As the Trump administration continues its campaign to reduce federal workforce, more than 700 employees of the National Parks Service throughout the year have received purchases, according to an internal email sent to supervisors at the end of last week.
That takes at least 1,700 the number of permanent members of permanent personnel throughout the year than the service, possibly the most beloved federal agency in the United States, has lost this month. The number is equivalent to approximately 9% of the agency's workforce.
In addition, the remaining personnel members have been forbidden to travel for work purposes, unless it is to support national security or the application of immigration, and some employees have discovered that the credit cards they use to buy gas for vehicles Basic service and supplies such as toilet paper for bathrooms have been deactivated, according to interviews with employees of the parks and internal documents shared with the Times. It is not clear how long those measures will be in place.
If the cuts are not restored, “this is not going to be the same parks' service,” said Kristen Brengel, senior vice president of government affairs of the non -profit organization ASSN of conservation of national parks. “All these places are so beautiful and have been so well protected for so long; Continue with the staff is illogical. ”
National Parks Service officials did not respond to a request for comments.
A memorandum sent last week to the supervisors of the Parks Service of Rita J. Moss, associate director of the Agency for Labor Force and Inclusion, said: “We have more than 700 throughout the service” that are “participating in the Deferred resignation program. ”
That is the name given by the so -called efficiency department of Elon Musk's government for the purchase program, which allows federal employees to resign now, but continues to receive their salaries and benefits until September. These programs generally attract older employees to retirement.
At the other end of the spectrum, around 1,000 parks -proof service employees, generally people in their first two years of service who still do not have employment protections, were fired on February 14 along with tens of thousands of other federals of proof. Employees in a multi -legal purge.
The permanent employees who are fired or taking the purchase include people who collect rates at the park entrances, maintenance workers who clean the park's facilities and the rangers that patrol the field and rescue lost and injured hikers.
In addition to the operating chaos for parks service supervisors, the Trump Administration in January notified thousands of seasonal workers who offer 433 national parks and historical sites in the United States during the peak seasons that their job offers for the 2025 season had been ” terminated. ” The measure triggered panic in the ranks of park employees, and threw the vacation plans of hundreds of millions of people visiting the parks every year.
Faced with public protest, and tomb warnings that iconic national parks such as Yosemite and the Grand Canyon could be too short to operate safely, the Trump administration reversed the course last week. He supported the plan to eliminate seasonal employees and even increased the number of temporary workers that parks may hire, from approximately 6,300 to up to 7,700.
The changing posts have left the heads of the supervisors turning.
“It's very crazy, because they don't warn us, and they close random things with the 12 -hour notice,” said a park service supervisor who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals. “We would never do that to the public.”
The disorder occurs immediately after almost 15 years without a significant increase in funds in the operational budget of the National Parks Service, said Brengel. “That means that many employees have already done more than one job and have been doing it for years,” he said.
Despite the pressure on the remaining employees to “do more with less”, since the managers of dying companies are so fond of saying that parks themselves have never been more popular.
More than 325 million people visited the National Parks of the United States in 2023. That is considerably more than double the number of people (136 million) that attended professional soccer, baseball, basketball and hockey games combined.
