National Parks brace for full scope of DOGE firings. How retired ranger is trying to help

Bill Wade did not begin to grasp the full weight of the Trump administration’s National Park Service firings until a copy of a young ranger’s termination letter landed in his email inbox late in the afternoon on Feb. 14.

He had planned for a leisurely day of paperwork in his home office in Marana, Arizona, a picturesque desert community surrounded by the iconic cacti of Saguaro National Park and the reddened peaks of the Ironwood Forest.

As executive director of the Association of National Park Rangers, which represents both current and former employees, Wade was in charge of most budgetary decisions. He leaned back in his leather office chair, the springs squeaking, and rubbed the creases along his tanned forehead.

The son of a ranger who himself worked for nearly 30 years at some of the nation’s iconic monuments and parks, retiring in 1997 as superintendent of Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, Wade was monitoring a drumbeat of unsettling news. Already, the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency had fired more than 1,000 probationary employees from the Department of Veterans Affairs and 5,400 probationary workers from the Defense Department.

Wade knew it was only a matter of time before DOGE targeted the Park Service as part of its broad reductions in the federal workforce.

Then came what was later known as the “Valentine’s Day Massacre.”

Other emails started to trickle in. Wade grew increasingly distressed as he read each one. DOGE had given terminated employees less than two hours to gather their belongings and leave their park.

Around 1,000 probationary National Park Service employees — those with less than two years of service time, thus lacking employment protections — were sent the same email: “The Department determined that you have failed to demonstrate fitness or qualifications for continued employment because your subject matter knowledge skills, and abilities do not meet the Department’s current needs.”

More than a month later, a San Francisco judge ruled that the DOGE firings were illegal and ordered that the probationary employees be reinstated. Although they retained their jobs, the damage was done — many park employees either already found other positions or were unwilling to return due to fears of future layoffs.

In July, the Supreme Court set aside the ruling and has directed federal agencies, including the national park service, to prepare for large-scale reductions in force. Uncertainty remains around whether the national parks will ever return to what was deemed by historian Wallace Stegner as “America’s best idea.”

Wade’s inbox filled with emails from board members who shared his shock at the scope of the firings. Roughly 5% of the Park Service workforce was let go. Just over 80 of those rangers were based in California.

Clenching his jaw and jabbing at his keyboard, Wade drafted a mass email to all 800 members of his organization to share the news and to offer support.

These were his people, part of an extended family he’d been born into.

When he was 5, John William “Bill” Wade started kindergarten in Mesa Verde National Park’s one-room schoolhouse. At 8, his play time involved joining his dad on horseback for hunting patrols, ensuring that no hunters illegally crossed park borders. At 13, he camped in the dusty cliff dwellings under never-ending stars. He joined the ranks at Mount Rainier in his early 20s, learning survival skills and safety training.

Now at 84, Wade could not sit back and watch his beloved Park Service get dismantled. He and his fellow board members began plotting.

Emails bounced back and forth between board members.

Wade’s unpaid position stretched far beyond the usual 25 hours a week as he became a point person for reporters and others seeking information about what was happening in the parks. The Trump administration had instructed park staff to dodge questions about the firings by using specific talking points, leaving Wade to rely on anecdotal information from rangers. His status as a retiree freed him to speak without fear of retribution.

After nearly two weeks of hearing from concerned rangers and park supporters, it was time for the 11 board members — some of them still park employees — to gather for their monthly meeting on Zoom. In some ways, it was business as usual, as discussions ranged from the budget to the annual member gathering dubbed the Ranger Rendezvous.

Except, the collective anger for the fired rangers was palpable.

But there was also a resolute commitment to help. Through their furious exchanges of emails, they arrived at a plan to tap into an emergency relief fund the board had set up three years earlier to help victims of natural disasters.

Affected rangers would only have to fill out a brief Google form to request financial help. Wade would be in charge of dispensing the funds. The only requirement would be for the ranger to be an Association of National Park Rangers member (the group is now offering a free one-year membership for those who cannot afford the $50 fee.)

Funding came from crowdsourced donations, including from former and current rangers. The Hello in There Foundation, a nonprofit created in memory of musician John Prine, sold items printed with Prine’s lyrics to raise money for the parks, with some of it going to the relief fund.

