How are staffing cuts impacting one of the oldest parks in the US? I went to Yosemite to find out

Even before this year’s staffing cuts, visiting a major national park like Yosemite in August was pretty much a guarantee of crowds and chaos. So when I pulled up to the eastern gate at 7:30am one Friday morning, I was prepped for a long wait with coffee, snacks, and a queue of downloaded podcasts.

At that hour, there were a couple dozen cars already in line. I was there to see firsthand how the staffing cuts Trump had set into motion on his first day in office, and then executed in February, were impacting the most iconic park in the US. All told, the National Park Service had seen a more than 25 percent reduction in permanent staff, according to an analysis of internal Department of Interior workforce data by the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA).

According to a September New York Times story, at least one-fifth of the country’s 433 park units reported significant strain and understaffing—and that was before the shutdown furloughed even more staff. Visitors over summer noticed reduced hours, fewer ranger talks, and even fewer collected entrance fees that ordinarily fund restrooms, trail work, and safety programs. At Zion National Park alone, partial staffing at fee stations was projected to cost about USD$2 million in lost revenue by late July, and Glacier National Park at times asked visitors to pay via QR code on the honor system. Despite the strain, the administration had insisted that the parks remain open, understaffed or not.

I hadn’t expected entering to be a huge issue—a gate employee I’d spoken with before coming had told me that their team was stretched thin that summer but that the visitor experience hadn’t noticeably changed. And I had a reservation, so they would let me in eventually.

The park had first implemented a reservation system in 2020 to manage overcrowding. Every year since, the exact process of how and when tourists could reserve entry had changed, which had been a source of frustration for visitors and gate staff alike.

The gate employee, who I’ll call Alex—he wanted to stay anonymous for fear of retribution from his employer—told me that their team had dropped from 14 to 9 members as a result of the government’s staffing policies. And because of the cuts, delays, and uncertainty surrounding the hiring of seasonal staff, “there wasn’t a lot of time to get the information out there about how the reservation system works,” Alex said.

For the rest of my visit, I wouldn’t encounter a single park employee in their official capacity—just these diligent volunteers. Experts cautioned that volunteers couldn’t replace trained staff.

“I’ve heard from a lot of people coming through that it’s been a really confusing process. And a lot of people were also hesitant to book things for the summer in the surrounding communities, because they didn’t know if they’d be able to go into the park,” he told me. 

About 4,500 of nearly 8,000 promised seasonal jobs across the entire park system were actually filled, leaving many sites “scrambling to operate with bare-bones crews,” the NPCA told The New York Times.

When Alex started working at Yosemite National Park as a ranger in 2016, he thought it was the best job in the world. “It never paid great, just enough to squeak by,” he said. “But the experiences you had, getting to be in the park and talk to visitors from around the world, were completely worth it.” He still loved Yosemite and believed in his work, but the job was different now—more stressful, less certain.

After twenty minutes or so, the line had barely moved. A ranger in a high-vis orange vest was walking down the line, pausing briefly to speak with each driver. “Do you have a reservation and pass already?” she asked through my window. I showed her both. “Great. Head in through the other lane, no need to stop at the booth,” she said. Up ahead, oncoming traffic was stopped to allow at least half the waiting cars to pull out of line and stream into the park.

My gate experience turned out to be pretty typical of the rest of my trip: Staff were able to keep things running smoothly enough that most visitors wouldn’t notice any shortage, but they didn’t have as much time to engage with individuals.

And according to anonymous employees who had spoken with me and others who posted on Reddit, maintaining the visitor experience came at the cost of conservation projects and employee morale.

As an October Outside and RE:PUBLIC investigation reported, one former NPS official called it “facade management… ensuring that visitor-facing services like fee stations, campgrounds, and yes, bathrooms, appeared to be functioning smoothly.”

The only drawback of the express lane at the gate was that I hadn’t gotten a brochure or other informational materials. Since I liked having the brochure map to plan my visit, my first stop was the visitor center—with any luck, someone there would also be able to point me toward a schedule of the shuttles into and around the valley. 

But when I arrived, the two rangers behind the counter had such a long line of people waiting to speak with them that I just snagged a pamphlet and walked out. 

A few feet from the entrance, an older woman in a vest identifying her as a volunteer was stationed below a large ‘information’ sign. She was friendly and equipped with printouts identifying native flora and fauna, but couldn’t answer most of my questions about getting around the park. I connected to the visitor center wifi to look it up myself.

After a short hike and a long swim at Tenaya Lake, the largest lake in Yosemite’s frontcountry, I headed to Tuolumne Meadows campground. Three cars were already waiting to check in, and another friendly volunteer was going from one vehicle to the next with a stack of fliers. “Have you ever camped in bear country?” he asked. 

I reassured him I had—Montana, where I lived, is home to the highest density of grizzlies in the Lower 48. Either unimpressed with my bear-country camping bona fides or working from instructions to give every guest the same spiel, the volunteer reviewed every point on his flier with me. It’s just as well they were being thorough—apparently, a bear had been wandering through the campsite just the day before.

“You can’t protect our national treasures by gutting the people who care for them.”

