The problem is for sure much deeper: chronic underfunding meets up with a surge in demand. That is the story of the National Parks since 2020.
When I visited Glacier in 2019, rangers there told me the park was nearly at capacity. The parking lot at Logan Pass was full by 8am every day. They were hoping to convert Going To The Sun Road to bus-only, the way Zion did. But I took the bus one day and the wait was over an hour. Not enough buses and not enough drivers. And that was before the post-COVID surge in visitors.
Or institute a mandatory reservation system, the way RMNP did. I used the reservation system at RMNP in 2023 and it worked fine. But even with reservations, the parking lot at Bear Lake was full before 7:30am on weekdays. Yosemite had a reservation system last summer… they cancelled for this year. It takes more staff to run.
The operational capacity of NPS was already in the red in popular parks; reducing staff in a haphazard way right now is not a smart solution to the well-known problems the parks are facing. It’s one of many hints that the team up top might be more interested in saying “we did something!” than actually understanding and addressing challenges.
> Glacier National Park will implement a pilot timed entry vehicle reservation system in the summer of 2025. Timed entry vehicle reservations are required beginning June 13 for the west side of Going-to-the-Sun Road and North Fork.
I wonder if layoffs or hiring freeze will affect this. At RMNP a ranger told me it takes a lot more staff in the park to fulfill a reservation system than without one.
> ...thousands of employees in the process of onboarding for federal agencies, including the Park Service, received emails stating that their job offers had been rescinded.
So they will be entering the busy season with staff cutbacks, understandably dismal morale, and none of the people they were in the process of hiring. Want government to run like a business? That's one solid strategy for tanking a business.
Point me towards any company and order me to lay off 5% of individuals up to my own personal discretion and I guarantee you I can find a way to break it.
Did you miss the part about hiring being frozen so that they cannot hire the several hundred seasonal workers that they would normally be hiring now to handle the summer load?
"Lets go back to when things were simple" the attempt to save energy of the mind, rolled out across the political spectrum ,as khemer rouge, liberal or anti-deepstate, having a happy little selfdestruct incarnation .
People pay to visit right? Why doesn’t the revenue match the necessary operation expenses and the whole thing just function as a non-profit business?
I don’t know what type of budget and expenses go into running this park in an ideal scenario, and what the revenue shortfall might be that would require additional taxpayer subsidies, but it seems like the obvious solution here is the ask people using the park to pay for the majority of its operations
The short answer is that national parks are not a self-contained business, they are held in trust for all Americans. Very high entry fees would violate that trust by excluding most citizens. So they are primarily supported by taxes, as they should be.
Parks do generate a ton of economic activity, but directly capture little of it. Airfare, gas, lodging, meals, retail sales, social media revenue, etc. mostly happen outside the parks. Like the highway system or national defense, they are a national platform that is federally maintained.
All that said, a national park is fundamentally not an economic concept. It satisfies a national desire that is deeper than just making a bit of money. The economic story is just another way of saying that tons of people love the parks.
> 2021 Operating Budget: Approximately $30 million
> Park visitors: 3,343,988 (2021)
An entrance pass is $35 (per vehicle) or $20 (per person).
I imagine Yosemite, being one of the most popular National Parks, subsidizes the others.
That said, the National Parks are one of this nation's greatest accomplishments, and would be a bargain at 10x the cost. Trump (or rather his sycophants) would rather see them collapse as further "proof" of government as a failure, and to open the lands up to private resource extraction, like logging, mining and drilling.
Yup, including me! I buy one every year, even if I'm only planning on visiting 1 or 2 parks that year. Same with the Colorado State parks annual pass. I have no problem about going above and beyond for just a wonderful resource, so that others who are less fortunate might also be able to visit.
You didn't specify if you thought that detracted from my point, though.
