NPS reels from hiring freeze

By Heather Richards | 02/03/2025 01:57 PM EST

Seasonal workers who are key to running national parks in the summer have had job offers rescinded.

A National Park Service ranger talks with a group of people sitting on a bench.

A National Park Service ranger talks with people at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks in California. Alison Taggart-Barone/National Park Service

President Donald Trump’s first two weeks in office sent shock waves through the National Park Service, a 20,000-strong agency of park rangers and desk jockeys who oversee some of the nation’s most beloved lands.

From a hiring freeze that could cripple parks during the upcoming busy season to a blanket invitation sent out to all federal employees to resign, NPS staffers have faced a volley of presidential edicts unusual for this early in a new administration and aimed at cutting their ranks.

“It’s a scary time,” a park ranger in a Western state with 15 years in the federal service told POLITICO’s E&E News. The person, who was granted anonymity because they were afraid of reprisal from the Trump administration, said the first two weeks of the administration have been “brutal” for the service.

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Enter Doug Burgum. The former Republican governor of North Dakota was sworn in last week to helm the Interior Department, which oversees the park service. Until now the flurry of orders coming from the White House were being implemented by a skeleton crew of political hires from the Trump administration called a “beachhead” team, in reference to the first line of soldiers who landed on a beach in a coastal attack.

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