Summer is coming for national parks. Will there be enough workers?

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. – Olek Chmura parked his blue Chevy truck alongside the El Capitan Meadow, named for its prime view of the “big wall” of granite towering in the distance. Taped to the back window of his camper top, a sign pleaded to “save our parks.”

“Every time I pull into the Valley, I crane my head up to look at that thing and it’s just incredible,” said Chmura, a 28-year-old park custodian. Even after Yosemite became his workplace, Chmura said it never gets old coming to the “Garden of Eden.”

On a clear, sunny day earlier this month, the natural splendor of one of America’s most popular public treasures was on full display. Chmura, who was among the roughly 1,000 National Park Service employees fired in the Trump administration’s effort to shrink the federal workforce, is living the uncertainty surrounding the Park Service ahead of the busy summer season.

While the White House and federal courts spar over the fate of workers whose jobs have been terminated — then reinstated — park officials must sort out who will tend to facilities and visitors.

“Trash doesn’t stop. Bathrooms don’t stop,” Chmura said. He provided terrifying photos of the ways people leave park bathrooms to prove it.

Chmura was living out of his car to make ends meet on a salary of about $40,000 a year while he worked for the Park Service. He spent his free time rock climbing. When he was on the clock, he said, he played a critical role keeping a large swath of the park clean: “scraping excrement off of toilets, squeegeeing urine out of the bathrooms, picking up diapers and beer bottles off the sides of the roads and whatever else I could find — just generally prettying the park up.”

Yosemite lost nine of its employees in the cuts through the Interior Department, according to a count crowdsourced by rangers and park staff from around the country. No official number has been released, and officials at Yosemite said they do not discuss specific personnel matters; statistics shared from 2021 show the Park Service employed 451 people at Yosemite in the winter season.

An additional undisclosed number of park workers took buyout offers from Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service. More yet may take a new buyout offer the Interior Department distributed Monday to most of its roughly 70,000 employees.

On Thursday, however, the Park Service began reinstating all fired probationary workers, according to emails obtained by the Washington Post and a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to comment publicly.

“At this time, we would like to return you to your position of record if you are still interested in the position,” the emails said. “With this return to duty, you will be made whole related to your salary and benefits, including back pay. Please let us know if you are interested in returning.”

The Park Service said in a statement Thursday that individual notifications for reinstating employees were “underway.” The decision comes after a federal judge ruled that the mass firings of probationary employees at 18 agencies were illegal.

“While the process takes time, affected employees can expect to receive notification soon, if they have not already,” the statement said. “All impacted employees will receive back pay, and the Department will ensure continued compensation as the White House pursues its appeals process.”

But a month after losing their jobs, probationary employees across the federal government may decide they’re not interested in reinstatement.

Since losing his job, Chmura has applied for several of Yosemite’s seasonal openings, including a custodian position that came with the same duties as his full-time role but for less pay and benefits. He said he turned down an offer, hoping instead that his job may be reinstated. Around 7 a.m. Pacific time on Thursday, Chmura said in a text message that he had not heard any news about his role.

Millions of people will continue to descend on the parks no matter what happens in court. National parks saw a record 331.9 million visits in 2024, and Yosemite had the sixth-most in the country. Yosemite has lost its only locksmith, and long waits have been reported at the Grand Canyon, but this early in the season, it’s unclear how many parks will manage with fewer workers.

Travelers who are already encouraged to leave no trace may need to look after themselves to keep parks running smoothly.

A case for a spring visit

If you were looking for signs that Yosemite was in chaos, you’d have a hard time finding them now.

On a recent weekend, a handful of visitors told me that there was no one operating their entrance when they arrived at the park at various hours. But both mornings I drove up to the Arch Rock Entrance, I found smiling rangers checking passes and handing out maps. Scott Carr, Yosemite’s director of communications, told me in an email that, while entrance staff plays a key role at the park, they take breaks and sick days, so they’re not guaranteed to be at their post all the time.

The welcome center was hushed but bustling with staff and visitors. The bathrooms were clean. So were the roads and trails.

Some park insiders, including Chmura, warn that we’re in the calm before the storm. This is Yosemite’s quietest period between peak seasons; nearly two-thirds of the park’s annual visitors come between May and October. Issues such as clogged traffic, overflowing trash and soiled bathrooms won’t be “highlighted until the summertime,” Chmura said.