Those are actually difficult hires to make. Huge number of low-quality applicants, but the standards for park employees are actually quite high, and admin tries to hire for passion which helps with retention and sustaining their unique culture (imo park staff are by and large excellent folks and most have impressive backgrounds relative to their position.) The immediately tangible upshot to this approach is retention, lots of those "booth jockeys" return many years in a row, or grow into admin/ranger roles.
Staff morale and visitor experience will suffer if the careful selection process is eased, and retention woes will probably cause a measurable fiscal impact to operational budgets once the passion-hire cohort churns out.
Selecting for passion takes time. It's the same when you're hiring to build a company with an exceptional culture.
Trump, Musk and co don't care. If it doesn't benefit them and they can't profit from it, it doesn't matter.
What are the odds there's chaos in the parks this summer with short staffing, and the admin decides to blame the National Parks Service as a reason to privatize management of the parks?
They are not going to privatize management - they are going to sell the land so the federal government does not own it anymore and give it to themselves in the form of tax breaks, subsidies to regime friendly companies.
The solution (not my solution you understand, but the Cliven Bundy et al mindset solution) is to reverse Federal Parks, privatise the commons, return cattle grazing to once national forests, allow the market to extract value and juice and leave a dry husk for citizens who are fenced out in any case.
How dare to question the great and powerful Orange One!! His great coming was fortold in the book of Revelation, wherein he cuts the heads off of the Magnificent Seven. He, the great Orange One, is the 8th head that is part of the seven but is destined to destroy them and ride off on a white horse.
Only in the USA would people be ignorant enough to rescind funding that supports the protection and conservation of world-famous wildlife resources that also are able to sustain there own revenue source. Yosemite can pay for itself and then some if the government just let people work and collect fees (aka fee technicians).
You need employees to stop those people walking around from destroying everything in site. Fires, garbage, etc. It's a legitimate concern, and a disgrace what the current regime is trying to do. Next will be attempts to privatize and sell off the national park system to billionaires.
- Why is this being posted in Hacker News? This is technology related stuff.
- Do you realize Trump assumed less than a month ago?
Even when this government is trying to resolve the huge amount of federal waste, it is normal to wait couple of months until it stabilizes.
I remember when my country did a massive reform to the judiciary, it was entirely chaotic for few months.
Under a certain problem you can always hire more people and expect that resolves the issue, but this goes against efficiency as government doesn't have accountability (just check US debt!).
Resolving an efficiency issue is always difficult and chaotic until it stabilizes, governments around the world are known for never updating their processes. They don't even have a database for Social Security!
1. Find a working government service and decimate its employees
2. Point to the service and say it's always been broken
3. Sell devalued service for profit
If a 5% layoff that sets them back to 2022 levels of headcount leads to chaos, maybe the problem is much deeper.
The problem is for sure much deeper: chronic underfunding meets up with a surge in demand. That is the story of the National Parks since 2020.
When I visited Glacier in 2019, rangers there told me the park was nearly at capacity. The parking lot at Logan Pass was full by 8am every day. They were hoping to convert Going To The Sun Road to bus-only, the way Zion did. But I took the bus one day and the wait was over an hour. Not enough buses and not enough drivers. And that was before the post-COVID surge in visitors.
Or institute a mandatory reservation system, the way RMNP did. I used the reservation system at RMNP in 2023 and it worked fine. But even with reservations, the parking lot at Bear Lake was full before 7:30am on weekdays. Yosemite had a reservation system last summer… they cancelled for this year. It takes more staff to run.
The operational capacity of NPS was already in the red in popular parks; reducing staff in a haphazard way right now is not a smart solution to the well-known problems the parks are facing. It’s one of many hints that the team up top might be more interested in saying “we did something!” than actually understanding and addressing challenges.
I thought Going to the Sun had a pass system and daily limit on vehicle traffic now?
