HOPE: How the public outcry about national parks made the Trump Admin change their plan

The story behind the layoffs, the public response, and what’s next

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

• Today we have a guest post from my friend Jo Piazza. Her new tradwife murder mystery Everyone is Lying to You is coming out and is perfect for you if you want bold and actionable books about taking down the patriarchy (that are also an excellent beach read). Pre-order it now: Bookshop, Amazon.

• Make America for Everyone Merch is still for sale, here!

I’m writing this post today because I’m a national park super fan. My second date with my husband was camping in Joshua Tree. We got engaged overlooking Golden Gate National Park. Our oldest son’s first vacation was to Yosemite and he took some of his first steps climbing up Sentinel Dome.

I didn’t grow up as a particularly outdoorsy person and I never slept in a tent until I was 34. But finally experiencing the parks as an adult made me love and appreciate America in a way I never had before. I’d thought that traveling abroad was the ultimate travel goal. I wanted Paris and London and Rome. I honestly had no idea how much beauty and adventure I could find right here at home. I didn’t know that hiking the Beehive in Acadia would help soothe my postpartum depression or that I could work through the grief of losing my father while exploring the vast terrain of the Badlands.

In the past ten years I’ve taken my growing family of five to more than twenty parks and we have plans to visit five more in the next year. A few weeks ago I finally got around to booking a Spring Break trip for our family. The plan was to visit Bryce and Zion National Parks. Apparently I was very late to the game and the lodges at both Bryce and Zion were already filled up. After I submitted a request for a room I got a kind and efficient email from Natilee, a national parks employee, offering to help me find other accommodations. She recommended a nearby lodge with two rooms available that also had an ice skating rink my three kids might enjoy. I’ve worked in travel journalism for years and I’ve rarely seen this level of hospitality, even from some of the fanciest hotel chains in the world.

Natilee was doing just one small thing in a list of thousands of things that employees of the National Parks service do to ensure that millions of people can enjoy our country’s natural wonderlands every single year.

National Parks workers are unsung heroes, a fact that many Americans finally began to think about (and shout about), once their jobs had been eliminated. And that shouting mattered. The people in power listened. It’s one of the first real examples that we have seen since Trump was elected, that fighting back and actually change this administration’s behavior.

On Valentine’s Day the Trump administration fired about 1,000 newly hired National Park Service employees who, according to the Associated Press, “maintain and clean parks, educate visitors and perform other functions as part of its broad-based effort to downsize government.” It was approximately 5% of the total workforce.

The order also eliminated thousands of positions for seasonal workers.

Public uproar on social media was swift, especially after laid off workers began posting their stories.

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There was also an onslaught of posts where people talked about their love of the parks, and how we don’t want them privatized. The outdoor community is fierce and it rallied.

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One of the consistencies we’ve seen is that the Trump administration rolls back their policies when there is public outcry. In particular, outcry that centers around the actual stories of people who will be impacted.

This week Trump backtracked. According to the Associated Press:

The Trump administration is restoring jobs for dozens of National Park Service employees fired amid government-wide reductions and hiring nearly 3,000 additional seasonal workers, following an uproar over an aggressive plan to downsize the agency.

At least 50 jobs are being restored to help maintain and clean parks, educate visitors and collect admission fees, according to two people familiar with the agency’s plans who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

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 this week and higher than the three-year average of 6,350 seasonal workers. The park service has about 20,000 employees.

The NPS regularly hires seasonal staff to help deal with the influx of visitors the parks see during high season in the summer months. Some park advocates say Trump’s reversal and new promises won’t be enough to maintain the levels of service visitors are used to.

From the Associated Press:

“While the plan to hire more seasonal workers is welcome, “it will take a while to get to the number of seasonals hired to avoid some of the impacts we’ve talked about,” said Bill Wade, executive director of the Association of National Park Rangers and a former superintendent of Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park.”

Those impacts are things like:

1. Limited Access: Some parks might need to close certain areas or reduce operating hours to cope with staff shortages.

2. Maintenance Issues: There are concerns about the accumulation of litter, uncleaned restrooms, and worsening maintenance problems.

3. Visitor Services: Educational programs, guided tours, and other visitor services may be reduced or canceled.

4. Safety Concerns: The reduction in staff could potentially impact public safety in the parks.

Travelers, like my family, who are planning to visit national parks in the coming months are preparing for longer wait times to enter the parks, possible limits to services (like bathrooms, gift shops and ranger programs) and even potential closings on days we already planned trips.

We should celebrate the fact that collective action by the public forced a reversal in Trump’s plans. But the parks are not out of the woods yet.

So what can you do? I know I often feel powerless against the onslaught of terrible news. That’s why I think it is helpful to focus on one thing at a time and to focus on the successes. That’s not what the right wants us doing. They want us to feel so scattered that we can’t act on any one thing at once. So here is a playbook for continuing to back against what is happening with the National Park Service.

• Spread the word. Share your love of the National Parks on social media. Let everyone know how many people love and value them. You can easily make a reel on Instagram (which is the best way to reach people outside of your audience). Take three or four of your favorite national park pictures and put this text over them: Reminder that we can’t enjoy these places without our park rangers.

  Tag me so I can share. Make sure to also tag #nationalpark, #nps, #findyourpark

• Support the parks. You can purchase an annual pass to the parks here for $80. You can donate directly to the National Parks Foundation.

• Get your hands dirty. Check with your local national park or organizations like the Wilderness Society for volunteer opportunities.

We have to stay loud even when we want to crawl into bed and block everything out (though sometimes we need to do that too). This is proof that our voices will be heard even when we feel like we are screaming into the void. I can’t wait to keep screaming with you.

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P.S. Jo + Emily are launching a new podcast, FRANK ADVICE. Call and leave a message with a question you want advice about! (612) 361-7215