Mass firings, decades of neglect, and creeping privatization are dismantling America’s best idea.

Author’s Note: I reported and wrote this essay in May of 2025. Since then, the situation at the National Park Service has worsened. Staff continue to do more with less and are now enduring the second-longest government shutdown in U.S. history. The systemic issues documented here remain urgent. If you’d like to learn more or get involved, the National Parks Conservation Association is a great place to start.

Valentine’s Day Massacre

Six weeks into her dream job at the National Park Service (NPS), Alexandria Hamlin was fired. Freshman year, she knew she wanted to wear the NPS uniform—to serve public lands. She moved from Virginia to Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield in Missouri to work as a Visual Information Specialist – designing multimedia projects, updating the park’s website, and supporting school programs. She was fired on Valentine’s Day for ‘low performance’—before receiving a performance review.

Alexandria has a dog named Ginny – short for Virginia – and a sunset tattoo on her left arm. When I asked why she thought Civil War battlefields still mattered, she said, “If we start losing pieces of history, it’s going to repeat itself. It shows how quickly we can fall into anger and hurt.”

Alexandria’s firing wasn’t isolated. The night she was let go, called the “Valentine’s Day Massacre” among rangers, a snowplow operator at Sequoia National Park was fired—during a snowstorm. Katie Clevenger, a program archaeologist at Yosemite National Park, sent frantic, info-dumping emails to colleagues—passing on critical information on the status of her cultural projects in case she was fired. She was.

They are among nearly a thousand permanent public stewards cut from the NPS—part of a sweeping assault on public lands in the name of efficiency. These are people who answered the call to serve a project larger than themselves, only to find that the institutions they believe in may not believe in them.

What’s being dismantled isn’t just an essential workforce, it’s the very idea that there are things worth caring for collectively, as a civic responsibility. Parks were never about efficiency. They’re about meaning.

Imagine you're a young person. You’re searching for something beyond the endless churn of digital marketing selling charcoal face masks and bagel guillotines. Then you visit Canyonlands National Park and meet a ranger. Standing perched on the sheer sandstone cliffs that frame the Island in the Sky mesa, the ranger’s confidence and genuine enthusiasm pull you in. Using a simple tape measure, the ranger helps you grasp geological time—each centimeter equals ten million years. Suddenly, Earth's ancient history clicks. You gaze out over the twisting Green River below and understand how it shaped the nested red canyons.

Environmental crises feel less overwhelming because here’s someone doing something about it: teaching others to understand and care. You’re inspired to serve public lands. You study hard, navigate the byzantine federal hiring process, and finally land your first role with the NPS. Then your job is deleted.

*Protester at Muir Woods National Monument, March 2025. Photo by Trail Crew Stories.*

Bipartisan Legacy

National Parks can’t take care of themselves without people. They never could. Each generation decides to steward them. It’s a choice we face again and again.

For over a century, public lands have been a uniting force in American Politics. In 1872, Ulysses S. Grant, a Republican, inked the bill creating the world’s first National Park, Yellowstone. At the start of the 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt, another Republican, dramatically expanded the parks system—arguing that the National Parks are special because they preserve these lands for all people, not just the wealthy. Ronald Reagan, a conservative icon, furthered protection for our national forests and wild areas. In his 1984 State of the Union, he declared “Preservation of our environment is not a liberal or conservative challenge, it’s common sense.”

The first Trump administration carried this bipartisan tradition forward, signing the 2020 Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA)—the largest public lands investment in a generation. It was a meaningful step in the right direction. But not enough.

*Donald Trump signing the Great American Outdoors Act on August 4, 2020. (White House/WIkimedia Commons)*

A Battered Park System

For decades, Congress has underfunded NPS budget requests. The result? A $23.3 billion maintenance backlog and abysmal morale in the nation’s most beloved federal agency. That backlog includes desperately needed repairs like fixing the water pipes at Gettysburg and stabilizing the dangerous Weeping Rock trail at Zion.

An NPS dispatcher, who asked to be called Raven, works the night shift at a large western park. She loves antique cameras and heavy metal—and was thankful to survive the Valentine’s Day massacre. Raven relays emergency calls not just for her park, but for nearby communities too. “Many employees were already burned out” she told me. “A lot of us do extra duties supposed to be handled by vacant jobs. When my office lost a supervisor, one of my coworkers just stepped up and became the closest thing we had.”

