Staffing shortages, traffic jams and a culture war: Inside the fight over America’s national parks

For Sam Peterson, it was love at first sight: the sweeping views of densely forested valleys and sun gleaming through snow-tipped mountain peaks.

After navigating Glacier National Park’s iconic Going-to-the-Sun Road, a 52-mile highway crossing the Continental Divide in Montana, Peterson spotted a park ranger, sporting the iconic grey and green uniform, and knew instantly what he wanted to do with his life.

He left his job as a history teacher in Oregon to become a ranger in northeast Washington state at the Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area. After being promoted to a permanent position, Peterson had a two-month gap before his new role began. Eager to keep working, he volunteered for a temporary assignment at the Jimmy Carter National Historical Park in Plains, Georgia.

Then came the call: former President Jimmy Carter had died. Peterson agreed without hesitation to stay on and help with the funeral, delaying the start of his new position by two weeks.

But the decision cost him his career.

The Trump administration imposed a government-wide hiring freeze , halting his promotion. A month later, on February 14, he was notified, along with tens of thousands of other park rangers and civil servants across multiple agencies, that his new position has been terminated - a day employees have since coined the “Valentine’s Day massacre.”

“There were some tears, there was shock. There was just this fear, this feeling of failure,” Peterson said, describing how he and his wife were given 60 days to move out of the National Park housing they’d settled into.

CNN spoke to more than a dozen current and former employees of the National Park Service, advocates and former officials who described an agency that has been gutted over the last 18 months, with permanent staff pushed out, vacancies left unfilled, funds redirected and educational material altered – all while visitations to dozens of parks reach record-highs and as extreme weather fuels dangerous conditions.

The challenges, some fear, are overwhelming for a system beloved by the American public and monumental for preserving America’s legacy and natural beauty.

Overall, roughly 1,000 NPS employees were fired that February 14, as part of an effort led by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to drastically reduce the number of people working for the federal government.

Peterson, who said he was making $39,000 a year at the time, had just returned from buying his wife flowers when he was notified his position had been terminated. “It has been determined that you are not effective at your job,” the email read.

“We’d put everything out there to do this really cool thing and serve our community,” his wife, Ashley St. Aubin-Clark, told CNN. “It just felt like it all blew up.”

Matt McClain/The Washington Post/Getty Images

Multiple legal actions were taken against the mass layoffs, and in March 2025, a judge issued a preliminary injunction ordering federal agencies to reinstate probationary employees that had been fired, finding the government dismissed the employees for performance reasons it knew “good and well” were a lie.

Peterson was offered his old job back, but by then he was already in a new position at a museum in Astoria, Oregon. “I had already signed a lease for an apartment… My wife had already resigned her teaching position in the community we had been living in.”

In September last year, the same judge issued his final ruling , calling the firings illegal but declining to order reinstatement, noting the terminated employees had “moved on with their lives.” The government has appealed the ruling.

Since Trump’s return to office, the NPS has lost approximately 4,000 permanent employees, a drop of about 24%, through layoffs, buyouts, early retirements, and a nine-month hiring freeze, according to the National Parks Conservation Association.

The decline builds on a longer slide: The NPS had already lost some 2,000 permanent staff between 2011 and 2024, according to Emily Douce, deputy vice-president for government affairs at the NPCA.

Despite the hiring freeze being lifted in October 2025, separate policies set by the Office of Personnel Management and the Office of Management and Budget have capped federal hiring at no more than one new employee for every four who leave, with exceptions for public safety roles. This means most vacancies at national parks remain unfilled.

William Hale Irwin/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

The staffing strain comes as many national parks tally record-high visitation numbers, leading to standstill traffic on park roads, packed parking lots and overcrowded visitor centers – all of which raise concerns about damage to the wildlife and landscapes the parks aim to preserve.

At Yosemite National Park, the reservation system was eliminated and visitation surged 45 percent, according to government data. Douce said the result has been “devastating.”

“Almost like a Disneyland or Disney World, rather than enjoying a peaceful place in a park,” she told CNN.

