NPS Employees Return On Two Judges' Orders, But Holes Blown In Staffing To Persist Into Peak Summer Visitation

[hatrack]

On Feb. 14, the Trump administration fired around 1,000 employees from the National Park Service, part of a widespread federal workforce purge that many have referred to as the “Valentine’s Day Massacre.” Last week, two U.S. District Court judges ruled that fired probationary workers be reinstated at several agencies, including those at the NPS. Despite the mandate, many of those affected by the layoffs waited for days to hear the fate of their roles. Some received word that they would return, but immediately be put on administrative leave.

Then, late this week, news came in that the National Park Service would be authorized to fully reinstate 1,000 previously terminated probationary employees at national parks, according to the nonpartisan National Parks Conservation Association. Reinstated employees and environmental advocates are cautiously optimistic about the win. But many are concerned that threats loom on the horizon for the backbone of the U.S. parks system—and the public lands they help protect.

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The reinstatement of fired employees marks a tentative triumph for public lands advocates, but experts say the long-term future for the National Park Service under President Donald Trump remains murky. At the start of Trump’s term, the administration announced a hiring freeze at the Parks Service, and more than 700 employees there accepted a “deferred resignation” offer. Thousands of job offers for seasonal workers at national parks across the U.S. were rescinded, The Associated Press reports.

In an about-face, the Department of the Interior sent a memo in late February pledging to hire 7,700 seasonal employees. But the administrative processing related to finding and onboarding new seasonal employees and reinstating previously fired permanent employees could make operations difficult at national parks during the upcoming busy season, according to Jonathan Jarvis, who was the 18th director of the National Park Service, serving from 2009 to 2017. “You have this sort of double whammy. Right now, in a typical year, is when the Park Service would be gearing up for its summer season,” he told me. “This is when [NPS does] the seasonal hiring. This is when you do your park planning. This is when you do your acquisitions. They also reduced everybody’s credit cards down to $1. So they have all these sort of layered effects on the parks’ ability to operate.”

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/21032025/todays-climate-fired-national-parks-workers-reinstated/

[CurtEastPoint]

1. What THOSE PEOPLE are doing will have effects lasting for decades. I pray they get caught in a ... never mind