But extra duties don’t come with extra pay. NPS staff step up because they believe in public service. Because they want to support each other. Because they care about parks.

“We’re paid in sunshine and rainbows” is a frequent joke among rangers that belies a darker truth: it’s demoralizing to be so undervalued. In 2024, the NPS ranked in the bottom 25% of all federal workplaces.

And staff aren’t new to doing more with less. Since 2010, NPS visitation has grown by 16% while staffing has shrunk by 23%. In 2024, the National Parks saw over 330 million visits—more than any year before. Many parks already operate with skeleton crews—stewarding as best they can while adapting to the pressure of increased public use.

Low morale, inadequate support, and systemic strains—that’s where we were before Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Now what’s happened to those park skeleton crews? Their bones are being shattered.

*Crowds in Yellowstone in 2015. (Neal Herbert / NPS)*

Cuts and Chaos

The whiplash of policy changes is jarring. Those mass firings on Valentine’s Day? Reversed. Kind of. The seasonal jobs? Cancelled, then uncancelled, then expanded—but who is there to do the hiring?

Government credit cards—used to order critical supplies and equipment—were frozen. How are you supposed to install new railings in time for peak season without them?

And who’s running the agency now? A DOGE-appointed ex-oil executive. Orders came down to keep parks open regardless of staff cuts. With what staff? And different waves of incentives to retire have pushed at least 12.5% of the NPS to leave since January.

“Viewing the situation with open eyes,” Alexandria told me, “We are passionate and support the Park Service, but we have little to no support. Little to no funding. Uncertainty every day.”

It’s a barrage of cuts, confusing directives, restructures and reversals. It’s not efficient. It’s chaotic. And it shakes people. Would you feel confident in your federal job right now?

Alexandria didn’t. When her offer of reinstatement came in, she called her supervisor. Alexandria asked, “Can you guarantee I’ll have a job in six months?”

The answer was no.

What We’re Losing

Far from expendable, staff like Alexandria are the rangers who lead junior ranger programs, the trail workers who clear fallen trees and ankle breaking rocks, and first responders who rescue people in dire emergencies.

Raven told me about one of her early jobs at Death Valley National Park. Four of her seasonal housemates had advanced medical training and routinely volunteered in crises—even though it wasn’t in their job descriptions.

One night, a visitor cut open his hand with an axe. A call came into Raven’s shared dorm. The visitor’s fingers were going numb. Raven was a fee technician at the time—the person who greets you at the entrance—but she had cross trained as an ambulance driver. She and another fee tech who had EMT training sprang into action. They arrived at the visitor’s campsite—but the bleeding wouldn’t stop. Raven drove. Five minutes into the desert run, her colleague banged on the window: the wound was arterial. He needed to apply a tourniquet. Raven floored it, ripping across the Mojave, sirens blazing, and making it to the hospital in Nevada just in time.

They stepped in that night so that the single ranger on duty could stay behind—in case something worse happened. This kind of story isn’t rare.

In her current role as a dispatcher, Raven’s primary concern is safety. When I asked her what she fears most with all these cuts, she said “Honestly? I’m terrified more people are going to die.”

Beyond the catastrophic loss of park capacity and institutional memory, we’re watching the critical pathway to public land stewardship vanish. When you cut seasonals and early-career staff, you shred our pipeline for future caretakers. You’re not trimming fat. You’re gouging muscle.

Americans are pushing back, and protests have broken out across public lands. Fired staff at Yosemite hung a 50ft upside-down American flag, a traditional symbol of distress, on the face of El Capitan. On March 1st, according to Outside Magazine, over 433 protests across the country took place in support of public lands. At Big Thicket National Reserve in Texas, a sign read: “As a Junior Ranger, I promised to do all that I can to protect and preserve all National Parks. That’s why I’m here.”

*Protestors outside of Sequoia National Park in April 2025. Photo by Trail Crew Stories.*

Demolishing the Bridge to Public Service

Among staff fired is Olek Chmura, a custodian at Yosemite. His job was cleaning restrooms and picking up trash left by visitors—work he loved, because he believed in the idea of public parks. In an interview with MSN reporter Martha Kelner, he asked “Why am I a target? I don't make that much money, I make around $40,000 a year, I can't even afford to live in the local community, it's like, why me? Why am I the fat?”

I’ve asked myself similar questions. I spent two seasons cutting trail in Yosemite—chiseling granite steps beneath waterfalls on the Mist Trail and grading the winding path down Tenaya Canyon.

