On Thursday roughly 1,000 National Park Service (NPS) personnel were fired. While the administration has said these were recent hires, in fact many of the victims had been working for the NPS for a number of years as Seasonal Employees and had finally made it after years of preparation as full-time staffers. We need to take some time this week to call your Congressperson and tell them why this is a bad move. Let him or her know how your family uses the National Parks and why you want to defend the staff. They preserve our history, conserve our natural resources, and educate both young and old on our culture, history, science, and nature.
Please contact your Congressional representatives to let them know that you object to this potentially illegal firing of staff staff.
Call the House of Representatives Switchboard to contact your Congressperson (202) 224-3121.
When you call you will likely have a live operator who will connect you to your Congressperson, so make sure you know the name of your Congressperson!
The announcement comes in the same week that the National Forestry Service said it will lay off 10% of its employees. Both the Forestry Service and the National Parks Service protect some of America’s scenic and natural wonders and preserve many historic resources. Anyone who has been to Gettysburg, Antietam, Vicksburg, Chattanooga, Ford’s Theater, or any of the major Civil War battlefields knows how important these services are to protect these historic sites and how open they have been to the public.
I have been to a dozen National Park sites in just the last year and a half, as well as a half-dozen National Forests. I am sure that many of my readers have enjoyed the same access to these Federal government sites. A few of the sites I have been to since 2023 include Gettysburg, Antietam, Yosemite, Muir Woods, the Grand Canyon, Montezuma’s Castle, Arches National Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, Sequoia, and many more. I don’t want to see them closed or to have reduced availability to the public. I also don’t want to see them spoiled if rangers are not there to control exploitation.
People have defended these cuts by saying that the deficit is too big and that these cuts are in the interest of fiscal responsibility. You just need to have a little bit of history to know that this is not true. When Trump came into office in 2017 the amount owed by the United State government was $20 Trillion. By the time he left it had increased to $28 Trillion, largely as a result of his tax decrease. In other words Trump had increased the total debt by more than a third over all previous presidents combined. And now, in 2025, the administration is cutting back on spending on our parks, but that money will not be used to roll back the debt. Instead, it is to give almost $4 Trillion in tax cuts to some of the wealthiest people in the world.
Please make your call to Congress today or tomorrow.
Note on Photo: The NPS staff in the feature photo was giving a tour at Fredericksburg in August of 2024 that I took. She has not contacted me about the recent firings. I took the photo.
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Outrageous and contemptible.