Yeah, looks like you’re right:
> Glacier National Park will implement a pilot timed entry vehicle reservation system in the summer of 2025. Timed entry vehicle reservations are required beginning June 13 for the west side of Going-to-the-Sun Road and North Fork.
https://www.recreation.gov/timed-entry/10087086
I wonder if layoffs or hiring freeze will affect this. At RMNP a ranger told me it takes a lot more staff in the park to fulfill a reservation system than without one.
It will if they are at 150% of 2022 attendance (which they were in 2024).
They also froze hiring:
> ...thousands of employees in the process of onboarding for federal agencies, including the Park Service, received emails stating that their job offers had been rescinded.
So they will be entering the busy season with staff cutbacks, understandably dismal morale, and none of the people they were in the process of hiring. Want government to run like a business? That's one solid strategy for tanking a business.
No, they want to run it into the ground and sell it to oil and mining companies or real estate developers.
It can be that they were already understaffed in 2022. You aren't making the pat argument you want to be making.
5% of total staff mostly frontline crew, could cause chaos. Especially if under staffed already.
Point me towards any company and order me to lay off 5% of individuals up to my own personal discretion and I guarantee you I can find a way to break it.
So basically you're arguing that no important hires were made in the past three years? That feels...unlikely.
Did you miss the part about hiring being frozen so that they cannot hire the several hundred seasonal workers that they would normally be hiring now to handle the summer load?
where did you get this from, i didnt see it in the article?
wait until ai staffing is rolled out.
[flagged]
[flagged]
"Malicious compliance" then.
Malicious compliance what?
And what did my comment get flagged for?
[flagged]
Yeah I don't get it. I've slept in national parks that were closed. Don't leave trash don't start a stupid fire how hard is this?
"Lets go back to when things were simple" the attempt to save energy of the mind, rolled out across the political spectrum ,as khemer rouge, liberal or anti-deepstate, having a happy little selfdestruct incarnation .
People pay to visit right? Why doesn’t the revenue match the necessary operation expenses and the whole thing just function as a non-profit business?
I don’t know what type of budget and expenses go into running this park in an ideal scenario, and what the revenue shortfall might be that would require additional taxpayer subsidies, but it seems like the obvious solution here is the ask people using the park to pay for the majority of its operations
The short answer is that national parks are not a self-contained business, they are held in trust for all Americans. Very high entry fees would violate that trust by excluding most citizens. So they are primarily supported by taxes, as they should be.
Parks do generate a ton of economic activity, but directly capture little of it. Airfare, gas, lodging, meals, retail sales, social media revenue, etc. mostly happen outside the parks. Like the highway system or national defense, they are a national platform that is federally maintained.
All that said, a national park is fundamentally not an economic concept. It satisfies a national desire that is deeper than just making a bit of money. The economic story is just another way of saying that tons of people love the parks.
It also looks like it does pay for itself: https://www.nps.gov/yose/learn/management/statistics.htm
> 2021 Operating Budget: Approximately $30 million > Park visitors: 3,343,988 (2021)
An entrance pass is $35 (per vehicle) or $20 (per person).
I imagine Yosemite, being one of the most popular National Parks, subsidizes the others.
That said, the National Parks are one of this nation's greatest accomplishments, and would be a bargain at 10x the cost. Trump (or rather his sycophants) would rather see them collapse as further "proof" of government as a failure, and to open the lands up to private resource extraction, like logging, mining and drilling.
> An entrance pass is $35 (per vehicle) or $20 (per person).
Anyone visiting more than one park is almost certainly buying the $80 annual pass (free for military) or lifetime senior pass.
Yup, including me! I buy one every year, even if I'm only planning on visiting 1 or 2 parks that year. Same with the Colorado State parks annual pass. I have no problem about going above and beyond for just a wonderful resource, so that others who are less fortunate might also be able to visit.
You didn't specify if you thought that detracted from my point, though.
Who said something about revenue and expenses?
They are just firing people arbitrary and claim fighting bureaucracy and corruption.
The popular national parks like Yosemite do pay for themselves, so that’s how it works, it’s just run by the government instead of a corporation.
