The US Forest Service is firing about 3,400 recent hires while the National Park Service is terminating about 1,000 workers under Donald Trump’s push to cut federal spending and bureaucracy, according to a report on Friday.
The terminations target employees who are in their probationary employment periods, which includes anyone hired less than a year ago, according to Reuters, and will affect sites such as the Appalachian trail, Yellowstone, the birthplace of Martin Luther King Jr and the Sequoia national forest.
The cuts represent about 10% of the Forest Service workforce and about 5% of National Park Service employees, but excludes firefighters, law enforcement and certain meteorologists, as well as 5,000 seasonal workers, from the cutbacks.
“Allowing parks to hire seasonal staff is essential, but staffing cuts of this magnitude will have devastating consequences for parks and communities,” the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) president, Theresa Pierno, said in a statement.
The association warned in a statement this month that staffing levels were not keeping pace with increasing demands on the national park system, which saw 325m visits in 2023 alone – an increase of 13m from 2022.
Send us a tip
If you have information you’d like to share securely with the Guardian about the impact
12 Comments
jauntywundrkind
Parks being unable to handle normal crowds sucks.
Out of control fire seasons due to poorly managed vastly understaffed land is a catastrophe.
What a catastrophic self own, America.
nine_zeros
When everything is secondary to billionaires right to exploit the country for their own greed.
mlhamel
Where are you America? It look like people don’t care ?
cma
Nonmilitary federal employee payroll only makes up ~5% of the budget. This isn't about money.
darknavi
The plays perfectly into the conservative dream to sell off tons of public lands to the private sector.
umeshunni
FYI that these two agencies have about 55000 employees in all, so this is about an 8% RIF
whoitwas
This shit makes me want to cry. I might have to go camp in a tree before all is said and done.
meltyness
Lets go with 'layoff' or 'release' unless that's somehow worse than 'fire' in this context.
Also what if the machinery of this arm of government isn't (currently) optimizing the sum of risk-adjusted damage due to mudslides and fires? How do you propose we start over?
As much as I would like to suspect that "Edward Helmore" might have some background in Civil Engineering or statecraft more generally, it seems he's just a New York-based author who writes for a British publication, maybe he's not the best to defer for about the consequences of this area…? I mean, it's not joke, people lose homes in fires and mudslides, and it's not like Trump doesn't know this, but if the current regime isn't optimally preventing or responding to these, then your options are pretty much to just try again.
Whatarethese
This shit is just getting so exhausting. I really wish congress had an ounce of bravery and say no to his stuff but nope, they are as pathetic as him.
Gud
I have a feeling large parts of this pristine blue and green ball will be further enshittified by the greedy men who rules it.
I was always amazed at how much of the US is national parks, what a treasure for you guys over the pond I thought. My home country also has large swaths of untouched land but my content is way overcrowded.
I feel sorry.
insane_dreamer
Another own goal.
esalman
It's funny (and sad) that the US federal workers are being made to experience the same FUD we immigrants face for years, some for decades, over job security, livelihood, taking care of family etc. That too for absolutely no good reason, given how well the economy is doing.