Visitors to America’s most beloved public lands could find dirty bathrooms, unmaintained trails and closure signs on visitor centers and campgrounds if a federal hiring freeze does not thaw before hundreds of millions of people flock to national parks for the summer.
The hiring freeze implemented Jan. 20 by President Donald Trump‘s new administration resulted in the U.S. National Park Service rescinding thousands of job offers to the seasonal employees who serve as the backbone of the parks system during its busiest months. Typically, the service hires more than 6,000 seasonal employees across the 433 sites it manages, including Rocky Mountain National Park and 12 other sites in Colorado.
The freeze caused panic among parks advocates, though reporting by The Washington Post on Friday indicated the Trump administration could reinstate some seasonal jobs even as it fired thousands of full-time probationary employees. Plans for reinstating seasonal employees had not been publicly announced by the federal government as of Monday afternoon.
The freeze came at a critical point in the agency’s monthslong hiring process for seasonal employees, said Tracy Coppola, the National Parks Conservation Association’s program manager for Colorado. The agency generally sends job offers in January and February, which gives new hires time to line up travel and housing for the busy season, which begins in the spring.
Even if hiring resumes, Coppola said, the delay could impact how many employees the agency can attract.
“They were supposed to be starting that process already,” she said. “It takes a while to onboard people and find housing — it’s been a mess. There has been no guidance.”
In Colorado, the National Park Service manages four national parks covering 713 square miles: Great Sand Dunes, Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Rocky Mountain and Mesa Verde. The service also manages three historic sites, five national monuments and a national recreation area.
Rocky Mountain was the fifth most-visited national park in 2023 — the most recent year for which numbers were available — when it welcomed more than 4.1 million people.
“The seasonal employees, that’s where the rubber meets the road,” said Sheridan Steele, a former deputy superintendent of the park and a former superintendent of Black Canyon and Curecanti National Recreation Area. “They’re the ones making the emergency search and rescue, doing the trail work.”
“If you don’t have seasonal employees, you’re not cleaning restrooms and you’ll end up closing restrooms,” he said. “Or reducing the hours of a visitor center or closing one. And what about the campgrounds? And on and on.”
Spokespeople for the National Park Service and Rocky Mountain National Park declined interview requests about the impact of hiring and staffing uncertainties. Representatives at the national level did not answer questions about whether the agency is hiring seasonal employees for summer; how it plans to roll out the hiring process, should it begin; whether there will be cuts to the number of seasonal positions; and how many permanent employees accepted a recent offer to resign later this year, in September.
Visitors to the Great Sand Dunes National Park hike the vast space of the dunes on Sunday, October 30, 2022. (Photo by William Woody/Special to The Denver Post)
The agency instead emailed a statement that said it is implementing Trump’s hiring freeze, while noting that the order does allow for some exemptions. The park service did not say which positions those exemptions might cover.
“The NPS is assessing our most critical staffing needs for park operations for the coming season and is working to hire key positions,” the agency said in the emailed statement. “The NPS is committed to protecting public lands, infrastructure and communities while ensuring public access.”
Fearing broad impacts
Seasonal employees at Rocky Mountain National Park work mid-April to mid-October and “provide essential visitor services and carry out critical park operations,” a 2023 news release from park officials states. The positions include park rangers, park guides, fee takers, campground staff, trail crew members, and building and utilities staff and custodians, the release states.
If the park service does not hire seasonal staff — or hires fewer — the impacts could be broad, lawmakers and parks advocates said.
Broken infrastructure will go unrepaired longer. Response times for emergency calls will grow longer. Fewer staff will be available to keep visitors safe and help guide them to activities and hikes appropriate for their skill levels. Restrooms, visitor centers and campgrounds will close if there are not enough employees to maintain them.
The hiring freeze, as well as the specter of buyouts and layoffs across the federal workforce, prompted U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper, a Colorado Democrat, and 21 other senators to send a letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum on Feb. 7. They urged him to reissue seasonal employment offers as well as to rescind deferred resignation and early retirement offers to permanent staff.
Gutting staffing at national parks will devastate local gateway communities — many in rural areas — that rely economically on tourism from the parks, the senators wrote. Park visitors spent $26.4 billion in gateway communities in 2023 and supported an estimated 415,000 jobs, according to the letter.
“Americans showing up to national parks this summer and for years to come don’t deserve to have their vacations ruined by a completely preventable — and completely irresponsible — staffing shortage,” the senators wrote in the letter. “And local economies don’t deserve to have their livelihoods destroyed for political gain.”
Visitors tour the dwellings at Cliff Palace in Mesa Verde National Park on July 12, 2017. (Photo by Joe Amon/The Denver Post)Parks system faces other challenges
Advocates for the parks said the staffing uncertainty comes as the national parks system already faces a trifecta of problems: a reduced workforce, budget cuts, and finding employee housing in remote and expensive resort areas.
Between 2010 and 2023, the staffing in the agency declined 20% — by about 3,500 full-time jobs, according to federal data reviewed by the National Parks Conservation Association. Visitation surged 16% in that same period.
“The National Park Service, the men and women who make up that organization, are under tremendous stress and they have been for some time — it’s only growing,” said Steele, who retired from the parks system in 2015 after 38 years with the agency. “It’s just kind of this vicious circle, as more and more people come to the parks and you have fewer resources to serve them and protect the resources they’re there to see — it just makes it really stressful.”
Layoffs, early retirement and deferred resignations from permanent staff members could impact the long-term resilience of the parks as the climate changes, Coppola said. Scientists at the park service who study climate change, wildfire risk and mitigation are crucial, but those are positions that could be at risk, she said.
“It’s extremely demoralizing and obviously the essence of disrespect to people who have dedicated their careers to protecting these landscapes we love,” Coppola said of the looming threat of layoffs in the federal workforce.
Dismantling parks staffing will do little to fix the national debt and will instead weaken institutions that are a net gain for the economy, Coppola said.
In Colorado alone, she said, national parks hosted 7 million visitors, supported 11,000 jobs and funneled $796 million to local communities in 2023.
“I really think parks have always been a bridge for so many people, no matter how they identify,” Coppola said. “So we’re continuing to fight for that vision because it’s more important now than ever.”
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Originally Published: February 17, 2025 at 2:53 PM MST
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Publish date : 2025-02-17 09:21:00
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