National Park Service employees re-hired after callous job update: 'Definitely a win'

The Trump administration appears to have reconsidered eliminating thousands of seasonal workers at the National Park Service for the 2025 season, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The Department of the Interior told park service officials in late February that the agency could hire 7,700 seasonal employees. The decision comes after staff — who perform duties such as collecting entrance fees, maintaining and cleaning parks, and helping injured hikers — received emails saying that their job offers for the coming season had been rescinded.

Since Donald Trump has returned to the White House, he has been on a crusade to downsize the federal workforce, which has already led to thousands of layoffs.

For Kristen Brengel, senior vice president of government affairs for conservation group National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), the rollbacks are "definitely a win" against the backdrop of an across-the-board government hiring freeze.

It's a testament to "advocates, park rangers and everyone else who has been shouting from the mountaintop that we need these positions restored," Brengel told the L.A. Times.

The memo was addressed to temporary seasonal employees only, omitting mention of the 1,000 members of the National Park Service's permanent workforce who were laid off in what some dubbed the "Valentine's Day massacre."

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"Quite simply and astonishingly, this is dismantling the National Park Service as we know it, ranger by ranger and brick by brick," Theresa Pierno, the head of the NPCA, said in a statement published in early March.

Parks employees and outdoors enthusiasts took the issue online and quickly drew the attention of the media.

Yosemite maintenance worker Olek Chmura was one of the employees laid off. "I make just over $40,000 a year; scrape s*** off toilets with a putty knife nearly every day," Chmura wrote on Instagram. "Somehow, I'm the target."

Trump's administration intends to restore at least 50 jobs across the parks, according to the Associated Press, but Chmura's is not among those. The 28-year-old rock climber said he still hopes that pressure from the public and elected representatives over how the job cuts could affect visitors will help persuade the government to change course.

"Human resource officers in federal agencies, and particularly the parks, probably have the worst job in America right now," executive director of nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility Tim Whitehouse told the L.A. times. "They're dealing with unprecedented levels of chaos."

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