"National park visitors could be confronted by "chaos" this summer if the Trump administration does not lift its hold on season hirings — soon —, says former National Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis.
"It will be chaos. There will be a lot of dirty toilets and a lot of visitors unsatisfied with their experience, and hopefully not too much damage to the resource," Jarvis told the Traveler during a phone call Thursday. "But if you don't have folks on the ground out there, we certainly saw this during the last shutdown [in 2018-19] when they didn't staff the parks, and we saw vandalism, intentional damage."
The ramifications could affect a suite of crucial operations in the parks, everything from plumbing and electrical work in park buildings to critical water testing, snowplowing roads and sanitation treatment, he said.
The National Park Service, like many other federal agencies, has been traumatized by the administration's hiring freeze and "deferred resignation" offer, under which Trump is trying to get federal employees to quit, by promising them pay through September.
The agency already was struggling on a daily basis due to underfunding and lack of personnel prior to the Republican's second term. According to the National Parks Conservation Association, staffing to operate national parks is down 20 percent, or nearly 3,500 full-time jobs, since 2010."
Kurt Repanshek reports for National Parks Traveler February 6, 2025.
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