Following a wave of firings and uncertainty, the Trump administration is looking to hire seasonal employees to fill summer jobs at national parks and has restored some probationary employees, according to organizations affiliated with national parks employees.
The move comes days after positions were eliminated as the new administration continued to make budget cuts to reduce spending across the federal government.
At Mount Rainier National Park in Washington state, the park’s only plumber lost his job, and at Yosemite National Park, the park’s only locksmith was terminated, Wade said.
“He was the keeper of all the keys … and now he’s gone and there’s no one else to pick up those responsibilities,” Wade told The Epoch Times. “It certainly is going to impact the operations of the park for a while until they figure out how to mitigate that issue and deal with it.”
Wade said a few of the probationary employees terminated last week have been rehired.
Neal Desai, the National Parks Conservation Association’s regional director in California, said that parks were notified this week by a memo from the Department of the Interior that they can hire up to 7,700 summer season positions in certain categories.
Wade welcomed both the rehirings and the memo.
“Those two things are obviously good from our standpoint,” Wade said. “The bad news is there still are a large number of those probationary employees out there who have not been restored and have been impacted in various ways.”
The seasonal employees also have to be processed through human resources and undergo background checks. Wade said the process might delay the start date for many of them, which would jeopardize the summer’s busy season.
According to Desai, three categories of employees affected by the recent cuts are equally important to park operations throughout the country.
In Nevada, the Great Basin National Park was missing 20 percent of their workforce after the cuts, and the workforce at parks in California is also down 20 percent, Desai said.
Vacant positions were frozen and not filled, while probationary employees were fired and seasonal help was canceled. While seasonal workers can now be hired, the other two categories of workers still need to be restored, he said.
“We were already in a difficult place, and all these things happened on top of that,” Desai said. “The seasonal employee issue is just one of three things that need to be restored to make the parks work.”
National parks are also concerned that they might not be able to find seasonal workers this late in the process, he said.
“What we saw last week, which was heartbreaking, was people being told in boilerplate cookie cutter language, you’re not useful here,” Desai told The Epoch Times. “So, what does that say to recruitment of seasonal employees and people?”
Rick Mossman, president of the Association of National Park Rangers, said Feb. 18 several safety issues could result from the terminations.
Yosemite National Park and the federal National Parks Service did not respond to requests for comment by publication time.
