Former GNP superintendent: NPS, USFS personnel cuts not sustainable
Laura Lundquist
(Missoula Current) Almost three weeks have passed since Elon Musk fired thousands of public land employees, and although problems have started to surface in national parks and forests, they’re only a hint of the full damage that could follow, according to a roundtable discussion.
On Wednesday evening, three U.S. Senators held a roundtable discussion with three former federal employees and a fishing outfitter on how the loss of so many federal employees will leave public lands in the lurch and cause ripple effects through nearby communities and ultimately the country.
“There’s a lot of perception out there that something’s really being accomplished in terms of the budget by all these firings. But I’ve done the math - if we fired half of the federal employees, that would equal about 1.8% of the federal budget, forgetting about all the services they provide,” said Sen. Angus King Jr., I-Maine. “What’s going on here is a sham. It’s a performance that’s intended to lead people to believe that something’s really happening with regard to the budget and the deficit, when in reality, it’s simply cutting government services, it’s disrupting people’s lives. The point I’m trying to make is what’s the point?”
On Feb. 14, the Trump administration fired approximately 3,400 probationary employees from the U.S. Forest Service, in addition to 1,000 from the National Park Service and 420 from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It's estimated that more than 20,000 employees throughout the federal government, almost all probationary workers, have lost their jobs and another 75,000 have taken a buyout, the “Fork in the Road” that Musk offered.
A week later, the Trump administration backpedaled regarding the National Park Service, restoring 50 jobs and allowing the hiring of up to 7,700 seasonal workers.
But that still leaves the National Park Service in bad shape because the agency was already understaffed and seasonal workers can’t replace permanent staff, said former Glacier National Park superintendent Jeff Mow. Mow is now with the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, a group of mainly Park Service retirees.
Mow said superintendents and managers are scrambling, trying to figure out which workers they still have and which they might lose to the buy-out and to the upcoming reduction in force that was just announced. In addition, managers just learned two days ago that the Trump administration is terminating Park Service building leases and shuttering 34 offices that house visitor centers, law enforcement offices and other services across the country. So far none are in Montana, but one in Colorado houses the Natural Resource Stewardship and Science Directorate, which provides scientific, technical, and administrative support to national parks for the management of natural resources.
“The ripple effect of so much chaos and uncertainty is palpable for park staffs, partners and surrounding gateway communities,” Mow said. “All the staffing impacts come with the backdrop of the parks being understaffed already. I would add that while I was superintendent of Glacier National Park, there was always a background vacancy of 10 to 15% at any point in time as we tried to fill positions of those headed out the door. As the Park Service prepares plans for an upcoming reduction in force, there are scenarios that predict staff losses of up to 40%. That level of reduction along with the continued hiring freeze will be crippling.”
Parks are already announcing reduced hours, services and closures. Long queues of cars were stuck outside Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, Yosemite in California, and Zion in Utah over President's Day weekend, one day after the mass firing, due to a lack of toll operators to check people in at the gate. Cascades, Mount Rainier and Olympic national parks lost six employees each, so visitor centers and campgrounds may close, guided tours will be cut back or canceled, emergency response times will drop, and visitor services like safety advice, trail recommendations, and interpretation will be unavailable. Some national monuments have announced they’ll be open only on certain days of the week.
Mow said the state of Montana, and particularly the small gateway communities around Glacier and Yellowstone Park, stand to lose a lot of money when park visitation drops due to reduced opportunity. Glacier National Park accounts for more than $400 million in direct spending to the state of Montana.
Nick Streit, Taos, N.M., fishing outfitter, said the permitting process for public land recreational activities is a long one, and now parks and forests have only one person handling permitting. That means some businesses may not get the permits they need to keep going.
Lydia Jones was a lead park ranger for Badlands National Park before she was fired. She had worked seasonally since 2021 and had finally gotten a permanent position but was still on probation. In addition to conducting visitor education and seasonal employee orientation, she was one of three certified EMT’s in that region of South Dakota, a qualification not required for her job but which was immensely important to park visitors.
“I was hired for my qualifications but I think I did play an important part serving as an EMT at the park. There were days when I was the only EMT on staff at the park, and I was the first one to respond to emergencies on many occasions. The terrain there is very difficult,” Jones said. “The loss of this position had a great personal impact on me. But beyond that, my greatest concern is the impact that I see this having on public lands as a whole and the public that visits.”
Mow said that in the past, the Park Service often relied on its “militia” in the early stages of an emergency. The militia are staff who aren’t specifically first-responders but they are trained to deal with emergency situations and often help with evacuations and even some fire suppression. Staff who have training and experience in wildfire situations earn a red card and can end up working various roles in fire camps. But now, some of those people have been lost, even though the Trump administration has said firefighters weren’t affected by the termination orders.
“In the Northern Rockies, we’re worried about the ability to respond to thunderstorms with multiple lightning strikes that are so frequent in our area in August, we depend a lot on our collateral-duty red-carded staff from both the Park Service and the Forest Service, who are so integral to initial attack, that first 24-hour period. If you can put lightning strikes out in that first 24-hour period you can prevent them from becoming larger fires,” Mow said.
The newer seasonal employees that will eventually be hired won’t have that red-card experience and many won’t have much experience at all. They’ll need supervision, but Mow said having one permanent employee try to manage 19 seasonal workers is unsustainable.
Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., said the Trump administration’s intent was to make all public land management unsustainable in order to justify selling off public land to private interests.
“Laying off the people who care for these lands is Step 1. But it’s just Step 1,” Heinrich said. “This isn’t careless - it’s intentional. The architects of the public land transfer effort - rebranded under Project 2025 - they want to be able to say that our public lands are going unmanaged so they can go ahead with Step 3: Transferring our birthright (public land) to the states.”
Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., said he, Heinrich and King would fight against public land transfer to keep federal lands for future generations and to try to get federal jobs back for those who had them illegally taken away. But the minority party doesn’t currently have much power.
“If we do everything we can as electants, and if the court does everything as it should to enforce the law, and if the public rises up and says ‘Hell, no, we love our public lands and we don’t want them devastated in this fashion,’ then I think, collectively, we have a good chance,” Merkley said. “We need colleagues across the aisle. There are plenty of colleagues across the aisle who treasure public lands but we need them to stand up and join us.”
Montana’s delegation is unlikely to join. After President Donald Trump’s speech Tuesday night, Sen. Steve Daines told NBC Montana that he supports the federal cuts.“I chair the National Parks committee in the U.S. Senate to make sure that as we look at the downsizing going on that we won’t affect serving the public. Especially protecting our public lands,” Daines told NBC Montana.
On Wednesday, the Merit System Protection Board, a board that reviews the firings of federal employees, ordered the U.S. Department of Agriculture to reinstate fired Forest Service probationary employees for 45 days while a challenge to the terminations plays out.
Contact reporter Laura Lundquist at lundquist@missoulacurrent.com.