The acting director of the National Park Service believes 2025 was a “ass-kicking year.” Advocates for what polls say is the most popular federal agency might use the same term, but with a far different meaning than Jessica Bowron intended in a year-end email to Park Service managers.
“The past 11 months have been devastating for the National Park Service,” said John Garder, senior director of budget and appropriations for the National Parks Conservation Association. The NPCA puts full-time Park Service employment at 12,600, down 24 percent since the start of the Trump administration.
“Under this administration, our national parks and the people who protect them have been pushed to the brink through mass staff cuts, hiring freezes and pressured resignations,” Garder said. “Park Rangers are doing the work of multiple people, visitor centers are closing, and morale has never been lower.”
Bill Wade, executive director of the Association of National Park Rangers, had a similar assessment of morale.
President Donald Trump’s quasi-federal agency, the Department of Government Efficiency, and, after DOGE, the Interior Department and the White House Office of Management and Budget eliminated more than 4,000 permanent employees through layoffs, buyouts, firings and forced resignations, according to Park Service records obtained by the NPCA. Some staff members also left voluntarily in frustration.
Most visitors probably thought things seemed “pretty normal” in the park system, but many employees were working outside their job descriptions to make sure adequate maintenance and safety was provided, Wade said.
“The big problem, and one that is disguised and will get worse, is behind the scenes,” he said. “Many of the permanent positions that have been lost are ‘specialist’ positions in the central offices — scientists, historians, archeologists, water and air quality specialists, contract specialists, climate change specialists and others.”
Despite all that, Bowron, who became acting director in early 2025 after 18 years as a budget analyst and comptroller at the NPS, told regional and associate directors in December that things are going great at the NPS. Her email was a follow-up to one from the NPS deputy director of operations, Frank Lands, telling managers that staff were being given too many evaluations rating their work as “outstanding” or having “exceeded expectations,” according to the website National Parks Traveler.
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