Murray, Cantwell among senators sounding the alarm on national park staffing decisions

A group of senators is sounding the alarm about the potential impacts of the Trump Administration’s federal hiring freeze on the country’s national parks after seasonal employment offers were revoked.

Washington’s Democratic Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray were among 21 senators who signed a letter Friday urging Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to step in and reissue offers to seasonal National Park Service employees that were revoked last month.

Seasonal staff at national parks handle a wide variety of responsibilities, including cleaning bathrooms, staffing visitor centers and guiding tours. The letter says seasonal staffers “had offers in their hands that were yanked away just days after the inauguration,” and that the loss of those employees could mean big problems at national parks this summer.

“Without seasonal staff during this peak season, visitor centers may close, guided tours will be cut back or altogether cancelled, emergency response times will drop, and visitor services like safety advice, trail recommendations, and interpretation will be unavailable,” the letter reads.

The letter also urges Burgum to nix the Trump Administration’s deferred resignation and early retirement offers to permanent park employees, arguing that the agency can’t afford to lose any more staffers.

It follows several weeks of conservation groups and park advocates raising concerns that the loss of seasonal employees and longtime staffers could create big problems for the country’s parks.

Hundreds of millions of people visit national parks each year, and the number of trips has been growing. At Yellowstone National Park, visitation topped 4.7 million in 2024, its second-busiest year on record. A decade earlier, the park had never topped 4 million in a single year.

Crowds peak in mid-summer, putting a strain on infrastructure and resources. That’s led some sites like Mount Rainier National Park to turn vehicle reservations to limit crowding at peak season.

Having limited staff to manage visitors at the peak of the season is a major concern for critics of the administration’s decision to rescind seasonal job offers.

The Park Service employs about 6,000 seasonal staffers across its 433 units at the peak of the summer season, according to the senators’ letter. They typically work a few months of the year, often during the peak of parks’ busy season.

Reports started surfacing in January that seasonal employees were having their job offers rescinded. According to the National Parks Conservation Association, more than 2,000 seasonal and permanent positions have been rescinded across the country.

Mount Rainier hires up to 175 temporary employees each year, according to its website. Glacier National Park, in northwest Montana, usually hires about 350. Lee Newspapers reported that Yellowstone typically hires 380 seasonals.

Even some of the Park Service’s smaller and less busy sites, such as Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area in Hunters, hire seasonal employees each year to work as fee collectors, rangers and maintenance workers, among other positions.

Kristen Brengel, the National Park Conservation Association’s senior vice president of government affairs, said in a statement that the loss of seasonal staffers could mean people traveling to parks are “met with overflowing trash, uncleaned bathrooms and fewer rangers to provide guidance.

“These are not the memories we want people to take away from their experience at our parks,” Brengel said.