By Pakar PBN 
Each year, millions of visitors celebrate spring holidays and summer holidays with a trip to one of the country’s 63 national parks. They are a classic American vacation destination for a good reason, offering affordable means to connect with nature and soak up some of the most inspiring natural landscapes in the world.
This year, a trip to the national park could be a little different, however. On Valentine’s Day, the Trump administration dismissed around 800 probation employees from the National Park Service (generally people during the first years of their career or at the first stadiums of a new position), after having already eliminated thousands of seasonal positions in the context of wider efforts to reduce the federal government and its workforce.
Later in February, he made a little return, recruit certain employees and extinguish a new memo allowing the park of the park to hire up to 7,700 seasonal positions this year. But even with this slight change, travelers should anticipate the impacts on American national parks.
“We can expect to see long lines,” explains Jackie Ostfeld, director of the Sierra Club Outdoors for All Campaign. “We can expect the personnel discounts to hinder basic park operations.”
How the parks will be affected by these cuts
The positions most affected by the cuts are the rangers which provide interpretation and education by the staff of the centers of visitors and the leading school programs and the walks and interviews led by Ranger, as well as by the people who receive fees in the entrance stations of the park, explains Bill Wade, executive director of the Association of National Park Rangers. “So there may be adjustments at the time of the visitors center or even days [of operation]”, He said.
It has already happened in certain places. The Saguaro National Park in Arizona recently announced that its visitors of visitors will be closed on Monday until further notice.
In other cases, parks’ interpretation offers will be limited or reduced. In the Carlsbad Caverns National Park in the New Mexico, for example, all the guided tours by Ranger were “temporarily suspended until further notice”.
And it can take you more time to access the park. “For parks like the Grand Canyon National Park which have two ways for the entrance fees, they may have to reduce things on a single track,” explains Wade. “Which will mean longer lines so that people go to the entrance position, pay their costs and enter the park.”
Maintenance and childcare operations will also be affected. This could affect everything, from the maintenance of the trails to the cleanliness and the availability of the toilets. “The appearance of some of the installations and the maintenance of historical structures may not be up to the level that people have seen in the past or would expect,” explains Wade.
The late authorization to hire a limited number of seasonal workers can be too little, too late for visitors who expect business as usual in the parks this spring. “Even if these seasonal workers can be hired, in some parks, it can be a little later in the start of the seasons for heavy use before being able to put them on board,” explains Wade.
To add to everything, the American Office for Management and Budget and the Personnel Management Office sent a memo that directed all executive branch agencies to submit reorganization plans by March 13 to support efforts to eliminate “waste, bloating and insularity” and prepare for “large -scale discounts.”
“These plans will be examined, then the determinations,” explains Wade. “So, depending on the measure that the National Park Service is affected, it is possible that we will see additional layoffs or endings from maybe from April.”
The National Park Service manages more than simple national parks: it also oversees national monuments, battlefields, military parks, historic parks, historic sites, lakeshores, seashores, leisure areas and rivers and pittoresque paths. In total, the national park system includes 433 zones covering more than 85 million acres in each state and many American territories. It is a lot of places feeling the impact of the Trump administration.
The US Congress must also conclude an agreement to avoid a government closure by March 14, 2025, which many people are not optimistic. If there is a government closure, national parks will be even more affected.
“We saw the greatest government stop in history in the last Trump administration,” said the Sierra Club Ostfeld. “And we saw all kinds of problems … and have seen damage to many national parks across the country during this period.”
But even if a closure is avoided, it is still worried. “These efforts to reduce the federal workforce is a very slippery slope towards the privatization of our parks and public lands, which we know that the Trump administration is interested in doing,” she said.
How to be a good visitor to the national park during this period
Although it is not business as usual in parks, OSTFELD does not recommend canceling your plans, especially since it could have major undulation effects on neighboring communities. About 325 million people visited the national parks in 2023, spending about $ 26.4 billion in the communities near the parks.
“They stay in hotels, go out to eat, buy memories,” she said. “Local savings will be seriously affected from any reduction in the park visits which could occur following the closure of the parks or the perceived fear that they are closing and that people decide to make other plans because of uncertainty … What I think would be an absolute disaster, it is if people decided to visit a national experience.”
Patience will certainly be a virtue during the visit. “One of the things that, in my opinion, will do good will is that visitors are nice and considerate for park employees, as well as other visitors,” explains Cheryl Schreier, member of the Coalition Executive Council to protect American national parks who worked for the National Park Service for almost 40 years.
“There is a lot of uncertainty and a lot of confusion,” explains Wade. “Many employees are really worried about their work, and it’s understandable.”
Download the NPS application to stay aware of any closure or other impacts on all the parks you plan to visit. During your stay, follow the park rules and stay on marked trails. And take the usual safety precautions, then some, in case the safety and rescue operations have been affected.
“People get lost every year; People are injured when they go out on the trails, ”explains Ostfeld. “This is why it is really important to have a fully personal fleet service that can respond to any concern for security that appears.”
Pack your garbage and plan to lend one hand by picking up another litter along the way. “Beyond that, help in any way by signaling illegal acts or suspicious things that visitors may be more unscrupulous in the parks could do in the absence of so many people of service in the park who kept their eyes on the ground,” explains Wade.
How to support national parks even if you do not visit
If you are concerned about the impacts of these policies on national parks, talk. “Apart from the visit, the most important thing that people can do now is to contact their representatives in the congress,” explains Ostfeld. “Congress members must hear voters directly that they are worried about their parks.” The Sierra Club has an action alert to help you do so, and you can also find scripts for telephone calls via organizations like 5 calls.
“It is really important that people understand that these parks all belong to us as American citizens,” explains Schreier. “These are really gifts to the American people … The National Park Service has preserved all these special places, these natural resources and these cultural resources that really tell the stories of us and the United States. And these resources belong to everyone.
“What national parks are doing is to protect these really precious natural, cultural and historical resources not only for current people, but with a certain indication that they will be preserved and made available for their children and grandchildren,” explains Wade. “The only way to reverse this is that people are concerned enough and perhaps even enough to exercise their ability to contact their elected officials and protest against what they see and what they concern in national parks.”