It appears that the Trump presidency has reconsidered following a public uproar about job breaks at the National Park Service and a continuous advertising campaign from outdoors enthusiasts all over the country.
The favorite national agency’s controversial plan appears to have been reversed in order to eliminate a number of seasonal workers.
Last month, future annual employees — the people who collect the entry fees, clean the trails and restrooms and help save injured hikers — , received emails , saying their employment offers for the 2025 period had been rescinded.
A letter from the Department of Interior to garden service officials this week stated that the company may employ 7,700 annual employees this season, an increase from the almost 6,300 who have been hired in recent years.
If fully implemented, that would be a notable exception to the government-wide hiring freeze imposed when the Trump presidency clamped down on the federal government, threatening to remove entire organizations, offering “deferred withdrawal” to about all federal workers and firing tens of thousands of job employees.
The reprieve for the parks is “definitely a win”, said Kristen Brengel, senior vice president of government affairs for the nonprofit , National Parks Conservation Association, which obtained a copy of the memo that was shared with the Los Angeles Times.
And it’s a testament to “advocates, park rangers, and everyone else who has been yelling from the top that we need these positions restored,” Brengel said.
The memo addressed only temporary seasonal employees. The roughly 1, 000 permanent employees of the National Park Service who were fired on Friday were not mentioned in the statement. They were a part of the administration’s multiagency purge of tens of thousands of probationary federal employees, the majority of whom were in their early careers and had fewer job protections than more seasoned employees. About 5 % of the full-time staff at the park service work in probationary conditions.
” We need to keep pushing until we get an exemption from the park service in general and restore all of the positions for the park service,” Brengel said.
Park service representatives did not respond to a request for comment.
Parks employees and outdoor enthusiasts took to social media to call their congressional representatives and buttonhole anyone who would listen in a coordinated effort to restore jobs at what is arguably the most well-known agency. The firings on Friday have been dubbed the” Valentine’s Day massacre.”
More than 320 million people visited America’s national parks in 2023, including Yosemite, Joshua Tree, and the Grand Canyon, and have been the setting for countless family vacations for generations of Americans.
Olek Chmura, a Yosemite maintenance employee, was fired on February 14 when he and his modestly paid coworkers were exposed on Instagram to find out what kind of wasteful spending Trump and Elon Musk, his appointed efficiency expert, claim they are trying to stop.
” I make just over$ 40, 000 a year, scrape s — off toilets with a putty knife nearly every day”, Chmura wrote. ” Somehow, I’m the target”.
Like so many other social media cris de coeur, Chmura assumed his would receive a few kind words from some supportive friends before becoming mired in the sea of online angst.
He was wrong.
By the early hours of this week, he had become a de facto spokesman for the outrage felt by millions of Americans who value America’s parks from all sides of the aisle.
He was suddenly juggling interview requests from almost every media outlet he’d ever heard of, and perhaps not even a few. Fox, NBC, local newspapers, even SkyNews from Britain. A photogenic patch of Yosemite Valley, with the soaring rock face of El Capitan in the background, had become his personal TV studio.
Reached Wednesday afternoon, he said he’d already done several interviews that day. ” I’m unemployed”, he joked,” and this is, like, the busiest day of my life”.
Originally from Cleveland, Chmura, 28, caught the rock-climbing bug and made a pilgrimage to classic crags across the U. S., saving the best for last: Yosemite.
” This is where I want to live, you know. This is the place where I want to get older, and it’s kind of where I’ll spend the rest of my time, Chmura said.
Before getting hired by the park service, he spent a few years doing odd jobs in Yosemite, like so many self-described “dirt bag” climbers who have self-described as “dirt bag” climbers. It meant scraping toilets, picking up used diapers and” squeegee-ing urine” from bathroom floors, he said. However, it was still essentially the holy grail of jobs for a devoted climber.
” It was, quite literally, a dream come true”, Chmura said.
He was shocked and heartbroken to be swept up in the Trump administration’s slash-and-burn saga against the federal workforce.
” I just really don’t understand why they’re attacking working-class Americans who never took these jobs to get rich”, he said. ” It’s just extremely confusing. Why us”?
Conservative friends from Ohio, who have seen him on Instagram and TV, have reached out and said,” This is not what I voted for, this is … insane”, Chmura said.
Because he was a probationary full-time employee, Chmura’s job is not among those being restored. But he holds out hope that pressure from the public, and elected representatives, might turn the tide in his favor, too.
Meanwhile, for parks supervisors, the uncertainty continues. Two people who feared reprisal claimed they had been given permission to begin hiring seasonal employees. They stated that they are attempting to act quickly because no one knows when the administration’s instructions might suddenly change.
” Human resource officers in federal agencies, and particularly the parks, probably have the worst job in America right now”, said Tim Whitehouse, executive director of the nonprofit , Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. ” They’re dealing with unprecedented levels of chaos”.
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