Reporting for this story was supported by the Climate Equity Reporting Project at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and is part of a project on how the Trump administration’s funding cuts are affecting Californians.

The last few months have been a tumultuous time for National Park Service employees. After President Donald Trump took office, the federal agency laid off roughly 1,000 employees in a purge dubbed the Valentine’s Day massacre. Then, after two judges ruled that the layoffs were unlawful, they were rehired. Now, as the Department of Government Efficiency begins executing an official and much larger plan to slash the federal workforce, many employees are anxiously awaiting the next round of cuts. The White House has reportedly directed the agency to reduce its workforce by as much as 30 percent in the coming months. 

Despite the agency’s murky future, some changes are clear: As the days get warmer, the numbers of visitors to the parks will begin to tick up. As spring gives way to summer, the Western landscape will begin to dry out, and the risk of drought and wildfires will also increase. The stakes for the climate — and for the parks in the face of climate-fueled disasters — couldn’t be higher.

“Cities and places that are more developed are more resistant to changes in climate, but in these wild areas, we can see more warning signs, more indicators if the patterns start changing dramatically,” said one National Park Service employee. “With all of these positions lost, there will be no one on watch anymore.”

The employee, who works at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks in California, was among those laid off in February and rehired. He returned to work on Saturday and requested anonymity to speak freely without fear of reprisal. The February layoffs targeted probationary employees who had been hired or promoted within the last year. 

National parks are on the frontlines of climate change. Temperatures in the parks have increased at double the rate of the country as a whole in part due to the fact that they are located in extreme environments, including at high elevations and in especially arid places. Many parks are now drying out faster than they ever have, resulting in larger wildfires, while others are facing unprecedented flooding. In Sequoia National Park, for instance, the giant sequoia trees, which have evolved with fires, have been unable to withstand the wildfires of recent years and are dying at unprecedented rates. Meanwhile, parts of the park had to be closed in 2023 because severe flooding washed away roadways.  

Grist spoke with five former and current park employees about the role staff play in protecting the parks and the climate implications of the Trump administration’s policies for the National Park Service. Aside from the interpreters and rangers who work directly with the public, the agency employs biologists, hydrologists, geologists, and conservation managers who track, study, and actively protect the ecosystems they work with. Crews also remove invasive species in an effort to preserve native species and make the landscape less flammable. Some employees are also working to move species at risk of extinction due to climate change, such as the Joshua trees in the Mojave Desert, to other parts of the park in a process called managed relocation. Many of the staff who study burn areas and the impacts of fire on native species also serve as a secondary fire-fighting force when needed. If the agency’s workforce is reduced dramatically, it’s unclear how much of this work can continue, they said.

“Most of those positions have the least protections to begin with, so they’re the first ones on the chopping block,” the Sequoia and Kings Canyon employee said. 

In addition to potential staff losses, a portion of the funding from two landmark federal laws — the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law — remains frozen, further jeopardizing the agency’s work. A spokesperson for the agency did not respond to questions about the firings or frozen funding. 

The National Park Service has been working to prepare for a warming world. It has had an ecosystem inventory and monitoring program in place since 1998 and a climate change response program since 2010. In recent years, it invested in building out both programs to detect and respond to the rapid changes in ecosystems and the growing number of disasters taking place in the parks. It also trained thousands of rangers, educated the public about the impacts of climate change on the parks, and adopted a national framework to help park staff decide which ecosystems to prioritize saving. In 2023, the agency developed a plan to electrify park vehicle fleets and buildings to reduce the parks’ overall greenhouse gas emissions.  

The Biden Administration provided funding for a number of these initiatives through the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which Congress passed in 2022 and 2021, respectively. The agency used the funding for landscape restoration, invasive species removal, and integrating Indigenous knowledge with scientific research and restoration work. Funds from the Inflation Reduction Act alone directed $700 million toward hiring more staff and better preparing the parks’ natural, cultural, and historic resources to withstand a changing climate. Since the parks also serve as carbon sinks by storing planet-warming gases in soil, wetlands, and forests, thirty five parks received funding to restore grasslands and the seedbanks that support them. But as funding for such initiatives remains frozen and the potential for mass layoffs looms large, the future of these projects is now uncertain. 

Terri Thomas, a retired natural resources manager who worked in Crater Lake, Yosemite, and Everglades National Parks, said she is particularly concerned about the potential impact of weakening the inventory and monitoring program, which collects scientific information about how a park’s native plants, animals, and birds are evolving.

“Parks are increasingly considering measures such as managed relocation to protect at-risk species by moving them beyond their historical range to locations with more favorable biotic or climatic conditions,” said Thomas. “Without the staff and their scientific and institutional knowledge, these actions may not occur, and species could be lost.”

The agency’s restoration work, some of which is dependent on federal funding, is also on the chopping block. In 2016, Yosemite National Park’s Ackerson Meadow, a 400-acre parcel of formerly privately-owned land, was gifted to the National Park Service. The park and several conservation nonprofits are working to restore the land, which is home to multiple endangered plants and animals, a large meadow, and a vast network of wetlands.

“It’s an ongoing process of improving the hydrology and function of a meadow system, and one of the benefits is carbon sequestration,” said Jesse Chakrin, executive director of The Fund for People in Parks and a former park ranger. “Not only does it provide clean water, but the peat and the soils there are incredible carbon sinks.”

The number of visitors to the national parks has been increasing steadily since the pandemic and reached a new record of nearly 34 million people last year. But a recent internal park memo forbade employees from publicizing the number, in part because public awareness of this growth might spur more concern about the cuts to staff and funding. In years past, Chakrin, said that kind of bump would have likely resulted in more resources for the agency. Now, he said, “we’re in a totally new arena of operations at this point, and [parks are] trying to meet this increased demand with potentially a lot less staff down the road.”

The agency will be allowed to hire 5,000 seasonal employees this summer, but Chakrin and others worry about the lack of institutional knowledge moving forward. “It’s a real problem when you don’t have continuity of leadership because these [climate resiliency] projects require effort and dedication over long periods of time. The damage being done under this administration will have an impact for decades.”