Park Service Is Left Short-Staffed in Peak Travel Season
The park service, which manages 433 sites and 85 million acres, has lost nearly a quarter of its permanent staff since the beginning of the Trump administration, according to a new report from the National Parks Conservation Association, a nonprofit organization that focuses on protecting the park system.
The agency is also far behind on hiring temporary employees to support the busy summer season, already well underway.
In one of his earliest actions, Mr. Trump cut 1,000 employees from the National Park Service. Thousands of others have left voluntarily under pressure to resign or retire. The cuts to the work force are part of a governmentwide effort to shrink the number of federal employees and eliminate programs, and in some cases, entire agencies.
'National parks cannot properly function at the staffing levels this administration has reduced them to,' Theresa Pierno, the head of the National Parks Conservation Association, said in a statement on Thursday. 'And it's only getting worse.'
The cuts keep coming. The administration requested about one-third less for its 2026 budget compared with what it received in 2025.
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