DOGE and the Trump Administration fired roughly 1,000 employees of the National Park Service (NPS) within the last week, as well as an estimated 3,400 employees of the United States Forest Service (USFS). Whether calculated (or not, which is increasingly obvious), the ripple effects on outdoor recreation opportunities have been massive.
Let’s be clear here up front – these layoffs, many of which have been listed as due to ‘underperformance’ despite exemplary performance reports refuting such charges, are upending the livelihoods of thousands of dedicated workers who had chosen to pursue these jobs despite relatively low pay. These folks – the rangers and maintenance workers, trail crews and first responders – are the ones doing the dirty work to keep our National Parks, National Forests, and National Monuments up and running as public goods for everyone.
While the dopes in charge at DOGE and their terribly flawed artificial intelligence have lumped together each government agency as merely a capitalistic ‘bottom line’ institution, neither the NPS nor the USFS have origins as money-making entities. Those departments exist to maintain and provide some of the greatest natural resources our country has to offer for the greater good, but also to ensure that those natural resources don’t directly worsen the society that has risen up around them.
Fire mitigation, for one, is a primary focus of the USFS, especially as fires have raged with increasing fury across the American west in recent dry years.
Entering the park requires staffing, as do visitor centers, youth education, restroom maintenance, accident first response, and countless other tasks. Already we have seen National Parks and Monuments respond to their staffing cuts, with Yosemite delaying the ability to reserve key campgrounds for the summer and Florissant Fossil Beds announcing they’ll be closed two days a week during the summer.
Long lines to enter Grand Canyon National Park have already popped up as there’s simply not enough staff to open all the entrances.
Perhaps most alarming is that emergency response within from rangers within some National Parks almost certainly will be delayed, or even unavailable, according to a press release from the Association of National Park Rangers. Bear encounters, heat exhaustion, search and rescue…all of the above now with significantly less staff on hand to help.
This is normally the time of year when submitting backcountry permit requests to Yosemite, Yellowstone, Glacier, and the like becomes an annual rite for me. The March 1st and March 15th early permit lotteries open, and the chance to land summer backpacking trips through the most beautiful parts of our nation’s glorious National Parks begins.
I’m having a very hard time committing to doing that this year, however.
The system, as currently constructed, has far overasked the remaining staff of these great places. By the time the peak summer hoards descend upon them, the stress on the system – if not corrected by the powers that be – risks not just overwhelming the infrastructure in place, but also expanding the human footprint into areas where it should never be due to lack of resistance.
How many more idiots are going to take selfies with bison if there’s no ranger around to stop them?
How many folks are going to get lost on trails that didn’t have a crew available to clear them this year? Who’s going to go find them when they do?
What is still pulling at my heart strings, though, is the communities that support both the park employees and the millions of visitors that come see them each year – the Estes Park, Colorados, the West Yellowstone, Montanas, the Whitefishes and Moabs and Bryson Cities. These gateway towns provide food, lodging, entertainment, and the economic backbones of tourism season. Avoiding the parks themselves because the parks are overwhelmed trickles down directly to the business owners adjacent to the parks who make the greater experience doable for most who travel from all over the country to see them.
(Not to mention, the remote nature of so many of these parks means that the only other employment opportunities in the areas for the laid-off NPS and USFS employees are jobs with those businesses within those towns, a brutal double-whammy.)
It’s a mess, one whose endgame I don’t yet see.
There’s a hope that some of the laid-off workers might be rehired, or that additional seasonal workers will be picked up to help patch over the void. Given the indiscriminate scythe being wielded by DOGE with zero accountabiilty, though, it’s hard to envision to best and brightest candidates signing up for these jobs given how little security they come with and how fickle they are so obviously viewed by the powers that be.
This is not me saying I don’t intend to put foot on trail this year, or until things get more concretely sorted out. It just means that it will require much more preparation than ever before, with primary evidence on conditions and status updates likely a lot more difficult to come by (or trust) given how weakened the support systems have become.
You’re going to need to do a lot of the work that the rangers typically do for you.
Watch the weather weeks in advance, and learn how to read National Water & Climate Center maps and databases to determine where there will be some water, no water, or too much. Anticipate that the casual 5 mile walk you’ve done before might be covered in avalanche debris or blowdown since nobody’s been out with saws to clean it up for you – and factor in the extra time you’ll need to circumvent it. Know that if you do get hurt or need help in the backcountry, it might take twice as long, three-times as long for someone to be available to assist you, and maybe bring that extra freeze-dried meal on your longer trips.
Carry that extra liter of water. Pack the bigger first aid kit. Know that though the rangers want to help you prepare as best you can, their limited size and scope might mean they haven’t even covered all their own trails to know up to date conditions – and that it isn’t their fault.
Backcountry treks in 2025 – and potentially beyond – just got a lot more difficult to plan. You owe it to yourself to put in that extra work on the front end now that fewer folks will be there to help you down the road.
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