Even at Yosemite, ‘the shadow of Donald Trump is over everything’

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK — It was 10 a.m. in mid-July in California’s Yosemite Valley. As the temperature climbed over the 80-degree mark, late arrivals circled clogged parking lots scanning for an empty spot beneath the fragrant cedar trees and ponderosa pines.

On Yosemite’s purple line bus, dusty hikers enjoyed a brief blast of air conditioning, and tourists holding river floats between their knees craned their necks to catch a glimpse of Half Dome towering above the Merced River.

What’s less visible in this park, one of the crown jewels of the National Park Service, are the gray-and-green-clad park rangers who manage it.

The Trump administration has not disclosed its tally for national park staffing levels after its effort to slash the government workforce hit arguably the nation’s most popular federal agency earlier this year. But the park is down at least 40 staffers compared with last summer, according to figures shared with POLITICO’s E&E News by a person familiar with Yosemite’s current staffing. This summer, there are roughly 400 permanent staff and about 330 seasonal employees working in the park, that person said.

Six Yosemite employees who spoke with E&E News said those missing rangers are felt by staffers, as parks have long dealt with a significant number of vacant positions and tourist numbers that climb every year.

This summer, many rangers who lead backcountry hikes, swear in junior rangers and operate the entrance booths are working long hours and trying to keep a cheerful demeanor for visitors, despite feeling burdened by the Trump administration’s cutbacks, they said.

“It just feels like we’re being taken advantage of,” said one permanent employee who has worked in Yosemite for several years. Employees were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media and feared retribution. “We are buffering the public because we care. But how long is that going to last? Because it’s not fair that we keep getting the hit to make it seem like everything’s OK.”

Former Yosemite Superintendent Cicely Muldoon, who worked at NPS for 40 years before retiring in February, said the Trump administration has added pressure to an already taxed system.

“There’s a lot of folks who are doing the jobs that three people used to do. Summers, in particular, our high season, really just crush people, because you have to be called out on overtime all the time. The search-and-rescue loads are intense. The traffic and parking, and Yosemite crowds is intense,” Muldoon said. “People are always exhausted by the end.”

Yosemite declined requests for an interview with the park’s acting superintendent but answered written questions, saying in a statement that its staffing level “closely aligns with historic averages.”

Rachel Pawlitz, communication director for the National Park Service, added that visitor feedback from this summer across the parks has been “overwhelmingly positive.”

“Narratives suggesting the National Park System is in decline do not match reality on the ground,” Pawlitz said in an email. “Our parks are open, our mission is strong, and our workforce is delivering on protecting America’s treasures and providing meaningful, safe, and enriching experiences to the public.”

Outnumbered

Just three hours from San Francisco, Yosemite is one of the nation’s oldest and most popular national parks. The unique granite formations of Half Dome and El Capitan, waterfalls, and renowned hiking and rock climbing draw millions of people every year. Officials expect visitation this year to surpass 2024’s 4.1 million, the highest number since the pandemic.

In a sign of the park’s importance, Deputy Interior Secretary Kate MacGregor — the department’s second in command — speaks regularly to the Yosemite’s acting superintendent, according to two people familiar with the park’s management. The park confirmed leadership’s communication but said it was the norm for a large park.

Historically, the National Park Service’s staffing struggles have been a bipartisan concern.

Lawmakers from both parties have fretted in recent years about how skyrocketing housing costs around parks — like Yosemite — hurt recruitment and retention efforts. The Inflation Reduction Act enacted during the Biden administration approved $500 million for a hiring effort, but Republicans eliminated what remained of that money with the passage of President Donald Trump’s tax and spending law.

Under the Trump administration push to drastically reduce the size of the federal government, parks are now seeing their staff ranks shrink, initially from buyouts and early retirement offers, and perhaps again from layoffs that the White House ordered but has not yet carried out at Interior. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has defended possible NPS cutbacks to members of Congress, saying Interior can target “back office” staffers instead of those working in parks.

Since Trump took office, about 1,600 employees from the roughly 16,000-strong ranks of permanent National Park Service staff accepted buyouts from the administration rather than get snared in the White House’s downsizing plan. That included 18 people from Yosemite, according to the person familiar with the park’s staffing numbers.

NPS also lagged this year in staffing up for the busy summer season — a monthslong process that begins during the winter — due to the Trump administration’s hiring freeze. By July, just 4,500 of the nearly 8,000 positions Burgum promised to hire had been onboarded, according to records reviewed by E&E News.

