Record Post-COVID Visitor #s At Yosemite; Meanwhile, Trump's NPS Barely Hit Half Of Seasonal Hiring Target By July

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Lawmakers from both parties have fretted in recent years about how skyrocketing housing costs around parks — like Yosemite — hurt recruitment and retention efforts. The Inflation Reduction Act enacted during the Biden administration approved $500 million for a hiring effort, but Republicans eliminated what remained of that money with the passage of President Donald Trump’s tax and spending law. Under the Trump administration push to drastically reduce the size of the federal government, parks are now seeing their staff ranks shrink, initially from buyouts and early retirement offers, and perhaps again from layoffs that the White House ordered but has not yet carried out at Interior. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has defended possible NPS cutbacks to members of Congress, saying Interior can target “back office” staffers instead of those working in parks.

Since Trump took office, about 1,600 employees from the roughly 16,000-strong ranks of permanent National Park Service staff accepted buyouts from the administration rather than get snared in the White House’s downsizing plan. That included 18 people from Yosemite, according to the person familiar with the park’s staffing numbers.

NPS also lagged this year in staffing up for the busy summer season — a monthslong process that begins during the winter — due to the Trump administration’s hiring freeze. By July, just 4,500 of the nearly 8,000 positions Burgum promised to hire had been onboarded, according to records reviewed by E&E News. Yosemite ultimately hired 25 fewer seasonal employees this year compared with last because of the hiring delay, according to the person familiar with the park’s staffing data.

The park declined to comment on its current vacancy rate, which two people familiar with Yosemite’s staffing said usually hovers around 30 percent. Jobs running the park’s water treatment and electrical systems are particularly challenging to keep filled in the remote region, they said.

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https://www.eenews.net/articles/yosemite-feels-the-burn-of-an-understaffed-summer/