In the midst of America’s 250th anniversary this summer, park rangers were responsible for managing sites in Philadelphia, New York, and across the West that were expected to see huge visitation numbers. “It’s really sad because these poor Park Service employees want to protect these places, but it’s really difficult with this huge reduction in staffing,” Douce said.

The situation is stressful for the park employees who remain and are left doing extra work while dealing with “uncertainty and fear about whether or not they’re going to be next,” said Bill Wade, a former ranger who now leads the Association of National Park Rangers. “Morale is the lowest it’s ever been that anybody can remember,” he told CNN.

They’re also facing pressure as the consequences of the climate crisis wreak ecological havoc on the country’s national parks, with a historic drought dwindling water resources and fueling wildfires across the West.

As the world continues to burn more fossil fuel, warming Earth’s atmosphere, extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and deadly, as seen by relentless heat waves , rampant wildfires and catastrophic flooding – posing a greater challenge to land preservation.

Congress, for its part, has tried to hold the line – with bipartisan support on park preservation. The administration’s fiscal year 2026 budget proposal for discretionary spending included $1.2 billion in NPS cuts – a 37% decrease – the largest in the agency’s 110-year history. Congress rejected it and passed a budget with just a 2% decrease. For the 2027 fiscal year, the administration again asked for more than $1 billion to be cut from NPS funding. While the budget hasn’t been finalized, the House Appropriations Subcommittee approved just a 1% funding cut.

But Congress’s spending decisions have not translated into staffing. John Garder, who has tracked NPS budgets for the NPCA for 15 years, told CNN parks are being told not to use the money on staffing, as lawmakers directed, but to instead use it for things like repair projects, wildlife monitoring equipment or landscaping equipment.

“It’s an affront to Congress when both parties provided sufficient funding for the level of staff that they used to have and gave specific direction to have sufficient staff to meet the Park Service mission,” Garder said. “And it’s an affront to the American people who treasure these places and expect their parks to be staffed and cared for.”

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, testifying before the House Natural Resources Committee in May, defended the administration’s approach. He said the department had “hired thousands and thousands of people into the national parks system,” and the budget focused on visitor-facing operations.

Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

But Garder said the “thousands” Burgum cited were seasonal employees, not permanent replacements for the career scientists and resource managers the agency has lost. The number of permanent hires is between 500 and 600, Garder said.

In a statement to CNN, a spokesperson for the Department of the Interior did not respond to questions about how many permanent hires had been made, but said the department was “modernizing to eliminate unnecessary duplication, improve efficiency, strengthen coordination, and better align resources with mission-critical work.”

In June, Maine independent Sen. Angus King, the ranking member of the Senate subcommittee on national parks, and other senators wrote to Burgum demanding transparency about the redirection of park funds toward what King called “vanity projects” in Washington, DC, including ornamental fountains, the renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool , and covering statues in gold leaf, none of which were among the Park Service’s top construction priorities .

The Department of the Interior also did not respond to questions about the redirection of funds, but said it has been working on “many deferred maintenance projects throughout the country.”

Photo Illustration by Jason Lancaster/CNN/Getty Images

Emergency response workers pulled from national parks for Trump’s ‘beautification’ of Washington, DC

The staffing collapse is one piece of a broader effort. The administration has also moved to reshape how America’s public lands tell the nation’s history – and who gets to decide what stories are told.

In spring 2025, Trump signed an executive order titled “ Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History, ” directing federal agencies to remove descriptions, depictions and other content that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living, including persons living in colonial times.”

The order set in motion efforts to revise or remove interpretive signs and other materials across national parks and federal sites, touching on subjects ranging from slavery and Indigenous history to climate change.

Within weeks, QR codes were displayed in parks nationwide, inviting the public to report anything they found objectionable. Some critics called them snitch signs.

RJ Sangosti/MediaNews Group/The /Denver Post/Getty Images

A seasonal ranger who worked at Mount Rushmore last summer described the process to CNN: A visitor scans the code and the complaint goes to Washington. If the complaint is deemed credible, an assessor is dispatched and staff are told to remove the material or be fired.