I pursued a graduate degree with hopes of coming back to serve an agency I believed in. The Presidential Management Fellowship (PMF) offered that path—a competitive program to bring fresh thinking into federal service. I prepared a comprehensive federal resume. Exams assessed my behavioral fitness. Silent interviewers listened to my responses to challenging questions. I made it to the final round. On February 26th an email arrived: the program had been deleted. “There is no appeal process” it said. My bridge back to serving public lands was demolished—along with the hopes of thousands of others.

I wanted to return to the NPS because it needs serious reform. At Yosemite, I witnessed firsthand how a cumbersome hiring process and chronic underfunding left critical positions vacant. Inadequate wages forced dedicated seasonal rangers to live in their cars, and housing shortages pushed permanent staff to live hours from their duty stations.

The National Park system must also grapple with its origins in the violent displacement of Indigenous Peoples. While some parklands were later purchased or donated, all National Parks sit on land that was first seized—through force, coercion, or broken treaties—from people who had stewarded it for generations. It’s a legacy that the NPS is only beginning to reckon with.

Some parks, like Mesa Verde, have formed strong partnerships with Indigenous nations—including the 26 Tribes associated with the site. But much more is needed to ensure that public lands reflect the full history they hold and the communities they belong to—including a future where Indigenous leadership plays a central role in their stewardship.

National Parks have also long struggled to be truly accessible to all Americans, especially for people with low income, disabilities, and from other underrepresented groups. That’s not new. Inclusive representation among staff is a consistent challenge for the agency as well. This work is far from finished—but slashing the NPS won’t fix its flaws. It erases our chance to.

I’m afraid that people who believe in public lands will spend the rest of their lives just trying to bring things back to where they were last year. And that was still light years away from where we need to be.

*A lone hiker in Yosemite National Park. Photo by Trail Crew Stories.*

Privatizing the Parks

Beneath the eye-popping images of Elon Musk thrusting a chainsaw into the federal bureaucracy lies a deeper assumption: that these agencies aren’t really providing anything important to the American people—or at least nothing that private industry couldn’t do better. And looking at the current state of the NPS, privatization begins to look like an obvious solution to an agency that can’t take care of itself. But is that true?

Some partnerships have worked. In 2015, Alabama shut down Lake Guntersville State Park due to budget shortfalls. But the park reopened when Recreation Resource Management (RRM), a private outfit, partnered with the state to manage it. The land remained public, and RRM provides maintenance and recreation services. Without RRM, there wouldn’t be a park. Warren Meyer, RRM’s owner, told The Emerald Review. “We like the parks; we’re not trying to turn them into McDonald’s or used car lots.”

But not all companies think like this. Parts of the NPS are already privatized—especially concessions at large parks. Aramark, a food and facilities management corporation which serves the NFL, schools, and prisons, took over Crater Lake’s visitor services in 2018. It didn’t go well.

The NPS issued scathing performance reviews for years, citing substandard maintenance, filthy housing, poor staff training, and even reports of sexual assault. In 2024, NPS cut Aramark’s contract six years early—an extremely rare action. Low quality food and dismal wages for line staff make financial sense to Aramark. The company’s chief responsibility lies with shareholders, not the American public.

Privatization seeps in quietly too. Take Recreation.gov—the online reservation system for federal lands. Though it looks like a government service, it’s run by Booz Allen Hamilton—a company who makes 98% of its revenue from government contracts. The software is clunky. Refunds are inconsistent.

But supporting upwards of 20 million active users a year is beyond the current capacity of the National Park Service. It needs help. Partnerships like this may be necessary—but only with strong guardrails and deep consideration of the meaning of public access.

Let’s be fiscally clear-eyed: the Park Service is well worth its cost.

In 2023, the NPS delivered an estimated $55.6 billion in economic benefit to communities that surround parks on a budget of just $3.5 billion.

On May 2nd of this year, the White House proposed cutting this budget by over a billion dollars. According to the National Parks Conservation Association, the proposed budget would shutter 75% of National Park units.

This administration asserts that these park units will simply be taken over by state governments. But there seems to be no plan for how this would work—or whether federal support would follow. Many state park systems face budget shortfalls and lack capacity to absorb National Parks.

What’s more likely? Privatization by default. What DOGE is doing isn’t streamlining, it’s manufacturing collapse. And when the NPS is gutted, private actors won’t just plug holes. They’ll take over.

