Rocky Mountain National Park among hardest hit by firings
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Bear Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park. Photo: Ron Buskirk/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
More than 750 U.S. national park employees — including in Colorado — have been fired amid the Trump administration's purge of federal workers, per an unofficial tally shared with Axios by a park ranger.
Why it matters: The cuts come months before peak summer travel, leaving parks short-staffed, including for critical lifesaving search-and-rescue missions.
Zoom in: Colorado's Rocky Mountain National Park is among the hardest-hit locations across the U.S. National Park Service (NPS), with 12 of 253 full-time workers terminated, the count shows.
- Meanwhile, the National Parks and Conservation Association this week flagged another looming cut: the Trump administration's plans to terminate 34 NPS leases nationwide — including one in Fort Collins, where more than 100 specialists work.
- That site, the Oak Ridge Building, serves as headquarters for the Natural Resource Stewardship, a key hub for conservation efforts across the national park system.
Zoom out: Other hard-hit national parks in the country include: Florida's Everglades (15 workers fired), Virginia's Shenandoah (15) and New Mexico's Carlsbad Caverns (14), according to the tally.
- North Carolina and Tennessee's Great Smoky Mountains (12) and Utah's Zion (11) also saw significant losses.
How it works: That's according to a spreadsheet shared with Axios by a U.S. park ranger who requested anonymity to protect their job and employment prospects.
- The spreadsheet, which shows 756 total firings as of March 4, is based on reports from hundreds of rangers and other park workers in multiple online groups.
Reality check: Because it's a crowdsourced effort, the document is likely incomplete and undercounts the full breadth of the firings.
Yes, but: At least a few fired park workers have since gotten their jobs back, per the document, suggesting there's at least a glimmer of hope for people who have found themselves out of their dream job.
- On Tuesday, the White House said the firing of federal probationary employees is now up to individual agencies, not the Office of Personnel Management.