“If my site superintendent, who’s been in the park service for over 20 years, said, ‘I’m not going to do that. You can kick rocks,’ they would be fired on the spot,” the ranger said. “This level of censorship threatens everyone’s jobs.” He spoke on condition of anonymity while working at a national historical park that focuses on Indigenous history, exactly the kind of content the order targets.

Under the directive, at least 45 signs that covered topics ranging from climate change to Native American history were altered, according to Save Our Signs, an advocacy group that tracks changes to NPS displays.

At Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, a former ranger said staff were ordered to take down part of an exhibit that asked visitors to consider the complicated legacy of Gustavus Cheyney Doane, an explorer and soldier who was involved in the massacre of members of the Piegan Blackfeet tribe in 1870. The order came by phone, the ranger said, noting “there’s no trace” of the order if someone were to file a Freedom of Information Act request to see it.

Tom Brenner/The Washington Post/Getty Images

Another flashpoint in the controversy has been the iconic photograph, “Scourged Back,” depicting welts and scars across the body of a formerly enslaved Louisiana man, one of the 19th century’s defining photographs. The Washington Post reported that officials at an unidentified national park had ordered that the photo be taken down, along with other signs and exhibits related to slavery. The National Park Service denied the report and said no such order was given, but by then, it had already sparked concern over historical censorship.

In May, the National Park Service released its database of 35,700 public submissions received between June 2025 and January 2026. About two-thirds were used not to flag exhibits but to defend them or to criticize the policy, express support for park rangers, or demand the signs be taken down. Fewer than 2 percent used the tool for its intended purpose.

The administration’s censorship seems to extend beyond signs and exhibits, one former ranger told CNN. SJ Joslin, a wildlife biologist who ran the bat program at Yosemite and managed the park’s terrestrial wildlife data, was fired in August 2025 after hanging a transgender pride flag from El Capitan while off-duty.

There’s a long history of people temporarily hanging flags from El Capitan, Joslin said. “As long as people have been climbing El Cap, it’s been this canvas for First Amendment speech, and there’s never been any repercussions from anyone flying flags.”

Joslin, who is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, told CNN the flag hung from a naturally formed heart-shaped feature 800 feet up the rock face for about two-and-a-half hours in May 2025 before Joslin and others they were with took it down.

“The whole point was, like, it’s this heart feature on an iconic granite monolith, and we’re hanging the symbol of love in a heart,” Joslin said.

The next day, Yosemite’s acting superintendent signed a new rule prohibiting people from hanging large banners and flags in areas designated as wilderness, which would include El Capitan.

Other high-profile instances of a banner or flag being hoisted on the rock face were seen in the prior year. In February 2025, a group of Yosemite employees hung an American flag upside down – a symbolic distress call – in response to the staffing cuts. And in June 2024, a banner reading “Stop the genocide” was displayed to bring attention to the Israeli offensive in Gaza, The San Francisco Chronicle reported.

In response to inquiries, a spokesperson for the National Park Service did not comment on Joslin’s termination, but said the agency “will not tolerate violations of laws and regulations” affecting park resources or the visitors experience, and that demonstrations outside designated First Amendment areas require a permit.

Today, Joslin still lives near Yosemite and has yet to find another job. On Memorial Day weekend, they went into the park and picked up trash. When they tried to volunteer at the park, they say they were unofficially told their name was “untouchable.”

What worries those CNN spoke to who have spent their lives in the parks is not just what has happened, but what cannot easily be rebuilt.

Adam Auerbach, a former seasonal ranger at Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, spent months working toward a Presidential Management Fellowship, a nearly 50-year-old federal leadership pipeline. The administration killed the program before he reached the final round of the application process.

Auerbach now watches as positions that once went to people with five years of experience go to applicants with 15 years of experience and a PhD, because the market is flooded with displaced federal workers

“They’re cutting today’s civil servants,” he told CNN, “but they’re also cutting out the pathway so that there can be qualified people to follow in their footsteps.”