Imagine you wake up at the Grand Canyon, but you haven’t purchased a Canyon View Pass. No matter—you’ll hike Rim to Rim for just a $60 dollar add-on. Shade? An extra $15 to use the shelters. Water? $6, chilled and brought to you by Nestlé. Instead of helpful graphics designed by someone like Alexandria to teach you about geologic history, you’re greeted by men in polos. Their tablets suggest a 20% tip as you exit through the Tesla tunnel.

It’s not absurd. It may be imminent.

But collapse is avoidable. Some parks are showing us what actual reform looks like.

Partnerships that Work

Systemic issues demand thoughtful solutions. I applied to the PMF program to help address some of them: to streamline the hiring process, to increase staff compensation through innovative stewardship funding, to expand access to park housing through collaboration with community land trusts, to advocate for deeper partnerships with Tribes. This is all realistic with dedication and hard work.

At Golden Gate National Recreation Area in San Francisco, the Partnership for the Presidio brings together the NPS, the Presidio Trust—a federal corporation that hasn’t received appropriations since 2013, and the Golden Gate Conservancy. The partnerships works because it combines a shared mandate for public access and stewardship with the diverse funding streams of non-profit structures. They’ve done innovative work, including building a 14-acre park atop highway tunnels.

The Presidio Trust also helps manage park housing, offering income-based rentals for park staff in one of the least affordable cities in the country.

But creative partnerships aren’t only happening in San Francisco.

At Indiana Dunes National Park, the NPS partnered with local towns and non-profits to co-manage trails and expand access for underserved communities. Take the Dunes Learning Center, a non-profit educational center that provides overnight outdoor education to local students.

At the center, kids explore a protected part of the natural world in the heart of a key industrial region. They are given space to reflect on the deep connections between urban life and the environment, and what it means to be a good steward to both.

Through human vision and community partnerships, the NPS can become the promise the American people deserve. But it’s not one size fits all—it takes deep local knowledge, staff that live in community, and relationships that move at the speed of trust. None of which is possible while the NPS is under attack.

Partnerships like the ones at Indiana Dunes and in the Presidio recognize that our public lands are civic infrastructure worth investing in, not financial burdens to shed. We don’t need a billionaire’s vision of efficiency to improve our parks. True reform would mean empowering park staff to focus on their mission: preserving natural and cultural resources for future generations.

DOGE’s logic suggests that corporatization of public lands is innovative. But it’s more like theft—siphoning something that benefits everyone into the hands of the few.

Yes, some private-sector roles—tour operators, non-profit conservancies, even Recreation.gov—may be necessary. But there are clear limits to what pure market incentives can do.

What the private companies can’t do, is exactly what the National Park Service can: care for these places as promises, not products.

Parks are a Sacred Promise

National Parks aren’t just scenic. They’re sacred. They’re where we remember who we are. Gettysburg. Flight 93. Bunker Hill. Our parks and monuments hold our history. They allow us to stand with it in awe, in grief, and in contemplation. They keep the story so that we all may ask ourselves what kind of people we are—and who we still might become.

And the people who steward those places—who repair trails and clean bathrooms, who guide us in educational talks and keep us safe when we visit—they’re not line items. They are the Park Service. They deserve better.

That fired program archaeologist at Yosemite, Katie? She speaks with a steady no-nonsense cadence, and bakes in her spare time. I asked her what she loved most about her work, and she said it was the moments when visitors would come upon her surveying for cultural sites. They’d ask “Why does this matter?”, I asked how she’d usually answer. Her voice caught. “I’m tearing up—can we try a different question?”

This isn’t just about parks. It’s about how we imagine ourselves as a people. The National Park System—flawed, underfunded, and stretched—still represents a radical democratic promise. That the most meaningful parts of our country belong to all of us. Forever.

Promises are fragile. They can be broken. They are breaking right now.

Alexandria Hamlin was originally inspired to work for the NPS after a trip to Sequoia National Park with her father. Standing beneath Giant Sequoia trees—she felt awe in the presence of something older than our nation. She said “I had planned to work in the Park Service until I retire. In six weeks, those plans were turned upside down. I don’t know that I want to pursue that again if this is how it’s going to be.”

Alexandria was the promise—a future steward of the parks. She’s gone now. And probably not coming back.

But millions of us are still here. And the promise is ours to keep.

The Gutting of the National Park Service