Vacancies at the National Park Service have shot up since President Trump returned to the Oval Office and slashed the federal work force, leaving popular destinations across the country short-staffed during what is expected to be one of the service’s busiest seasons.
The park service, which manages 433 sites and 85 million acres, has lost nearly a quarter of its permanent staff since the beginning of the Trump administration, according to a new report from the National Parks Conservation Association, a nonprofit organization that focuses on protecting the park system.
The agency is also far behind on hiring temporary employees to support the busy summer season, already well underway.
In one of his earliest actions, Mr. Trump cut 1,000 employees from the National Park Service. Thousands of others have left voluntarily under pressure to resign or retire. The cuts to the work force are part of a governmentwide effort to shrink the number of federal employees and eliminate programs, and in some cases, entire agencies.
“National parks cannot properly function at the staffing levels this administration has reduced them to,” Theresa Pierno, the head of the National Parks Conservation Association, said in a statement on Thursday. “And it’s only getting worse.”
The cuts keep coming. The administration requested about one-third less for its 2026 budget compared with what it received in 2025.
The parks agency did not respond to a request for comment.
Citing internal data from the Interior Department’s employee database, the association said the National Parks of Boston had lost top leadership and more than 40 full-time staff members. At the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park in Colorado, the custodial employees have all been fired, taking the remaining staff away from their assigned duties to clean bathrooms and empty trash.
“Keep in mind, these are the rangers who rescue stranded or injured hikers, the crews who fix busted water systems and the law enforcement officers who keep families safe,” said Representative Jared Huffman of California, the top Democrat on the House Committee on Natural Resources. “Lives could be put in danger because of this administration’s incompetence and carelessness.”
The agency’s regional office in Alaska has lost about one-third of its staff, and Big Bend National Park in Texas is down half of its full-time employees. There is no lead wildlife biologist at the black bear-filled North Cascades National Park in Washington. The lead wildlife biologist responds to human-bear conflicts, the association said.
And the Assateague Island National Seashore in Maryland and Virginia is short on lifeguards.
Asked about the lifeguard shortage last month, a national parks spokesperson said it was a national problem and not limited to the park service. The agency asked The New York Times to encourage readers to learn about riptides, noting that ocean swimming is different from swimming in lakes or pools.
The park service has been understaffed and underfunded for decades, but the situation became more acute this year. In 2024, the parks had a record 332 million visitors, and the number this year is expected to be even higher.
During a congressional hearing last month, Representative Joe Neguse, Democrat of Colorado, asked Interior Secretary Doug Burgum about the 100 vacancies of superintendents across the parks.
“If there’s a vacancy to superintendent, we fill it with the deputy,” Mr. Burgum said.
But that just exacerbates the problem, said Emily Thompson, the executive director of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, a group of current and former park service employees and volunteers.
“There’s no backfilling for the deputy,” Ms. Thompson said. So now, the deputy is doing two senior-level jobs, she said.
“It’s no small thing to be a park superintendent,” she said. “And so to have that number of vacancies is huge.”
As of Thursday, the government’s job website had 54 positions posted for the park service. None were for a superintendent.
Employees at the park service are also waiting for the agency to announce a significant round of layoffs, decisions that have been on hold for weeks. With the widespread vacancies, many people are working three jobs, including ones above their service level and pay grade.
One parks supervisor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution, said employees were stepping outside their individual jobs to make sure that buildings with public restrooms are opened. In some cases, archaeologists who work behind the scenes are having to work in visitors’ centers to plug vacancies, she said.
Hiring seasonal employees in parks is behind schedule because the workers who facilitate the hirings have left in some cases, the supervisor said. In addition, employees are being pulled away from their assigned duties to respond to management directives. This includes the placement of QR codes around parks so that visitors can provide feedback about the park, like reporting anything that might cast historical figures in a disparaging way.
Everything has slowed or been bogged down since the beginning of the Trump administration, she said. And the loss of institutional knowledge because so many employees resigned or are taking an early retirement, she said, will hurt the agency for decades to come.
Eileen Sullivan is a Times reporter covering the changes to the federal work force under the Trump administration.
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