Behind the scenes, park advocacy groups and some staff members said everything wasn’t going well in the national parks in the country.
National Park staffing faces crunch time amid Trump cuts
National parks, which have been on budget for years and have been understaffed, face a severe workforce shortage that has been exacerbated by the Trump administration’s cuts.
Estes Park, Colorado – As her children danced stuffed animals around a 3D map of the mountain peaks and valleys in Rocky Mountain National Park, Chrissy Whissler began carving all the national parks she visited this year.
While she tallied, her souvenir sweatshirt from Mount Guadalupe National Park opened and showed her T-shirt from Blythe Canyon National Park.
Whistler, a Los Angeles mom who homeschools 13 and 10 through experiential learning, said she enrolled this year due to safety concerns about how the Trump administration’s staff cuts will affect national parks.
However, after a summer adventure, Whissler is happy to report her fears about staffing.
President Donald Trump’s administration has cut staffing across Park Services, and longtime park advocates and frequent users worried that the cuts could lead to messy parks and dirty bathrooms.
Despite widespread fears about the systemic collapse by some public activists and supporters, American national parks appear to have weathered most of the summer tourist season almost unharmed. Following the elimination of more than 25% of staff work, Secretary of Home Affairs Doug Burgham ordered park supervisors to prioritize services aimed at visitors.
There have been isolated reports of the issue, but visitors saw very few systematic issues. Instead, they marveled at Redwood and the giant sequoia, hiked the slot canyon, climbed the half dome in Yosemite, took photos of elk and moose in Rocky Mountain National Park, and watched stars swirling their heads at the Agate Fosilbed National Monument in Nebraska.
There is also no evidence that regular maintenance will be stopped. Among other items, federal purchasing records show the project to purchase 40 new picnic tables at Great Smoky Mountain National Park, draw cedar snake roofs at James A. Garfield National Historic Site, and buy two new thaws at Crater Lake National Park.
Behind the scenes, concerns about the lack of staff in the national park
But behind the scenes, park advocacy groups and some staff members said everything wasn’t going well in the country’s national parks.
Park advocacy groups that criticized Trump’s budget cuts say park staff have usd to hug visitors, especially as seasonal employees begin to leave in the coming weeks, to keep visitors happy and safe.
Park workers consulted by USA Today, budget analysts are sitting in the admissions booth, scientists are “volunteered” to run the visitor center, and in one park, archaeologists are trained to drive boats as the park is not permitted to hire a captain.
Other unemployment is inherently invisible to visitors, such as local environmental coordinators and climate change policy experts. Legally, national parks need to study and preserve landscapes and sites, and changing focus on visitors’ experiences means that research projects from decades ago have been put on hold or completely removed.
“The Park Service and park staff have made incredible attempts to do what is necessary to keep the park’s visits big, and that doesn’t have to be that way,” said Sarah Landstrom, Parks Visit Expert at the nonprofit National Park Conservation Association. “It was a kind of facade of the visitors’ experience, but the park is not just summer. They are forever, but this year summer worked.”
She is particularly concerned about the future.
“What will next year look like with losing a quarter of our staff and not being able to hire them to replace them? What will this fall look like when all seasonal workers are gone?” asked Landstrom.
The National Park Service did not respond to multiple requests for comments regarding maintenance, staffing or park visits. The USA Today review of preliminary visitor data shows that many park visits in 2025 have been up or flat so far.
Park visitors remain happy despite the cut
On a sunny day at Rocky Mountain National Park, at about 8,231 feet above sea level, first-time visitors Jake Kundert, 33, and Sarah Joaquin, 24, said the park’s rising peaks were meeting expectations. They also had no issues with the park’s timed booking system, which was their major concern when planning trips from New Hampshire. The couple said they were not aware of staffing concerns caused by Trump’s cuts, visiting for their wedding.
In addition to searching for moose, elk and other wildlife, the couple drove down America’s most paved trail ridge road, reaching its peak at 12,183 feet above sea level.
“Everything looked pretty clean. Some of the toilets were a little dirty, but that’s what you would expect,” Joaquin said.
Added Kundert: “I mean, I’m not expecting running water on top of the mountain.”