This was known problem in 2024 unfortunately: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d24PTLHEu_Q
Budgets are set a year ahead of time.
Reminded of what happened during Covid when a few asshats decided to go into the public's parks and started tagging everything.
I’ll bet DOGE could code up an auction system in no time. Or turn it over to Ticketmaster. Think of the profits.
Or just open it up to the entire Internet [1].
[1] https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/the-doge-website-is-s...
You say that, but a private company already manages the reservation system, and profits off of all the junk fees
Shhh, don't let the facts get in the way of the bootlicking.
But what if we had LexisNexis run it and charge a $350 processing fee for entrance passes with a 3-8 business week processing time?
"fee technicians — the people who collect money at park entrances and campgrounds — who were two months into the hiring process"
What? It takes two months+ to hire a ticket seller? Ridiculous.
Those are actually difficult hires to make. Huge number of low-quality applicants, but the standards for park employees are actually quite high, and admin tries to hire for passion which helps with retention and sustaining their unique culture (imo park staff are by and large excellent folks and most have impressive backgrounds relative to their position.) The immediately tangible upshot to this approach is retention, lots of those "booth jockeys" return many years in a row, or grow into admin/ranger roles.
Staff morale and visitor experience will suffer if the careful selection process is eased, and retention woes will probably cause a measurable fiscal impact to operational budgets once the passion-hire cohort churns out.
Selecting for passion takes time. It's the same when you're hiring to build a company with an exceptional culture.
Trump, Musk and co don't care. If it doesn't benefit them and they can't profit from it, it doesn't matter.
What are the odds there's chaos in the parks this summer with short staffing, and the admin decides to blame the National Parks Service as a reason to privatize management of the parks?
They are not going to privatize management - they are going to sell the land so the federal government does not own it anymore and give it to themselves in the form of tax breaks, subsidies to regime friendly companies.
[flagged]
Hey mods, how is this even helping to discourse?
I got some comments flagged for less than that.
This comment is both flagged and dead.
[flagged]
[flagged]
[flagged]
The solution (not my solution you understand, but the Cliven Bundy et al mindset solution) is to reverse Federal Parks, privatise the commons, return cattle grazing to once national forests, allow the market to extract value and juice and leave a dry husk for citizens who are fenced out in any case.
[flagged]
How dare to question the great and powerful Orange One!! His great coming was fortold in the book of Revelation, wherein he cuts the heads off of the Magnificent Seven. He, the great Orange One, is the 8th head that is part of the seven but is destined to destroy them and ride off on a white horse.
[flagged]
Only in the USA would people be ignorant enough to rescind funding that supports the protection and conservation of world-famous wildlife resources that also are able to sustain there own revenue source. Yosemite can pay for itself and then some if the government just let people work and collect fees (aka fee technicians).
Do you support defunding the police in your jurisdiction? Paid National Park Service employees are the only law enforcement officers in the park.
You are exhibiting signs of California Derangement Syndrome.
It's contagious, and although not fatal, can be super embarrassing in public.
Get it checked out.
You need employees to stop those people walking around from destroying everything in site. Fires, garbage, etc. It's a legitimate concern, and a disgrace what the current regime is trying to do. Next will be attempts to privatize and sell off the national park system to billionaires.
Do other states not have park rangers?
- Why is this being posted in Hacker News? This is technology related stuff.
- Do you realize Trump assumed less than a month ago?
Even when this government is trying to resolve the huge amount of federal waste, it is normal to wait couple of months until it stabilizes.
I remember when my country did a massive reform to the judiciary, it was entirely chaotic for few months.
Under a certain problem you can always hire more people and expect that resolves the issue, but this goes against efficiency as government doesn't have accountability (just check US debt!).
Resolving an efficiency issue is always difficult and chaotic until it stabilizes, governments around the world are known for never updating their processes. They don't even have a database for Social Security!