The following is a report from the Los Angeles Times.
Following a loud public outcry about job cuts at the National Park Service — and a relentless media campaign from outdoors enthusiasts across the country — it looks like the Trump administration has reconsidered.
A plan to eliminate thousands of seasonal workers at the beloved federal agency appears to have been reversed.
Last month, prospective seasonal employees — the people who collect the entrance fees, clean the trails and restrooms and help rescue injured hikers — received emails saying their job offers for the 2025 season had been rescinded.
This week, a memo sent from the Department of Interior to park service officials said the agency could hire 7,700 seasonal employees this year, up from the roughly 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 administration clamped down on the federal bureaucracy, threatening to eliminate entire agencies, offering “deferred resignation” to almost all federal workers and firing tens of thousands of career 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 Assn., which obtained a copy of the memo that was shared with The Times.
And it’s a testament to “advocates, park rangers and everyone else who has been shouting from the mountaintop that we need these positions restored,” Brengel said.
The memo addressed only temporary seasonal employees. It said nothing about the roughly 1,000 members of the National Park Service’s permanent workforce who were fired Friday. They were included in the administration’s multiagency purge of tens of thousands of probationary federal employees, mostly people in the first couple of years of their careers who have fewer job protections than more seasoned employees. Probationary employees represent about 5% of full-time staff at the park service.
“We need to keep pushing until we restore all of the positions for the park service, and get an exemption from the park service in general,” Brengel said.
Park service officials did not respond to a request for comment.
Following the firings Friday, which some have dubbed the “Valentine’s Day massacre,” parks employees and outdoors enthusiasts took to social media, called their congressional representatives and buttonholed anyone who would listen in a coordinated campaign to restore jobs at what is arguably the federal government’s most popular agency.
America’s national parks — including Yosemite, Joshua Tree and the Grand Canyon — attracted more than 320 million visitors in 2023, and have been the settings for countless family vacations for generations of Americans.
