Interior Department Planning More Changes To National Park Service Staffing
By Kurt Repanshek
April 2, 2026
Another shudder could be about to ripple across the National Park Service workforce, as Interior Department officials are planning to realign employees to place more of them in “visitor‑facing roles.”
In a department-wide email sent Thursday evening, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told his ~70,000 employee workforce that “we are taking an important step forward in strengthening service to the American people.”
The moves, he said, would “improve efficiency, modernize operations and enhance mission delivery across the country.”
“This initiative reflects a commitment to delivering faster, more reliable service to the public, reducing administrative burdens and ensuring that Interior’s work provides meaningful benefits to taxpayers, communities, territories, states and tribal nations,” the secretary wrote.
Interior Department staff did not immediately respond to questions about what the changes might portend for the Park Service, which the Trump administration has worked to winnow down in size. However, the agency’s regional directors have been summoned to Washington next week to be briefed on the changes, the Traveler was told, and an Interior release said the plans included “aligning more National Park Service positions to visitor‑facing roles.”
Last year, according to the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), nearly a quarter of the Park Service workforce was let go, either by encouraged retirements, firings, or by making working conditions so adverse that some quit. An additional reduction in force was anticipated, but never arrived.
There have been circulating concerns that the administration intends to reduce the Park Service’s Natural Resource Stewardship and Science Directorate, which “provides scientific, technical, and administrative support to national parks for the management of natural resources.” Such a move could be illegal, as the National Parks Omnibus Management Act of 1998 directs the Interior secretary to “assure that management of NPS units is enhanced by the availability and utilization of a broad program of the highest quality science and information…”
Furthermore, that law calls for Interior through the Park Service to establish “a comprehensive network of such college and university based cooperative study units as will provide full geographic and topical coverage for research on the resources contained in NPS units and their larger regions; and (2) undertake a program of inventory and monitoring of NPS resources to establish baseline information and to provide information on the long-term trends in their condition.”
In conjunction with this news of further reorganization of the Park Service staff, Interior is again offering some employees another opportunity to retire now and continue on the payroll for a number of months.
At NPCA, Emily Douce said Interior continues to weaken the Park Service’s ability to manage the National Park System, which counts 433 units from American Samoa to the Virgin Islands and from Alaska to Texas.
“The administration’s most recent reorganization plans won’t solve the challenges our parks are facing. In fact, it will make them significantly worse,” said Douce, the group’s acting vice president for government affairs. “After a year of deep staffing cuts, dwindling resources, and ongoing attacks on history and science, park staff are already stretched to the brink. Nearly a quarter of the Park Service workforce is gone. And many who remain are working two or even three jobs just to keep parks running, often not even performing the roles they were originally hired for.
“This latest attempt to push park staff out and prioritize visitor-facing roles at all costs runs counter to the very mission the Park Service was created to uphold and the natural and cultural resources it is mandated to protect,” she added. “You can only maintain the appearance of things being fine for so long. The cracks are already beginning to show, and this approach will only widen them.”
At the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, Executive Director Emily Thompson said “[O]ur parks are in crisis. They are understaffed and under-resourced. And what we learned today is that Secretary Burgum’s solution to this crisis is to try to force more critical staff to leave the National Park Service.”
“And don’t be fooled, just because many of the jobs Secretary Burgum is looking to eliminate are not publicly facing doesn’t mean they are not vital to ensuring the agency can fulfill its mission and parks can operate safely,” she added. “This will only deepen the crisis. Congress needs to step in and fully fund parks.”