions and changes over time, a practice vital to ensuring safe and enjoyable park visits. But without these staff, visitors will undoubtedly feel negative impacts, from hazy park vistas to higher risks of asthma and respiratory illnesses.

Recent personnel cuts and threats to remove entire divisions across the park system put clean air and water, as well as healthy wildlife — mainstays of the national park experience — at risk, perhaps for the first time since the very founding of the National Park System over 100 years ago.

As of May 13, the National Park Service had just 18,066 employees — a nearly 16.5% drop since fiscal year 2023. That sharp decline includes staff lost to pressured buyouts, early retirements, deferred resignations and hundreds of unfilled vacancies. And that’s on top of the 20% reduction in staffing the agency had already experienced since 2010 due to underfunding. To make matters worse, the president’s proposed budget could slash thousands more jobs in parks’ busiest season. For an agency currently facing crisis, this move doubles down on the Trump administration’s attempts to dismantle national parks by attacking their most valuable resource: the employees who protect what environmentalist Wallace Stegner called “America’s best idea.”

Learn more about how these staff reductions across parks and the NRSS division impact some of America’s national parks.

Healthy Wildlife

Visitors are drawn to national parks not just for their scenic vistas, but for the chance to connect with nature in its purest form. Whether it’s watching brown bears catch salmon, spotting whales or catching a glimpse of a rare bird, viewing animals in the wild creates unforgettable memories for families and reminds us of what’s worth protecting.

In Olympic National Park, the loss of two permanent staff members from the fisheries team leaves 4,000 miles of river without dedicated management expertise. This absence of oversight is particularly alarming given the park’s critical role in salmon recovery, especially following the landmark removal of the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams over a decade ago. That historic restoration effort symbolized hope for the Pacific Northwest’s iconic salmon runs — a legacy now jeopardized by reduced capacity to monitor and manage the health of the imperiled fisheries.

Alaska’s Lake Clark National Park and Preserve faces similar challenges. The Cook Inlet beluga whales, beloved and endangered, live in the waters along the park’s rocky shore. They are now at increased risk as monitoring positions are slashed, particularly at a moment when new development — including a helicopter pad and mining infrastructure related to the proposed Johnson Tract mine — begins to encroach on sensitive habitats. With staff responsible for this park reduced from 11 people to just 4, key data on species like whales may go uncollected, potentially silencing early warning signs of ecological harm.

Clean Water

Clean water is at the heart of many national park experiences. The shorelines, rivers and streams housed in national parks present endless opportunities for people to swim, fish, kayak and boat. Whether it’s swimming in a cool alpine lake, casting a fishing line into a pristine river, or listening to the rush of a waterfall, people often gain a sense of peace, freedom and wonder from clean water. Visitors expect these protected places to offer safe, healthy environments for recreation and reflection. Clean water also supports the vibrant wildlife that draws visitors to these special places.

Yet over half of all national park sites contain waterways that fail to meet Clean Water Act standards.

Harmful algal blooms, which produce toxins dangerous to both humans and animals, are on the rise. Once rare in national parks, these blooms now regularly appear in places like Channel Islands National Park and Buffalo National River. In 2020, a toxic bloom in Zion National Park even killed a family dog in the Virgin River — a sobering example of what happens when water quality monitoring is underfunded.

Underground contamination is just as concerning. At Mammoth Cave National Park — one of five parks featured in our Polluted Parks report — hydrologists use dye tracing to study how pollutants travel through groundwater systems. This data protects cave-dwelling species like the federally endangered Kentucky cave shrimp and helps preserve the integrity of the Green River. But continued research like this is uncertain amid cuts to water resource teams.

As the effects of climate change, pollution and industrial development intensify, reducing the workforce or eliminating entire divisions dedicated to monitoring these matters in our national parks is not just shortsighted — it’s dangerous. Without adequate expertise, we risk losing both the natural beauty and the ecological integrity of the lands we hold in trust for future generations.

Clean Air

Cuts to staffing and project funding related to the National Park Service’s air quality program would have immediate and long-term consequences for the effectiveness of air monitoring efforts that help us understand parks’ environmental conditions and protect visitors, staff, wildlife and ecosystems.

With fewer staff, the Air Resources Division would struggle to maintain the high quality and consistency of data collection, analysis and communication that is vital to ensure public health and safety in and around parks.

In recent decades, due to the continuity and reliability of the Park Service’s data sets, we’ve been able to track tangible improvements in visibility and air quality in places such as Great Smoky Mountains National Park, where visibility has more than doubled since 1990. If the Park Service loses personnel, the consistency and dependability of these long-term data sets are at risk.

In Rocky Mountain National Park, decades-long research has been instrumental in revealing the widespread effects of nitrogen pollution, which comes from vehicles, agriculture and industry, on alpine ecosystems. Supported by consistent staffing and funding, this research has informed broader environmental policies and mitigation strategies that extend well beyond Colorado.

Staffing reductions also could directly impact the Park Service’s ability to track and communicate information to the public regarding harmful emissions from increasingly frequent and severe wildfires. Real-time air quality data is essential for informing life-saving decisions, such as when Yosemite National Park was forced to close during the Ferguson Fire due to hazardous smoke levels. Similarly, prescribed fire planning depends on air quality staff working with regulatory agencies to meet Clean Air Act requirements. Without these capabilities, fire management would become less safe and less effective.

Our parks need natural resource staff

We need an experienced workforce with deep expertise to preserve visibility, protect ecosystems and safeguard human health during wildfire season. These experts working behind the scenes in the Park Service’s NRSS division keep visitors safe and protect the natural places they want to visit. Further cuts to park divisions could pose a serious threat to air and water quality, wildlife, visitor safety and environmental stewardship. Undermining their capacity not only weakens the mission of the Park Service but risks reversing decades of hard-earned progress in protecting some of the nation’s most treasured landscapes.