- Theresa Pierno, National Park Conservation Association president

At the booth, another volunteer looked up my reservation and highlighted a path through the warren of looping roads to my site. From earlier conversations with staff members, I knew that volunteer campsite hosts predated that year’s cuts. Still, I couldn’t help tallying up who I’d gotten face time with on my trip. So far, it was staff members: One; volunteers: Three. 

For the rest of my visit, I wouldn’t encounter a single park employee in their official capacity—just these diligent volunteers. Experts cautioned that volunteers couldn’t replace trained staff. “Volunteers are valuable, but they’re no substitute for agency personnel,” Josh Hicks of The Wilderness Society told High Country News, adding that many parks “don’t have the staff … to get volunteers plugged in” for monitoring and critical projects.

Despite reports that facility maintenance had taken a hit at many understaffed parks—and a warning from a friend who had recently visited Yosemite that the bathrooms had been a “disaster”—the campground and restrooms were clean and stocked with toilet paper and soap (part of the façade management protocol). Pretty good, for camping amenities. My friend’s experience wasn’t anomalous, though: Poor restroom conditions had been a point of fixation for many tourists. But beyond the bathrooms, Yosemite’s larger problems were harder to see.

Languishing conservation projects and burned-out staff, for example, likely weren’t visible to most visitors. But other cracks were beginning to show. Earlier in the year, every building in Yosemite’s Pioneer History Center had to be closed after artifacts were stolen. “National parks cannot properly function at the staffing levels this administration has reduced them to. And it’s only getting worse,” the NPCA recently stated, underscoring how thin protection could be when rangers were reassigned to visitor-facing duties.

For over a century, the NPCA has been working to protect America’s wild spaces and preserve places of historical significance and cultural value. Earlier this year, in response to staffing cuts, the NPCA partnered with Intrepid Travel, and its charity arm The Intrepid Foundation, to raise over USD$50,000 in support of NPCA’s advocacy work on the ground and in D.C. 

“We’re committed to securing a lasting legacy for these cherished and iconic places and are proud to have the support of companies like Intrepid Travel who inspire their travelers to take meaningful action alongside us,” said Theresa Pierno, NPCA president and CEO. 

And right now, one of the most immediate threats to that legacy is the dearth of essential staff. “Without these essential workers, visitor centers and campgrounds will close, trails will go unmaintained, rescue response times will slow, and cultural sites will fall into disrepair,” said Pierno in a statement. And the administration had promised further cuts in the near future. “You can’t protect our national treasures by gutting the people who care for them.”

A Yosemite interpretive ranger told me it felt like the staff had been stretched to its limit. “If more cuts are made, the entire employment system is just gonna collapse completely,” she told me. “I don’t know how anyone would be able to effectively do their job.” 

That alarm was shared by former leaders. According to a September 26 New York Times story, more than 35 former park superintendents urged Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to close parks during a shutdown rather than leave them open with skeleton crews, warning that 2018–2019 government shutdown saw vandalism, damaged resources, and hazmat-level sanitation problems when parks stayed open without staff.

Cuts to regional capacity and leadership also degraded visitor services in less obvious ways, from slower emergency response to delayed maintenance schedules.

For park employees, the shifts under the Trump administration cut deeper than just having to do more with less at their workplace. Alex told me he missed the friends whose positions had been eliminated. Staff described department-wide weekly newsletters that read like “propaganda” and included information about topics unrelated or in direct conflict with the park service’s mission—celebrating the July 4 bombing of Iran, for example, or a slate of new oil extraction contracts. Under prior administrations, these emails had mostly been limited to updates on government initiatives, land management projects, and agency personnel changes. 

Staff often learned about new policies that might impact their job through the news, rather than from a manager. That winter’s rapid-fire onslaught of new DOGE initiatives had slowed, but remaining employees still didn’t feel secure. Proposed cuts in the 2026 budget are likely to lead to more positions being eliminated.

On October 20, during the shutdown, Department of the Interior documents detailing plans to eliminate roughly 2,000 jobs—including 272 at the park service—were made public. Conservation groups immediately warned that such losses would ripple across the parks.

“This will hurt natural and cultural resource protection and important construction and maintenance projects if it goes through,” Kristen Brengel, NPCA’s senior vice president of government affairs, told Reuters. And while the biggest parks might absorb some losses, smaller parks with fewer staff may not. “[They may] have no other way to obtain the support” they need, added Bill Wade, executive director of the Association of National Park Rangers, speaking to The Washington Post.

Cuts to regional capacity and leadership also degraded visitor services in less obvious ways, from slower emergency response to delayed maintenance schedules. Other services, like hospitality offerings, are contracted out to private companies instead of being provided by federal employees. But even this privatization isn’t a guarantee of quality. Yosemite’s hospitality company, Aramark, was rated “marginal” for performance in 2023, followed by “unsatisfactory” in 2024 by the National Park Service inspections. 

“It feels like the park experience is going to be completely different in coming years—it isn’t going to be about people making a connection with nature and preserving these beautiful places,” Alex told me. “My colleagues and I are public servants. We love this place, and at the end of the day we just want to be able to help people. That’s why we are here.”

You can support the work of the National Parks Conservation Association by donating via The Intrepid Foundation

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