“While overall employment in the agency has dropped by 3,500 or 16 percent, since 2011, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, the number of historians in the Park Service has taken a much greater hit, percentage-wise, dropping from 449 in 2010 to just 149 today, a loss of two-thirds.
Experienced professionals are retiring and not being replaced. Congress and the administration continue to add more parks and cut funding and staffing at the same time. We cannot do more with less. We can only do less. This lack of leadership is reflected in many offices, including that of chief historian of the National Park Service, a position that was downgraded after the 2015 departure of Robert Sutton from at a GS 15 to a GS 14 position.”
