‘Hire back park staff’: Visitors feel the pinch of Trump’s layoffs at National Park Service
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The visitors who trek to America’s national parks are already noticing the changes, just months after President Donald Trump took office.
“I’ve been visiting national parks for 30 years and never has the presence of rangers been so absent,†one visitor to Zion National Park wrote in National Park Service public feedback obtained by CNN.
The visitor said they saw just one trail crew at the iconic Utah park. There were no educational programs offered at any of the five parks they visited on their trip.
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“Hire back park staff. We need them,†the visitor wrote.
At Yosemite, another visitor said there were no rangers at the Hetch Hetchy reservoir entrance station, preventing visitors from picking up wilderness permits.
“More staff would be a BIG and IMPORTANT improvement,†that visitor wrote.
America’s most treasured national parks are getting crunched by Trump’s government-shrinking layoffs just as the summer travel season gets into full swing.
Top officials vowed to hire thousands of seasonal employees to pick up the slack after the Trump administration fired around 1,000 NPS employees as part of wide-ranging federal firings known as the “Valentine’s Day Massacre.†Department of Interior officials said in a February memo they would aim to hire 7,700 seasonal workers at NPS, and post listings for 9,000 jobs.
But those numbers haven’t materialized ahead July 4th — the parks’ busiest time of the year. Internal National Park Service data provided to CNN by the National Parks Conservation Association shows that about 4,500 seasonal and temporary staff have been hired.