In a unanimous decision, the board expanded the fund to include those impacted by the firings. The fund was established three years earlier in response to rangers losing their homes from wildfires and hurricanes. Despite advertising across ranger Facebook groups, on Instagram and in the association’s monthly newsletters, nobody took advantage, according to Wade.

But only days after they changed the bylaws to encompass the newly fired rangers, Wade began reading through the requests. One ranger was asking for $700 to help cover his rent. Another sought money to help with utilities. And then more emails came.

How parks are coping with staff cuts

Since January, the Trump administration has pushed nearly 1/4 of of permanent park staff out of the parks, the National Parks Conservation Association, a park advocacy group, estimates.

“This puts our natural resources at risk, our wildlife, our historical sites, but also the public,” said Dennis Arguelles, the Conservation Association’s Southern California director. “We’re talking about fewer rangers to provide public safety, emergency services or to monitor trails for damage.”

Wade expects the park service will lose as much as a third of their current budget over the next year, impacting park operating hours, maintenance and possibly emergency response. It will be part of the Interior Department’s budget, the entity that governs the parks.

The staffing reductions were initially delayed by a federal judge who ruled that the Trump administration acted unlawfully in requiring the staffing reductions, preventing any further layoffs through May 23. But when the reduction-in-force orders were cleared by the Supreme Court in July, uncertainty spread throughout the parks.

In February, the Trump administration not only fired 1,000 probationary workers, but also instituted hiring freezes for both seasonal and permanent positions. Although the probationary workers were offered their jobs back, the uncertainty around job stability left some rangers unwilling to return, while many others had already found alternate employment.

Following public outrage, the administration has since paused the hiring freeze for seasonal workers. All seasonal positions were restored, but the roles are normally filled in December. The delay in onboarding left many parks uncertain if they would have enough time to prepare for the busy summer season.

Since then, the park service has only managed to bring on 4,500 of the 8,000 employees the administration promised to hire, according to the Conservation Association. This has left the parks even more understaffed than previously expected.

The hiring freeze is still in effect for permanent positions, and has been extended until October . Yet, the Trump administration continues to pressure thousands of park employees to retire or resign.

Many workers accepted the offer of deferred resignation — deemed buyouts or early retirement — from the government, leaving many positions unfilled. In January, the federal government offered to pay park employees until the end of September if they agreed to resign. Alternatively, the employees could stay on staff without assurance of long-term employment.

“The ones that are retired say they are glad I’m retired,” said Roger Goldberg, a retired park ranger who now volunteers at Muir Woods National Monument and Alcatraz Island.

Soon after the deferred resignation offers were sent out, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum ordered that all parks must “remain open and accessible” and they must submit operating hours, trail closures and anything else that may impact visitor experience for review.

“They want to make sure there is no impact on the public that would reflect poorly on them in the media,” Arguelles said.

To comply, rangers are being spread too thin to cover the missing staff. This has jeopardized the parks’ long-term planning abilities including educational programs and scientific research. For example, Pinnacles National Park canceled all ranger programs until further notice.

“We end up managing the facade to make the park look good to the visitor, but the parts that make the park, the park — its natural and cultural resources — get ignored,” former Superintendent of the Channel Islands Russell Galipeau said. “When those go away, you have to wonder, what’s the purpose of the park?”

Staff are now being pulled from guiding hikes and conducting environmental studies to cover shifts outside of their jobs like cleaning bathrooms, taking out trash and watching the front gates, the Conservation Association’s Sierra Nevada and Clean Air Program Manager Mark Rose said.

“We are seeing dozens and dozens of biologists, air quality specialists, water specialists and habitat restoration specialists who have been lost or transferred from their normal day job where they often have a Ph.D level education and are now on toilet-cleaning duties,” Rose said.

The environmental employees are some of the most essential to the parks’ mission. The parks act as a benchmark to monitor for environmental concerns, Galipeau said. With such a limited staff, something was bound to take a hit. Since the parks are now prioritizing visitor safety and experience, many of the environmental monitoring programs have been paused.

Park roles inherently require flexibility.

When a natural disaster like a wildfire breaks out, employees get pulled in to help fight fires and to plan fire mitigation efforts. They may also get pulled to help with search-and-rescue or law enforcement.

