During the government shutdown in 2019, people vandalized historic sites and sawed down protected Joshua Trees after national parks remained open with extremely reduced staff, despite pleas from park staff and other groups to keep them closed. During this shutdown, national parks are remaining mostly open again, and this time it may not just be trees that are axed.
The Department of Interior (DOI) is gearing up to slash its workforce, and as past shutdowns indicate, this means danger ahead for our parks and public lands. In response to a memo circulated by the Office of Management and Budget Director Russel Vought, agencies (including DOI) are drawing up plans to fire employees who would typically be furloughed–temporarily suspended from paid employment–during a shutdown.
Vought’s order sought to put pressure on Congress to fund the administration’s priorities, using people’s careers and livelihoods as bargaining chips. Though reprehensible, and illegal, this is not surprising coming from Vought who has said that he wants to villainize and inflict trauma on federal workers.
With the government in shutdown mode, the Trump administration does not seem to be backing down on its threats. President Trump said that the shutdown could be used to “get rid of a lot of things that we didn’t want,” including federal workers.
For the National Park Service (NPS), the proposed layoffs would be devastating. NPS has already lost about a quarter of its permanent staff since the Trump Administration took office, and based on the 2025 NPS Contingency Plan, it is estimated that more than 9,000 employees were furloughed last week. If the Trump Administration fires even a fraction of these employees, the impacts to NPS personnel and parks will be severe.
Looking back at the irreparable damage and reduced safety that resulted from keeping parks open with minimal staff during past shutdowns paints a grim picture of the havoc to come if this shutdown drags on and reduced staff presence becomes more permanent.
Our national parks and public lands are already on life support. Various parks lack superintendents, several essential services have been eliminated, and the administration is promoting plans to privatize public lands and roll back existing protections. Moving forward with layoffs and other cuts would effectively pull the plug.
The Trump Administration is ignoring the public’s and Congress’ disapproval of sharp cuts to funding for public lands and the personnel that maintain them. The unprecedented call for mass layoffs during a shutdown is a deliberate strategy to capitalize on chaos and skirt the appropriations process to proceed with the administration’s plans to gut the civil service.
Although eyes are on the White House and Capitol as this shutdown plays out, we should not lose sight of the natural landscapes and, most importantly, the personnel and their families across the country that are suffering as a result.
Kaylee Rodriguez is PEER’s litigation assistant. Previously, she served as a legal assistant at the Department of Justice’s Environment and Natural Resources Division.