Garder, the NPCA budget director, put it plainly. “You can systematically destroy the park service in the span of a year or two or four. … But you can’t rebuild it in such a short amount of time.”

Peterson said he would like to return someday, likening the excitement he used to feel about the job to “the night before a big school field trip when you’re 13 years old.” But his wife has already given up a lot.

“I have those positive memories of being a park ranger,” Peterson said. “But she only has the negative side of it. She only has the part where her husband got fired from his dream job, we had to move, and all these terrible things happened.”

Meanwhile, Peterson still volunteers at a park site. He lobbies Congress to keep the parks funded and he still has his ranger hat. Someday, he hopes to give his wife the good experience of being married to a park ranger: the hikes after work, the wildlife, the house in a park.

对于萨姆·彼得森来说，这是一见钟情：视野开阔，可以看到茂密的森林覆盖的山谷，阳光透过白雪皑皑的山峰洒下。

在沿着冰川国家公园标志性的向阳大道行驶了一段 52 英里长的公路，这条公路横跨蒙大拿州的大陆分水岭后，彼得森看到了一位身穿标志性灰绿色制服的公园管理员，他立刻就知道自己的人生目标是什么了。

他辞去了在俄勒冈州的历史教师工作，前往华盛顿州东北部的罗斯福湖国家休闲区担任护林员。晋升为正式员工后，彼得森在正式上任前有两个月的空档期。他渴望继续工作，于是自愿前往佐治亚州普莱恩斯的吉米·卡特国家历史公园担任临时护林员。

随后电话传来：前总统吉米·卡特去世了。彼得森毫不犹豫地同意留下来帮忙处理葬礼事宜，因此推迟了两周才开始他的新工作。

但这个决定断送了他的职业生涯。

特朗普政府实施了全政府范围的招聘冻结，阻止了他的晋升。一个月后，2月14日，他和数万名其他公园管理员以及多个机构的公务员一起接到通知，他的新职位已被终止——员工们后来将这一天称为“情人节大屠杀”。

“当时有人哭了，有人震惊了。只有恐惧，只有失败感，”彼得森说道，他描述了自己和妻子被勒令在 60 天内搬出他们已经安顿下来的国家公园住房的情况。

CNN采访了十几位国家公园管理局的现任和前任员工、倡导者和前官员，他们描述了该机构在过去18个月中遭受的重创：正式员工被解雇，空缺职位无人填补，资金被重新分配，教育材料被更改——与此同时，数十个公园的游客数量达到历史新高，极端天气加剧了危险状况。

有人担心，这些挑战对于一个深受美国民众喜爱的体系来说是难以承受的，对于保护美国的传统和自然美景来说也是意义重大的。

2 月 14 日，大约有 1000 名 NPS 员工被解雇，这是由唐纳德·特朗普总统和埃隆·马斯克的政府效率部牵头，旨在大幅减少联邦政府员工人数的举措的一部分。

彼得森说他当时年薪3.9万美元，刚给妻子买完花回来就接到解雇通知。“经鉴定，您未能胜任工作，”邮件中写道。

“我们倾尽全力去做这件很棒的事情，为我们的社区服务，”他的妻子阿什利·圣奥宾-克拉克告诉CNN。“结果感觉一切都崩塌了。”

Matt McClain/华盛顿邮报/Getty Images

针对大规模裁员，人们采取了多项法律行动。2025 年 3 月，一名法官发布了一项初步禁令，命令联邦机构恢复被解雇的试用期员工的职务。该法官认定，政府以绩效为由解雇了这些员工，而政府明知这些绩效理由都是谎言。

彼得森被邀请回到原来的工作岗位，但那时他已经在俄勒冈州阿斯托利亚的一家博物馆找到了一份新工作。“我已经签好了公寓的租约……我的妻子也已经辞去了我们之前居住社区的教职。”

去年9月，同一位法官作出最终裁决，认定解雇行为非法，但拒绝下令恢复被解雇员工的职位，并指出这些员工“已经开始了新的生活”。政府已就此裁决提出上诉。

据国家公园保护协会称，自特朗普重返总统职位以来，美国国家公园管理局 (NPS) 已失去约 4000 名正式员工，降幅约 24%，原因是裁员、买断、提前退休以及长达九个月的招聘冻结。