Nobody minds helping for a little while, Galipeau said, but morale depreciates when it becomes the new focus of their job.

The National Park Service is now allowed to hire 50 employees in charge of cleaning the parks, collecting admission fees and educating visitors, the Associated Press found. Although every employee helps, it is still not enough to cover the loss.

Because of the lack of staff, the future of park education programs is uncertain. As part of the National Park Service’s mission, parks are required to develop interpretive programs that will engage visitors with park resources and foster a sense of stewardship.

“We try to help them access parks and become engaged so they fall in love with the parks,” Arguelles said.

This year, however, rangers are uncertain if they will have the capacity to run daily programs, nevermind to develop new ones, Virginia Tech Environmental Conservation Professor Marc Stern said.

Stern is working with a team of graduate students to research the effectiveness and impact of the interpretive programs at national parks across the country. Over the 2024 summer season, the team visited over 50 park sites and Stern hoped to visit a similar number again in 2025.

Now, over a dozen parks have had to renege from the project because the rangers were unsure that they would have the staff to run enough educational programs over the summer.

“Park Service staff are trying their best to still do good things, but it sure isn’t easy,” Stern said. “It seems almost everyday there’s some new surprise that makes work a little harder.”

Parks have also had to turn away community and youth group visits because of the staffing shortages. The groups can still visit on their own, but before this year, they would be able to arrange special ranger tours or special access to group campgrounds, according to Arguelles.

On top of the day-to-day stress on the parks, the staffing shortages have stretched to create a leadership vacuum, which disrupts long-term park planning.

Park advocates can only estimate how many of the around 433 superintendent positions — the highest-ranking leaders in individual parks — remain unfilled. Arguelles gauges as many as 100 of those positions are empty. Because of the freeze, any superintendents who retire or switch jobs are unable to be replaced. This includes Yosemite National Park, one of the busiest parks across the nation, whose superintendent retired in February.

Without a superintendent, the park’s internal operations, community relationships and government communication will take a hit. The leadership drain has pushed institutional knowledge out of the parks, raising concerns about the parks’ livelihood.

National Parks Traveler — a news outlet that covers the national parks — found that roughly a third of the parks’ senior leadership positions are empty following the retirements and resignations of key individuals, including the deputy director, the associate director for interpretation, education and volunteers and two regional directors. The Interior Department told the National Park Service that it is not looking to fill those positions.

“All these things combined make it difficult to see yourself having a future in the National Park Service,” said Arguelles.

Some parks in California are operating at 30% less staff than they need, putting natural resources, wildlife, historic sites and public safety at risk, Arguelles said.

Park understaffing is nothing new. The National Park Conservation Association found that visitation has increased 16% since 2010, while staffing has fallen 20% in the same time period. Park visitation hit a record high at 331.9 million visitors in 2024, spiking concerns that with an even lower staff, the parks will be unable to accommodate the influx of visitors this summer.

How rangers can get financial help

As part of his outreach, Wade designed his Google form to include no more than eight questions. He wanted it to be easy, knowing that asking for help came from a place of wounded pride.

“What is the minimum amount of money you need to help with immediate, critical needs? Specifically, what will you be using this money for if you receive it? If you are approved for funding, how do you want the funds to be sent to you?” the form asked.

He aimed to distribute the money via Zelle within a few hours of receiving a request.

The fund has helped eight rangers so far, Wade said. They never asked for anything more than necessary. Never more than a couple hundred dollars.

Wade continued watching the news, seeing mass protests in support of the park employees. His cell phone rarely stopped ringing. Reporters asked if he knew specific numbers as to who was fired.

“We can only estimate,” he said reluctantly. The Trump administration had instructed the Park Service to withhold information about what positions were let go.

In May, 15 park advocates gathered around a conference table at the Association of National Park Rangers offices in Washington, D.C. Over the next day and a half, they began to develop a strategic plan for how to inform and respond to what he called the Trump administration’s “attitude” towards the parks.

They wrote two briefing papers, around two pages each, to detail their concerns regarding visitor services, natural resource management and overall protection of the parks. Wade hopes the plan will push Congress to support the parks.

At the end of their meeting, Wade shook hands with his fellow park advocates and headed back to his hotel. He plopped at a gray hotel desk and pulled up his email.

Another ranger had just sent in a request for help.