Yosemite ultimately hired 25 fewer seasonal employees this year compared with last because of the hiring delay, according to the person familiar with the park’s staffing data.

The park declined to comment on its current vacancy rate, which two people familiar with Yosemite’s staffing said usually hovers around 30 percent. Jobs running the park’s water treatment and electrical systems are particularly challenging to keep filled in the remote region, they said.

“Like many large organizations, Yosemite continuously works to recruit and retain top talent. We’re actively filling exempted positions to maintain a strong, responsive workforce that keeps the park operating at the high standard visitors expect,” the park said in a statement.

Neal Desai, senior Pacific regional director for the National Parks Conservation Association, which has advocated for Interior to bolster staffing at NPS, said parks are holding up because of planning and good resource management going back decades.

But Desai added that the Trump administration’s “window dressing” of hiring some seasonal staffers can only cover deeper cuts for so long. “Parks are managed for tomorrow, not for today,” he said.

Employees at Yosemite, Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks voted to unionize this month, with more than 95 percent of employees voting in favor of the union with the National Federation of Federal Employees. The Federal Labor Relations Authority certified the vote Monday, giving park staffers the right to bargain with the federal government about their working conditions. What will happen with this effort is unclear, as the Trump administration recently terminated collective bargaining agreements at EPA and other agencies.

In one sign that Yosemite staff are under increased pressure, search and rescues in Yosemite shot up 40 percent between January and July compared with the same period last year, according to documents obtained through a public records request. Those missions are a regular part of a busy summer at large national parks but are workforce intensive, often requiring teams to trek into backcountry areas.

At the same time, law enforcement ranks for all parks have been in precipitous decline. Since 2010, the number of park law enforcement positions has fallen by 48 percent, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a nonprofit watchdog group.

“Every study that’s been done on law enforcement staffing in the park service has said: ‘You need more people. Visitation’s gone up. You need more law enforcement staff,’” said Greg Jackson, a former NPS deputy chief of operations and policy who also worked at Yosemite as a park ranger and emergency dispatcher in the 1980s.

Jackson, who was also an instructor at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, said that Trump staff cuts will undermine law enforcement even if — as Burgum has emphasized — those positions aren’t directly targeted.

“We’re cutting all of the support people around law enforcement,” he said. “Whether it’s an intended consequence or an unintended consequence, it doesn’t really matter. It’s what’s actually happening.”

Keeping up appearances

The Sierra Nevada funnels Yosemite’s visitors into the valley at the center of the park. Essentially a sizable town that fills with as many as 20,000 tourists on a busy summer day, Yosemite Valley boasts a public school, grocery stores, a library, a medical clinic, its own electric grid and public bus system, and even a church that offers Alcoholics Anonymous meetings twice a week.

The crush of cars moving into the valley sometimes delays visitors for hours, but the fallout from the increased number of tourists and decreased staff is not always visible to the public. Families chummily whizzed along the park’s trails on rented bikes this July and diners chased away squirrels chewing through their backpacks as they ate lunch outside the Base Camp Eatery.

The park has been the location of some of the most public displays of federal employee resistance to the Trump administration.

In February, a group of rangers hung an upside-down American flag on El Capitan to protest the firing of hundreds of newly hired park staff — a move that was later reversed by a court. Some rangers in May helped hang a transgender pride flag on the cliff face in response to NPS moves to scrub official websites of mentions of transgender people. Yosemite earlier this month fired one of the park rangers involved and has referred an NPS investigation of the incidentto federal prosecutors.

Three employees at Yosemite said park leaders have encouraged staff to hide signs of strain from the public in keeping with Burgum’s instructions that parks keep their services open and prioritize visitor experiences.

Two of those employees, who work directly with the public, said they were told to avoid questions about staffing levels. If pressed by visitors on the Trump administration’s policies, both said they were instructed to reply with something like: “I’m just really happy to be here.”

Yosemite did not respond to questions about these directives.

The guidance has aggravated some park staff who say they are being asked to do more than they should. Some of this year’s seasonal staff worked for as long as six weeks early in the summer without pay as the park’s managers struggled to get paperwork approved in Washington amid rising visitation, according to National Public Radio.

A more touchy subject was bathroom duty. When Muldoon, the former superintendent, retired earlier this year, a temporary leader who took her place, Stephanie Burkhart, ordered park scientists to help clean bathrooms because the maintenance crews couldn’t keep up, according to the permanent staffer. The incident was first reported by SFGate.