Cuauhtli Martinez, 32, a driver for the Yosemite Valley Shuttle System who lives in the park, said he hasn’t noticed any significant changes yet either, but staff members are still unsettled. Many are fearful of losing their jobs, even if they’re not federal employees. Will budget cuts affect the contracts the Park Service has with concessionaires?

“That has been on everybody’s mind,” Martinez said.

He’s been waiting to see whether the park brings back entrance reservations; the park’s website says it will have an update in the near future. The summer he worked when there weren’t any in place, there was a “chaotic atmosphere.”

Travelers are also still waiting for more campground reservations to come online. Last month, the park paused reservation sales but has since released some on recreation.gov again; more may be released “if operational capacity allows,” the park website says.

‘Understaffed’ before DOGE

Problems such as lax trash pickup go beyond aesthetics, said Nate Vince, who was the park’s only locksmith before he was fired.

If garbage goes uncollected or a dumpster stays tipped over, animals can get to the trash and become habituated to human food. “Then it becomes a wildlife issue,” said Vince, 42.

Last month, Vince was among the protesters who helped hang an American flag upside-down over El Capitan to signal the park was in distress. He believes more problems from the layoffs will reveal themselves as the year continues. Think of the park as a car, he said, and its employees as the parts that make up its engine. The layoffs were like ripping 10 parts of the engine out at random.

“Then you try to start the car,” he said. “It’s probably not going to work the way it did before.”

Even if some employees are reinstated, “the car still doesn’t run the same way,” Vince said.

Vince was informed of his reinstatement Thursday and said he’ll start next week. But he has also said Yosemite was dealing with staffing shortages long before the February layoffs and buyouts.

“We’re always understaffed,” Vince said. On busy days, he’d drop his to-do list to man the entrance gates or help with search and rescue.

Jonathan Farrington, the CEO and executive director of the Yosemite Mariposa County Tourism Bureau, also noticed the problem.

“In meetings that we’ve attended, the Park Service has stated that, on average the last three years, they’ve only hired 65 percent of the staff seasonally that they desire to,” he said. “That’s roughly 100 positions that have gone unhired.”

Even if the Park Service is understaffed, Farrington reminds travelers that many park jobs are contracted by outside vendors, not the government. For hotels, grocery stores, restaurants, mountain shops, the free shuttle systems and tram tours, “all of that staffing comes from concession staff that is not impacted by federal budgets or restrictions.”

What travelers need to know for their visit

In 1982, Farrington was in his fourth year working in Yosemite when his job “was eliminated due to government funding cuts,” he said, “so I do in fact know exactly what these folks are feeling.”

Decades later, he now works to promote responsible tourism to the park. His main advice to travelers is to avoid what he calls “dashboard tourism,” mostly seeing the park from the car on a day trip, rushing among popular Instagram spots. That’s the “fast food” version of visiting a national park, he said.

Instead, he recommends visitors go deeper by exploring a park through its many trails. “On the busiest day, you’ll probably see almost no one” if you get away from the road 100 yards in any direction, Farrington said.

Xanterra Travel Collection, a concessionaire at several national parks, and Leave No Trace, an educational conservation organization, held a webinar Wednesday encouraging visitors to shoulder some of the responsibilities of protecting national parks. They recommended that visitors bring their own trash bags and toss their garbage outside the park because bins might be full. They also urged visitors to stay on designated trails because staffing shortages could affect regular trail maintenance.

Carr said in an email that travelers should “be prepared” ahead of their trip to Yosemite this year. They should bring plenty of water; know the trails (you can download them for offline access in the NPS app); “and respect both the park and fellow visitors.”

If you do get to a front gate and no one’s staffing it, he encourages you to stop on your way out and pay the entrance fee anyway.

Carr also said to come early or during nonpeak hours; the park’s website recommends visiting before 8 or 9 a.m. and after 5 p.m. from spring through fall. Farrington’s advice is to come late and stay late, so you don’t miss the spectacle of golden hour in the High Sierra or the chance to star gaze.

Mostly, “don’t be part of the problem,” Farrington said.

Maxine Joselow and Andrea Sachs contributed to this report.