‘In Crisis Mode’: Former National Park Leaders Say Cuts Will Hit Public Lands Hard

Former National Park Service leaders are warning Californians about degrading conditions and safety risks on public lands this summer following the Trump administration’s cuts to staffing.

Despite firing 1,000 probationary employees this year and implementing a hiring freeze, the secretary of the interior ordered all national parks to remain “open and accessible” — something that Don Neubacher, former superintendent of Yosemite National Park, said is untenable.

“You just can’t have more visitors, less staff, less money and do an adequate job,” he said. “This is not possible. So I think you’re going to find long lines, less law enforcement presence, less search and rescue capability, and less visitor centers.”

At Yosemite, he said the quality of service is already declining: the popular High Sierra Camps are closed, and other campgrounds have had to delay their opening ahead of the busy season.

Russell Galipeau, who retired as superintendent of Channel Islands National Park in 2018, said he noticed cuts already beginning to affect service in his last few years on the job. However, he added that the recent hiring freeze and additional cuts in the proposed White House budget are unlike anything he has ever seen.

“The poor park service is left in a catch-22,” he said. “They want to keep the parks, but they don’t have the human resources or the funding to do it.”

Both Neubacher and Galipeau are also members of the executive council of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, a nonprofit organization made up of current and former parks employees.

In a statement, the National Park Service said, “It’s not unusual or unique to this year for questions to come up about staffing or for the staffing needs to fluctuate.”

But according to Neubacher, the situation on the ground is much more severe.

“They’re saying everything’s fine, but I don’t think one person in the park service believes that. And all the people I talk to say it’s really traumatic and it’s in crisis mode,” Neubacher said.

He added that many park staffers are so demoralized on the job that they are “jumping ship” at the first opportunity.

Besides longer lines and dirtier facilities, Galipeau said reduced staffing could also endanger park visitors. Fewer staffers will mean longer emergency service response times and less preventive maintenance for roads and trails.

“You have a bad experience or you get lost or you get hurt or maybe there’s a crime that occurs in the park, and there’s no one for you to turn to,” Galipeau said. “All this equates to a bad visitor experience, and a bad visitor experience means you won’t go back.”

The lack of maintenance also spells trouble for the beginning of the peak wildfire season in California, and Neubacher said the parks are less prepared now than ever.

Not only will there be fewer people to maintain vegetation and remove invasive species, but park rangers are also trained medics and firefighters. Galipeau said rangers are often sent to other regions or states to offer disaster aid; as a ranger at Everglades National Park in Florida, he was once sent to help fight fires in Oregon.

“If we don’t have those people around, how are we going to help when there’s a catastrophe? We won’t be able to,” Galipeau said.

Despite the issues they anticipate, the former park service leaders said that people should still visit the parks this summer — if anything, to see for themselves how bad it is and offer their sympathies to staff.

“Go there, enjoy your heritage. That’s why we set these places aside as a country,” Galipeau said. “But then if you see things that are broken, you need to go back home, you need to dial up your member of Congress or your senator and say, ‘You need to stop this.’”