Burkhart did not respond to a message sent to her LinkedIn account. NPS told Reuters that at times staff “may step into a range of responsibilities outside their usual scope to help ensure continued access, safety, and stewardship across the park system.”

Two park staffers who work with the public said their managers have urged caution when using certain terms that the Trump administration has tried to scrape from federal websites and programs, such as “diversity.” But these instructions, delivered word of mouth, have been interpreted differently by staff.

One staffer, a seasonal employee, said they’d been told to avoid the term “biodiversity” because it contains the word “diversity.” They said they believed their manager was trying to protect park rangers from getting in trouble amid heightened scrutiny under the Trump administration of how national parks tell American history. Earlier this year, Burgum ordered parks to steer clear of criticism of American historical figures and has encouraged park visitors to identify negative portrayals of U.S. history with a new online critique form.

But the other staffer said they’d been instructed they can use the word diversity — but only when it’s included in a scientific term like “biodiversity.”

Yosemite did not respond to questions about these instructions.

Backcountry management

Some of the biggest points of contention at Yosemite this season have involved how acting Superintendent Ray McPadden, a former Army Ranger who has been with NPS for more than 13 years, has managed the park during the Trump administration, said three staffers who spoke with E&E News.

Under McPadden, Yosemite opened all of its campgrounds. Some of those spaces were previously closed because of renovations that have since been completed, according to the park, which noted that the openings will help “spread out overnight visitation, reduce pressure on day-use areas, and give more visitors the chance to experience Yosemite overnight.”

But three staffers said Yosemite lacked the rangers to patrol in those areas and, therefore, shouldn’t reopen the camps. Some of the camps are out of cell service range, or have no potable water or bathroom services.

Yosemite defended its ability to respond to backcountry emergencies in a statement.

“The park has long prioritized resources to respond rapidly to Yosemite Valley and front country incidents, where visitation is highest, while maintaining the capability to quickly and effectively assist visitors through a variety of means, including helicopter, in all areas of the park,” the statement said.

Some staff also criticized McPadden after a fire, possibly sparked by lightning in Yosemite’s backcountry, was ordered swiftly stamped out, in defiance of the advice of fire experts, said two firefighters in the park.

Letting some fires burn, under the control and “herding” techniques of wildland firefighters, incinerates fuels like dry brush so that they don’t build up and become fodder for an intense and unmanageable blaze in the future. Periodic fires are also a part of a healthy ecosystem in the Sierra Nevada.

“He appears to believe that a national park is comparable to Disneyland, and your objective should be to increase visitation,” one of the fire employees said of McPadden. “He doesn’t appear to be aware of the fact that he is charged with protecting and managing nearly 800,000 acres of wilderness.”

Yosemite defended McPadden’s order to put out fires this season.

“We are in the height of fire season, and conditions are extremely dry. The acting superintendent has directed fires be suppressed quickly to protect lives, property, and park resources,” the park said in a statement.

The response to wildfires in parks are among NPS leaders’ most scrutinized decisions. In Arizona this summer, NPS has been criticized by Democratic lawmakers for not immediately trying to put out a wildfire in the Grand Canyon National Park, which continues to burn more than a month after it started.

McPadden did not respond to a direct message asking about the fire decisions that was sent to his LinkedIn account.

All of the park staff who spoke with E&E News said they were happy to be in their jobs despite recent pressures. They described a deep connection to NPS that’s meant most are willing to pitch in to help parks stay afloat.

“We love the park, and we love our jobs,” the permanent employee said. “We work with dedicated, hardworking problem solvers, like people who are public servants at the heart and core.”

But this year’s upheaval has some considering an exit.

“I think it is my last year,” the seasonal employee said. “I mean, I love it, and this is my dream job, and the shadow of Donald Trump is over everything I do.”

The crowds at Yosemite thin out late in the day. Most visitors who aren’t staying overnight in one of the valley’s campgrounds begin to head down the mountain in the afternoon, to stay in nearby hotels or drive through the yawning California valley to San Francisco.

In the Yosemite welcome center in July, a little girl raised her hand and solemnly repeated the words of the woman in the gray-and-green uniform. Most of her junior ranger pledge was drowned out by tourists buying T-shirts and tote bags to take home. But a few words carried above the noise. She would be a steward of Yosemite, and a protector of all lands, for the rest of her life.

Heather Richards can be reached on Signal at h_richards.99.