This article was originally published in the Here & There newsletter by Kyle Frost. Here & There is an email newsletter published every other Thursday. 

NPS firing

Cutting jobs and shrinking the federal workforce have been a top priority of the Trump administration. Recently, thousands of employees with the Department of the Interior (DOI), US Forest Service (USFS), and National Park Service (NPS) faced the chopping block. This rapid downsizing could leave parks and public lands dangerously understaffed heading into peak season.

The USFS alone lost 3,400 employees, many of them in fire management, forestry, and conservation roles. These cuts will mean fewer personnel available for wildfire response, forest management, and more. Essential projects such as trail maintenance, wildlife monitoring, and infrastructure repairs will be delayed or abandoned entirely. The NPS had similar reductions (around 1000), disproportionately affecting probationary employees. Many staff in 'probationary periods' are not new hires, but long-time employees who recently transitioned to full-time roles or promotions that require a probationary period.

After public outcry, the Trump administration (partially) reversed course, authorizing  7,700 seasonal NPS hires for 2025. This is an increase from seasonal hires in recent years, but only applies to temporary positions, leaving thousands of laid off staff still out of work.

The people

This rapid, drastic shift is resulting in devastating life changes for people who have dedicated their lives to our public lands. Despite a generalized email stating that employees "failed to demonstrate fitness or qualifications for continued employment," these were individuals with years of experience and strong performance reviews, far from failing at their jobs. Now, not only are they unemployed, but those who lived in park-provided housing are also left scrambling to find a new place to live. One ranger, who goes by 'ranger_wild' on social media, said: “Today I lost my dream job as a permanent park ranger in the NPS. I’m still in shock, and completely devastated. I have dedicated my life to being a public servant, teacher, and advocate for places that we ALL cherish. I have saved lives and put my own life at risk to serve my community...I am the only EMT at my park and the first responder for any emergency...These are the people who teach your Jr Rangers, build your trails, clean your restrooms, rescue injured visitors, and keep the parks operating. We are not the excess. We are essential to maintaining access to parks."

Lydia Jones, another recently laid-off ranger, shared her story: “I’ve worked as a seasonal Park Ranger for 4 years, at 3 different parks, and had worked at my current park for 4 summer seasons, but since I had been in my new permanent position for less than a year, my career is over. I have always had excellent performance reviews. My supervisors had no say in my termination. I haven’t even been given an official letter stating a reason for my termination yet".

Katie Ferwerda expanded on the wide-reaching impact of these cuts, saying "We maintain roads and trails, clean bathrooms and campgrounds, manage wildlife and fish habitat so you can hunt and fish, protect our national history, spray weeds, reduce fuels that prime wildfires, harvest timber, and improve grazing allotments for the ranchers who graze their cows on public land. We aren't all firefighters, but we all support firefighting logistics…Please understand that the impacts of terminating federal workers in public land managing agencies…will be far reaching and immediate."

These are folks who’ve dedicated their lives to protecting public lands and sharing them with visitors. They're people who clear fallen trees from trails, who spend years studying the delicate ecosystems they work in, and who put their bodies on the line during wildfires. They aren’t in it for the money. As with many in the outdoor industry (and government positions), these aren't jobs that come with significant monetary benefits. They do it because they love the work.

What about this summer?

Spring and summer are fast approaching, and millions of visitors will flood into popular places like Yosemite, Yellowstone, Glacier, and Zion. Over the last few years it’s sometimes felt like barely controlled chaos, but thanks to planning and dedicated staff, things are kept under control. This year? That chaos might not be controlled at all. Parks will have fewer people to manage crowds, maintain trails, and enforce regulations. Trailheads that should be staffed with rangers might be empty. Visitor centers could operate on reduced hours. Campgrounds may be understaffed or closed. Highly trafficked trails may not be cleared of winter debris.

One would hope that the public would recognize this situation and act reasonably, but we've seen this before. During past government shutdowns, the impacts were immediate and severe. In Joshua Tree, visitors illegally cut down trees to make room for off-road driving. In Yosemite, trash overflowed, and restrooms became unusable. This year, with staffing already gutted before peak season even starts, similar chaos could unfold on an even larger scale.

Meanwhile, the local communities that rely on park tourism like Moab, Bar Harbor, Estes Park, and others are bracing for ripples effects. Businesses that depend on a steady stream of park visitors are facing uncertainty. Will the visitors still come? Or will the prospect of crowds, closed trails, closed campgrounds and a poor experience keep people away? When that happens, the businesses that rely on those visitors—restaurants, gear shops, tour guides, and hotels could all take a hit.

The policies in play

There are legitimate conversations to be had about federal lands, whether you’re on one side or the other. Many feel that the federal government shouldn’t manage so much land, preferring instead if it was more open to development or management by states and private owners. There are ongoing debates about local and private economic control versus environmental stewardship and the national public good. But, looking at the number of people employed by government agencies and jumping straight to "unneeded bureaucracy" feels shortsighted.

