The National Parks Conservation Association is an non-profit that advocates for national parks and they have concerns moving forward after 1,000 people were laid off at national Parks.
Michelle Uberuaga is the senior program manager for the greater Yellowstone area for the NPCA. We caught up with her on a zoom interview from her home in Livingston, Montana.
"There is just so much uncertainty at this point, are they going to be able to operate," said Uberuaga. "They are already under staffed as we have seen a 20 percent decline in park service staffing since 2010."
Uberuaga told us Yellowstone has lost seven probationary employees while Grand Teton National Park has 15 workers laid off.
This comes after a hiring freeze in January and although that was rescinded by the Department of the Interior on Friday, Uberuaga told us the national parks start the process of hiring seasonal in September.
She isn't sure whether Yellowstone will hire the 300 to 350 workers they need by peak tourism season and it's the same scenario for Grand Teton as they usually have around 500 seasonal worker. Uberuaga also told us they don't know how many workers took the buyout proposed by DOGE and the Trump administration.
"When you add all of this up together it is pretty devastating," said Uberuaga. "I am deeply concerned about the impacts, we really don’t know how many people we are going to have."
Yellowstone had 4.5 million visitors in 2023 and they spent $663 million dollars in gateway communities including Island Park, Idaho. We witnessed examples on how a lack of tourism effected these communities during the pandemic and the flood of 2022.
"There are far reaching consequences to our small communities when they are laying off this many people," said Uberuaga. "The national parks are 1/15th of one percent of the national budget and for every dollar spent in the park, it brings $15 back into our communities. This is not an efficient way to cut the budget, it does the opposite."
The largest question looms what will these layoffs have for visitors this spring and summer in Yellowstone and Grand Teton. Right now we don't know how this will go, but Uberuaga has concerns moving forward.
"I can say with a lot of confidence there are going to be longer lines, potentially campgrounds closures, maybe limited hours at the visitors center and more traffic jams," said Uberuaga. "I think worst case scenario is public safety could be at risk."
Uberuaga had lunch with a man who was laid off from Yellowstone and lost his health insurance. She told us the staffer who working in IT got an email saying he was being let go because of poor work performance. That is similar to the other stories we have been hearing in the national parks and the forest service layoffs.
"We are right at that breaking point," said Uberuaga. "Morale is very low and people are scared they might be next, it is a pretty dire situation."
We reached out to the National Parks Service, but we haven not heard back. 3,400 forest service workers were also laid off and there have been rallies all over the country in response to these actions.
