National Parks Service is asking workers to help them make layoffs

While the 1,000 National Park Service probationary workers fired in February 2025 were eventually reinstated to comply with a judicial order, the threat of layoffs and reductions still looms under the new Trump administration and through power granted to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

“It’s not going to be great out there this year,” former NPS Director Jonathan Jarvis said, arguing that staff cuts will cause everything from longer lines at park entrances to dirty bathrooms and slower emergency response. “It’s going to be a disappointment, I think, to the public, and a potential impact to the resources.”

“I am tired of waking up every morning at 2 a.m. wondering how I am going to provide for my family if I lose my job,” wrote Brian Gibbs, a park ranger whose letter on how he was affected by the cuts ended up going viral. “I am tired of wiping away my wife’s tears and reassuring her that things will be OK for us and our growing little family that she’s carrying.” 

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The Department ‘continues to evaluate workforce optimization opportunities’

As first reported by local Californian outlet SFGate, workers at national parks across the country received a management email asking them to submit their resumes to help the NPS “evaluate workforce optimization opportunities” (i.e., determine whether they should be fired). 

Screenshots of the email show that it was sent by Rita Moss, an NPS associate director for workforce and inclusion at the Park Service.

Related: An emotional letter from a national park ranger goes viral

“The Department continues to evaluate workforce optimization opportunities,” Moss wrote. “This includes plans for reductions-in-force, with exemptions for positions that are critical to public safety.”

While White House representatives have previously used this term to refer to jobs that oversee emergency response and law and immigration enforcement, no examples on which jobs at the NPS would be affected were provided.

In some cases, employees who had worked at the NPS for years were asked to create and submit a resume to show their “experience.”

While the Trump administration has been obscure about how many jobs it cut, data from the Department of the Interior, which includes the NPS, shows that it currently has 2,400 fewer employees than it did in 2024.

Employees received email asking them to submit resume showing what they do

Amid the job cuts, parks like Yosemite and Grand Canyon have been seeing long lines at entrances and have put off accepting booking reservations for campgrounds until much later in the year as they waited for federal guidance.

Utah’s Arches National Park recently closed some bathrooms due to lack of staff around to keep them clean, while Saguaro National Park can only keep its visitors center open on certain days of the week for similar reasons of understaffing.

More on national parks:

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• Multiple national parks warn of similar danger
• One of the biggest crimes committed in a national park is solved

“It’s going to have impacts on everything from running the budget right at every national park to being the ranger who’s there to help a family find someone who may have gotten lost on a park trail,” Christine Lehnertz, who heads the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, told news outlet Nexstar on April 19.

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