While there has been plenty of criticism of staffing levels at national parks in Australia, with states like Victoria facing well-documented funding pressures … all problems are relative.
The ongoing Government shutdown in the US has seen thousands of rangers and parks workers furloughed.
And this follows on from a period of sustained cuts to the Parks Service as the US Government seeks to dramatically reduce the Federal workforce.
Back in July, the National Parks Conservation Association’s (NPCA) used internal data from the Department of the Interior workforce database to reveal the extent of the decline in staffing levels across the National Park System.
America's most iconic national parks face serious challenges. PIC: Linsdsay Williams / Pixabay
It found that, since January 2025, the National Park Service had lost 24% of its permanent staff, ‘a staggering reduction that has left parks across the country scrambling to operate with bare-bones crews’.
The NPCA said the cuts meant fewer rangers to protect visitors and resources, less interpretation and education for the public, slower emergency response times, and more strain on already overburdened staff who remain.
“The Park Service has lost 24% of its permanent staff — that’s nearly a quarter of the workforce gone, along with decades of irreplaceable knowledge and expertise,” said NPCA President, Theresa Pierno. “The remaining staff are overwhelmed and doing heroic work just to keep parks open, safe and protected … but many are hanging by a thread.”
The Government shutdown, of course, takes the crisis to a new level. The ABC reports that, during the last shutdown back in 2018, parks were allowed to remain open without staff … and that led to overflowing toilets, rubbish piling up, and damage at some of the country’s best-known sites.
This time around, the US National Park Service is acting on a contingency plan it developed, calling for furloughing more than 9,000 of its 14,500 workers.
The nine-page plan says most park roads and trails will ‘generally remain accessible to visitors’, but visitor centres and bathrooms would close.
The service planned to suspend guided tours, routine maintenance or trash collection, although law enforcement, emergency response and fire suppression would continue as usual.
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Who cares, not me….lan
Trump administration!
Putting politics aside, national parks are important for the global conservation effort and this is a blow for all of us. I’ve never been to the US parks but I understand they are remarkable. Let’s hope common sense prevails and staffing levels return to a level where the parks can be managed and maintained effectively and safely. With or without visitors.
same here in Australia you can go to most parks and never see a ranger
But you can see plenty of feral animals and weeds..!
I try to help out with being a volunteer camp host in the National Park in SA to take a bit of the pressure off the rangers as they have a lot to do.
We are ok no Trump
They should be staffed to protect the area, where someone takes your booking spot, there would be someone to sort it out.
National Parks should be open to camping, 4wd, dirt bikes, horse riding. Stop restricting access to parks. Get rid of rangers and beaurocracy. We don’t need facilities, just freedom. National parks burnt in 2020 because trails were shut and ordinary ppl could not camp and burn fallen timber.
National parks should be there first and foremost to protect the animals and plants, and only secondary to provide recreation to humans. There are no other areas for wildlife to live!!!!! You can go hooning on your dirt bikes, or riding your horses on someone’s farm!