Trump administration rushes to reduce costs Eliminate federal workEven people who work in national parks – in the country's most beloved and low politically politicalized corporations – can be found directly in cross -chairs.
Last week, seasonal workers working on 433 national parks and historical sites, including Yosemity, Death Valley and Joshua Tree, began to receive emails that the 2025 season was “canceled”.
The move caused panic in the lineup of park staff, and blurred hundreds of millions of people visiting parks every year. There are hundreds of park rangers who respond to medical emergencies in the cutting constituency – and thousands – and the audience center staff and the crew cleaning of bathrooms and plain garbage cans.
In many large and most popular parks, seasonal workers are more than permanent employees all year long, and it is difficult to imagine how the parks work without them, according to a supervisory ranger, not to use his name in fear of retaliation.
“For me, it is impossible to understand that we can run a large park without seasons,” he said. “They are necessary; They run the parks at the functional level. ”
By 2021, the Yosemiti National Park had 741 employees in the summer, according to the National Park Service website, compared to 451 people in the winter off-seas.
Yosemiti's spokesman Scott Gediman did not respond to commentary emails and phone calls. The agency's Washington, DC, and media contacts in the office did not respond.
In addition to the 63 parks named – nine of them are in California, more than any other state – the National Park Service manages the National Memorials, National Historical Sites and National Battlefields. Under its supervision, the total land area is over 85 million acres.
And they are one of the most valuable and beautiful acres in the United States, which attracted more than 325 million viewers in 2023.
Emails that violate work concessions for parks seem to be a paralysis of employees federal organizations, which seem to appear from a vast Trump administration, which is part of an integrated campaign to reduce the federal budget and weaken the bureaucracy – Trump and his supporters Call this as “deep position” -He says he worked behind the scenes to prevent much of his first agenda.
Although many government agencies are inevitably engraved on the country's polarist political tug, there are parks in some public places where all the lines can escape. Are you exhausted by fighting in cable news shows and social media feeds? Go to the camp underneath the stars in Yosemit, or browse between the giant trees in Sikhvoya, or look at the sunrise on the quiet desert on the Joshua tree. What is the still cleansing?
If the hiring freeze is actually, the arrival of a national park bathroom this summer is certainly not sure.
In previous shutdown Budget conflicts of Congress Or the Gov -19 infection, the facilities within the parks were worsening at a dangerous rate. The unauthorized visitors left the human stool in the rivers, once painted the graffiti on beautiful rocks, harassed wild animals and looked like “criminal views” to the toilets.
“It is scary to get the bad things when the places are abandoned without seeing anyone,” he said.
It seems to have been lost in politics, and how much people sacrifice to take the canceled seasonal work. Many workers hope to arrange their entire life around temporary places and eventually turn them into a permanent life. To make sure they are available when the summer tourist season comes back, they are patrolling all kinds of sidewashing and driving ambulances.
When terrible emails began to land in their inbox last week, many workers were wondering whether to cancel the travel plans, lease from leasing and sort other summer jobs.
Park works are not like the path for wealth. The pay is lower than many private sector life, and the home costs are high in the sky in the distant gateway communities on the edges of the parks. People do it because they were children because they were children.
“We will make fun of the sunset,” said the leader's Bill Francis Alliance to protect national parks in the United StatesIt refers to over 3,100 current, former and retired employees and volunteers of the National Park Service.
Prior to retiring as Superintendent of Blue Ridge Parkway in 2013, Francis worked for 41 years of Parks, including Stands at the Shenando National Park.
“We are suspended for a long time and the fact that the parks are going to open,” said Francis, said in the summer.
Worrying when the parks supervisors are not enough staff are not just to create garbage and graphite. This is the safety of the audience. “People are hurt and they are lost,” Francis said, so there should be enough rangers to respond to “when things go wrong”.
There are many hotels and businesses that rely on the park visitors, and by the families who have already booked and operated the hotel in the assumption that the parks will be opened and operated this summer.
Many families he met in his career in his career found a ritual of travel to national parks, which is a way of celebrating one of the essential joys of a United States.
“There are some families that come for decades every year, and they make it a tradition,” Francis said.