这一下滑趋势是长期下滑的结果：据美国国家公园管理局 (NPCA) 政府事务副总裁艾米丽·杜斯 (Emily Douce) 称，从 2011 年到 2024 年，美国国家公园管理局 (NPS) 已经失去了大约 2000 名常驻员工。

尽管招聘冻结令已于2025年10月解除，但人事管理办公室和管理与预算办公室分别制定的政策规定，联邦政府的招聘上限为每离职四名员工，新员工不得超过一名，公共安全岗位除外。这意味着国家公园的大部分空缺职位仍然空缺。

威廉·黑尔·欧文/洛杉矶时报/盖蒂图片社

由于许多国家公园的游客数量创历史新高，导致公园道路交通瘫痪、停车场爆满、游客中心人满为患，人员配备面临压力——所有这些都引发了人们对公园旨在保护的野生动植物和景观遭到破坏的担忧。

根据政府数据，优胜美地国家公园取消预约系统后，游客数量激增了45%。杜斯表示，这一结果“令人震惊”。

她告诉 CNN：“这里简直就像迪士尼乐园或迪士尼世界，而不是在公园里享受宁静。”

今年夏天正值美国建国250周年之际，公园管理员们负责管理费城、纽约以及西部各地的景点，预计这些地方将迎来大量游客。“这真的很令人难过，因为这些可怜的公园管理处员工想要保护这些地方，但由于人手大幅减少，这真的很难做到，”杜斯说道。

前护林员、现任国家公园护林员协会主席比尔·韦德表示，对于留守的公园员工来说，这种情况压力巨大，他们不仅要承担额外的工作，还要面对“不确定感和恐惧，不知道下一个会不会轮到自己”。他告诉CNN：“士气低落到了人们记忆中最严重的程度。”

他们还面临着压力，因为气候危机的后果正在对该国的国家公园造成生态破坏，历史性的干旱正在减少水资源，并助长西部各地的野火。

随着世界继续燃烧更多的化石燃料，地球大气层变暖，极端天气事件变得越来越频繁和致命，例如持续不断的热浪、肆虐的野火和灾难性的洪水——这对土地保护构成了更大的挑战。

国会方面则试图坚守底线，并在公园保护问题上获得了两党支持。政府提出的2026财年可自由支配支出预算案中，包括削减国家公园管理局（NPS）12亿美元的预算——降幅高达37%，这是该机构110年历史上最大的一次削减。国会否决了该预算案，最终通过的预算案仅削减了2%。对于2027财年，政府再次要求削减NPS超过10亿美元的预算。虽然预算尚未最终确定，但众议院拨款小组委员会仅批准了1%的预算削减方案。

但国会的支出决定并未转化为实际的人员配备。为国家公园保护协会 (NPCA) 追踪国家公园管理局 (NPS) 预算长达 15 年的约翰·加德纳 (John Garder) 告诉 CNN，各公园被告知不要按照立法者的指示将资金用于人员配备，而是用于维修项目、野生动物监测设备或景观美化设备等。

加德勒说：“两党都曾为国家公园管理局提供充足的资金，维持原有的人员配置水平，并明确指示要配备足够的人员来完成管理局的使命，现在却这样对待他们，这简直是对国会的侮辱。这同时也是对珍视这些地方、期望公园得到妥善维护的美国人民的侮辱。”

内政部长道格·伯古姆五月份在众议院自然资源委员会作证时，为政府的做法辩护。他表示，内政部“已在国家公园系统内雇佣了成千上万的人”，而且预算重点放在了面向游客的运营方面。

吉姆·沃森/法新社/盖蒂图片社

但加德表示，伯格姆提到的“数千人”指的是季节性员工，并非该机构流失的职业科学家和资源管理人员的永久替代者。加德说，永久聘用人数在500到600人之间。

内政部发言人在给 CNN 的一份声明中没有回应有关已聘用多少正式员工的问题，但表示该部门正在“进行现代化改革，以消除不必要的重复工作，提高效率，加强协调，并更好地将资源与关键任务工作相匹配”。

