Firings

In early February over 1000 newly hired National Park Service employees who maintain and clean parks, educate visitors and perform other functions were fired as a part of a large-scale reduction of the federal workforce to downsize the government. The reason for the mass firings has been stated as helping to eliminate “hundreds of billions of dollars” going to “nonexistent” federal employees. Many federal workers also received emails from Elon Musk and DOGE asking for workers to list their accomplishments from the past week or resign. With the layoffs, there has been many controversies that have stemmed from the firings this year.

Controversy

After the firings many people were left upset by either losing their job or disagreeing with the firings. Many visitors are seeing longer entrances to park lines and reduced hours at visitor centers along with dirtier facilities.

A federal judge in California had deemed some of the firing illegal due to many employees not doing anything that was deemed worth firing over. Many workers are also not there to help people at some of the National Parks due to being fired as a part of the recent layoffs. 

Results

Due to the controversy many employees have had their jobs restored. There has also been an additional hiring of nearly 3,000 additional seasonal workers.

The moves come as the park service said in a new memo that it will hire up to 7,700 seasonal positions this year, up from about 5,000 promised earlier, and higher than the three-year average of 6,350 seasonal workers. Many employees are still jobless however and some groups have made efforts to make records of all of the employees fired.