Unfortunately, I think a root of the problem lies with a tremendous lack of understanding of how the government apparatus works–not just in the DOI, but across a range of agencies. There are grants, federal funding, cost-sharing programs and more that weave a complex web funding thousands of important programs, jobs, conservation efforts, and impact local economies. Well-managed parks and public lands are massive economic contributors, adding a record high $55.6 billion to the U.S. economy in 2023.

Dissent about recent layoffs and funding cuts is sometimes framed as "pro government waste". No one is pro waste. There are plenty of reasonable changes to be made, both in the DOI and across the government. I don’t think anyone disagrees with that.  However, the way in which these cuts are being approached feels haphazard and disingenuous. A lack of desire to understand the work of these institutions is not an excuse to flip switches off, make indiscriminate cuts and just “see what happens”. Are the USFS and NPS  really where we see the worst examples of waste and bureaucracy? There are many, many, ramifications here. Just because things are hard to understand does not make them inherently "bad" or worth being carelessly downsized.

Long term

The gutting of staff isn’t just about this year. When you fire experienced people, you lose institutional knowledge—decades of expertise in conservation, safety, and visitor management. When you overload the people still employed, you risk creating an environment where fewer people want to join these organizations in the future. It’s a vicious cycle: underfunding leads to understaffing, which leads to burnout, which leads to even fewer people staying in critical roles while park experiences continue to degrade. And that may be the plan. Indications seem to be that we're heading toward a sell-off and/or significant privatization of operations and management in our public lands.

Trump’s first weeks in office have looked like a to-do list of Project 2025 priorities, which includes mass push for more extractive industry on public lands, privatization, and the repeal of the Antiquities Act. Artificially inducing a poor experience due to defunding and layoffs can provide an effective, if contrived, reason that public lands "need" to be privatized. Legislative approaches are already being attempted in Wyoming, where lawmakers want public lands turned over to the state (their state constitution may then require them to be sold). Utah has pursued legal action to gain control over federal lands within its borders, aiming to expand development opportunities. Although the Supreme Court recently rejected Utah's lawsuit, it reflects a persistent push toward privatization by conservative legislators. And, President Trump recently signed an executive order creating a sovereign wealth fund. While not inherently a bad idea, indications are that public land sales may be considered as a funding source for the fund. Most recently, it appears that the administration is planning to “terminate NPS leases and shutter 34 offices across the country that function as visitor centers, law enforcement offices, museums and hubs for critical parks services” (National Parks Conservations Association). We may find ourselves looking at a future where access is more restricted, services are privatized, and the experience of visiting public lands is fundamentally different from what it was meant to be.

I don’t want to resort to hyperbole. There are not “3 rangers left in Yellowstone National Park” as I’ve seen widely shared on social media. There are 3 full-time rangers left in the “Yellowstone and Bozeman Ranger Districts [of Custer-Gallatin National Forest] to manage 19 rental cabins, 60 bathrooms, 21 campgrounds and other infrastructure spread across 1 million acres.” This is equally troubling, but Yellowstone NP still has hundreds of staff and rangers. This is important. Recognizable park sites will be negatively affected, but some of these cuts will disproportionately effect less culturally mainstream areas like National Forests, monuments, and more. Out of 325.5 million recreation visits in 2023, only 28% of visitation was to National Parks.

I also find it unlikely that the administration will target National Parks for sale or logging, due to the potential for extreme backlash (not impossible, just less likely). However, National Forests like the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, where the administration wants to re-open logging (despite sales generating less revenue than the USFS spends to administer them), are highly likely to be heavily impacted. National forests already have management plans that often include logging operations but the current administration’s stance represents a uniquely dangerous situation. Trump’s most recent executive order charges federal agencies to find ways to expedite timber production and harvesting on public lands. Changes to NEPA provisions (which require agencies to assess the environmental effects of proposed major actions) and the weakening of other regulations may lead to drastic changes. Removed or decreased regulations mean fewer legal avenues to limit extractive industry on ecological or environmental grounds.

Looking forward

Last newsletter, a reader wrote in accusing me of focusing on corporations' bottom lines instead of focusing on some of the topics covered above. Things don't look great for public lands right now, but I don’t think taking it out on other people is the solution. If these are issues you care about, by all means, advocate. Vote. Organize. Call your representatives and senators. Write newsletters. Share your views. Recreate responsibly. Exercise your right to peacefully protest when JD Vance goes skiing in Vermont. Have conversations with people you disagree with. Calling out people on social media for “not being vocal enough” does little to serve anyone. The reality is that the best time for action was last November, and the next best time is now (and more accurately, the 2026 midterm elections).

Public lands don’t exist in a vacuum. The vast swathes of protected wilderness that are so uniquely American, in many ways, don't just happen without people and management. They can’t just exist. Often referred to as “America’s Best Idea”, the NPS is heralded as the most popular government agency, but this recent and dramatic reduction of key staff threatens to make our most cherished places overburdened and underfunded liabilities. Amanda Monthei, a former wildland firefighter (and Mountain Gazette senior writer), may have put it best in a recent newsletter discussing the situation, saying: “The best people I know are losing their jobs.” And that means we all stand to lose something much more.