On Feb. 14, over 1,000 National Park Service workers were fired through Trump’s new effort to downsize the federal workforce. All of these workers work hard to maintain and clean our national parks all around the country. This could be one of the worst orders Trump implemented during his presidency.
The entire goal of this executive order is to decrease the federal spending the government pays employees. This is understandable because the government paid over $300 billion in compensation for civilian employees in 2022. But my question is, why did we start with the firing of National Park workers? These workers help to keep our parks safe and clean for the millions of visitors every year. This will leave the parks severely understaffed and the once beautiful sights damaged.
This executive order just backs up the claim that Trump does not care about our environment. He moves away from climate change and increases the amount of oil and gas production this year. In a recent speech, Trump said, “We will Drill, Baby, Drill,”, a common Republican slogan used in 2008 by candidate Michael Steele. One of the Biden administration’s biggest focuses included climate change, and for us to completely pivot and immediately start scrapping that idea will only bring consequences.
The first National Park was Yellowstone, established as a park in 1872, and ten years later it became endangered because of the lack of protection. The same thing happened to Yosemite, so the park received protection under the federal government. It started as one or two workers, but it quickly escalated to multiple workers per park. The hiring of these workers actually BOOSTED America’s economy and helped the Depression era by contributing over $55.6 billion dollars and supporting over 415,000 jobs. Along with the economic benefits, the rangers kept our wildlife and environment safe from human interference. Getting rid of our park’s protection is not a good way to save our planet, instead, we’re destroying it.
This new plan, led by multi-billionaire Elon Musk and the new Department of Government Efficiency strives to downsize the government. The parks executives state that they plan on hiring 7,700 new seasonal employees, but this acts as a cover-up of the firings. The park’s higher-ups usually hire over 11,300 workers during the warmer months when visitation skyrockets. So even though the government says that they “allow” the parks to hire back 7,700 workers, it’s still a downgrade.
This downgrade will ruin our parks, everything we’ve worked so hard to protect for hundreds of years will die. Along with the environmental aspect, our wildlife within the parks will also be in danger. The parks house over 600 species of endangered animals protected by the ESA (Endangered Species Act). With the removal of the people enforcing this act, it’s only putting these animals on the brink of extinction from poachers. The Bald Eagle, America’s staple, became listed as endangered in 1978 after their lifestyle plummeted due to deforestation, illegal shooting and the contamination of its food source by an insecticide called DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane). After the ESA banned DDT and enforced laws for the protection of the Bald Eagle, their population numbers slowly started rising. In 2007 the Bald Eagle was removed from the endangered list and they’re now thriving with high population numbers. The Bald Eagle species thrives because of the ESA and our National Parks protecting them.
Taking away the very people who save our wildlife and our environment will be a terrible decision. Our National Park workers need to protect our Earth from climate change, deforestation and illegal hunting. Downsizing our federal workforce shouldn’t be one of our government’s top priorities, and instead, we should be focusing on more important problems. Our government needs to protect our parks and our National Park workers instead of hurting them or else our planet will be doomed.
