After a strong public protest on job cuts in the national parks service, and a relentless campaign of outdoor enthusiasts throughout the country, it seems that the Trump administration has reconsidered.
A plan to eliminate thousands of seasonal workers in the beloved federal agency seems to have been reversed.
Last month, the possible seasonal employees, the people who collect the entry rates, clean the paths and bathrooms and help rescue the injured hikers, received electronic emails that said their job offers for the 2025 season had been rescinded .
This week, a memorandum sent from the Department of Interior to parks service officials said the agency could hire 7,700 seasonal employees this year, compared to the approximately 6,300 that have been hired in recent years.
If it is completely implemented, that would be a remarkable exception to the freezing of contracting of the entire government imposed when the Trump administration amounted to the federal bureaucracy, threatening to eliminate the entire agencies, offering “deferred resignation” to almost all federal workers and shooting tens of thousands of thousands of career employees.
The reprieve for the Parks is “definitely a victory,” said Kristen Brengel, senior vice president of government affairs of the conservation organization of the non -profit national parks, which obtained a copy of the memorandum that was shared with the Times.
And it is a testimony of “defenders, rangers and all the others who have been shouting from the top of the mountain that we need these restored positions,” said Brengel.
The memorandum approached only temporary seasonal employees. He said nothing about the approximately 1,000 members of the permanent workforce of the National Parks Service that were fired on Friday. They were included in the multi -management purge of the administration of tens of thousands of federal test employees, mostly people in the first years of their careers that have less labor protections than more experienced employees. Test employees represent approximately 5% of full -time personnel in the parks service.
“We need to continue pressing until we restore all the positions for the parks service and obtain an exemption from the parks service in general,” said Brengel.
Parks service officials did not respond to a request for comments.
After Friday, some have called the “Valentine's Day Massacre”, Parks employees and outdoor enthusiasts resorted to social networks, called their representatives of Congress and buttoned anyone who listened to in a campaign in a campaign coordinated to restore jobs in what could be said that it is possible. most popular agency.
The National Parks of the United States, including Yosemite, Joshua Tree and the Grand Canyon, attracted more than 320 million visitors in 2023, and have been the environment of innumerable family vacations for generations of Americans.
After Yosemite's maintenance worker, Olek Chmura, went to Instagram to ask if he and his modestly paid colleagues were really an example of Trump's collapsed spending type of waste and his designated efficiency expert, Elon Musk, they claim that they are trying to eliminate.
“I win a little more than $ 40,000 a year; Raspe S— Off whys with a putty knife almost every day, ”Chmura wrote. “Somehow, I am the goal.”
Like many other social networks Cris de Coeur, Chmura thought that he would get an approval of some comprehensive friends and then be lost in the vast sea of anguish online.
I was wrong.
Earlier this week, he had become an unexpected poster and de facto spokesman for the outrage that millions of people feel, on both sides of the hall, which treasures the parks of the United States.
Suddenly I was juggling with the interview requests of all the media organizations I had heard about, and some who had probably not. Fox, NBC, local newspapers, even Skynews of Great Britain. A photogenic patch of the Yosemite Valley, with El Capitan's rocky face in the background, had become his personal television study.
Upon arriving on Wednesday afternoon, he said he had already conducted several interviews that day. “I am unemployed,” he joked, “and this is, as, the busiest day of my life.”
Originally from Cleveland, Chmura, 28, caught the insect of climbing in rock and made a pilgrimage to the classic cliffs in the United States, keeping the best for the end: Yosemite.
“This is where I want to live, you know. This is where I want to age, and this is something like the place that I will spend the rest of my life, ”said Chmura.
Like so many “Earth Bag” climbers self -described in Yosemite, a couple of years went by doing strange jobs to reach the end of the month before being hired by the parks service. It meant scraping toilets, collecting used diapers and “rubber brightness” from the bathroom floors, he said. But it was still more or less the holy grail of the works for a passionate scaller.
“It was literally a dream come true,” Chmura said.
Then, when the Trump administration arrived with its crusade of cutting and burning against the Federal Labor Force, it was stunned and disconsolate to be dragged by it.
“I really don't understand why they are attacking the working -class Americans who never took these jobs to enrich,” he said. “It is extremely confusing. Why us? “
Ohio's conservative friends, who have seen him on Instagram and television, approached and said: “This is not what I voted, this is … crazy,” said Chmura.
Because he was a full -time full -time employee, Chmura's work is not among those restored. But he hopes that the pressure of the public and the elected representatives can also change the course in their favor.
Meanwhile, for parks supervisors, uncertainty continues. Two who asked for anonymity because they fear that reprisals said they had received permission to start reacting seasonal employees. They said they are trying to act quickly, because nobody knows when the administration guide could suddenly change.
“Human Resources officers in federal agencies, and particularly in parks, probably have the worst work in the United States at this time,” said Tim Whitehouse, executive director of non -profit public employees for environmental responsibility. “They are dealing with unprecedented chaos levels.”