6 月，缅因州独立参议员安格斯·金（Angus King）——参议院国家公园小组委员会的资深成员——与其他参议员致信伯格姆，要求其公开将公园资金转移到金所称的华盛顿特区的“面子工程”上的情况，这些工程包括装饰喷泉、林肯纪念堂倒影池的翻新以及用金箔覆盖雕像，而这些都不是国家公园管理局的首要建设项目。

内政部也没有回应有关资金重新分配的问题，但表示一直在开展“全国各地许多延期维护项目”。

图片由 Jason Lancaster/CNN/Getty Images 提供

为了特朗普“美化”华盛顿特区，紧急救援人员从国家公园被抽调。

人员精简只是更广泛举措的一部分。本届政府还着手重塑美国公共土地讲述国家历史的方式——以及由谁来决定讲述哪些故事。

2025 年春季，特朗普签署了一项名为“恢复美国历史的真相和理智”的行政命令，指示联邦机构删除“不恰当地贬低过去或现在的美国人，包括殖民时代的人”的描述、描绘和其他内容。

该命令启动了对国家公园和联邦场所的解说牌和其他材料进行修订或移除的工作，涉及的主题包括奴隶制和原住民历史以及气候变化。

几周之内，全国各地的公园里都出现了二维码，邀请公众举报任何他们认为不妥的行为。一些批评人士称这些二维码为“告密者标志”。

RJ Sangosti/MediaNews Group/《丹佛邮报》/Getty Images

一位去年夏天在拉什莫尔山工作的季节性护林员向CNN描述了整个流程：游客扫描二维码后，投诉就会发送到华盛顿。如果投诉被认为可信，就会派遣评估员，工作人员会被告知移除相关物品，否则将被解雇。

“如果我的营地主管，一个在公园管理处工作了20多年的人，说‘我不会这么做，你们可以滚蛋’，那他肯定会被当场解雇，”这位护林员说道。“这种程度的审查会威胁到每个人的工作。” 他匿名接受采访时表示，他所在的国家历史公园主要展示原住民历史，而这正是该命令针对的内容类型。

据追踪美国国家公园管理局 (NPS) 展示品变化的倡导组织“拯救我们的标志”称，根据该指令，至少有 45 个涵盖气候变化到美洲原住民历史等主题的标志被更改。

怀俄明州大提顿国家公园的一位前护林员表示，工作人员接到命令，要求拆除部分展览内容。该展览旨在引导游客思考古斯塔夫·切尼·多恩（Gustavus Cheyney Doane）的复杂历史。多恩是一位探险家兼士兵，曾参与1870年对皮根黑脚部落成员的大屠杀。这位护林员说，命令是通过电话下达的，并指出，如果有人根据《信息自由法》提出申请要求查看该命令，将会“找不到任何痕迹”。

汤姆·布伦纳/《华盛顿邮报》/盖蒂图片社

这场争议的另一个焦点是那张标志性的照片《鞭笞之背》，照片中一位路易斯安那州前奴隶身上布满了鞭痕和疤痕，是19世纪最具代表性的照片之一。《华盛顿邮报》报道称，某国家公园的官员下令撤下这张照片以及其他与奴隶制相关的标牌和展品。国家公园管理局否认了这一报道，并表示并未下达过这样的命令，但此事已引发了人们对历史审查的担忧。

今年5月，美国国家公园管理局公布了其数据库，其中包含2025年6月至2026年1月期间收到的35700份公众意见。其中约三分之二的意见并非用于举报展品，而是用于维护展品、批评相关政策、表达对公园管理员的支持，或要求撤下标牌。只有不到2%的意见用于其预期用途。

一位前护林员告诉CNN，政府的审查似乎不仅限于标牌和展览。SJ Joslin是一名野生动物生物学家，曾负责优胜美地国家公园的蝙蝠项目并管理公园的陆生野生动物数据。2025年8月，他因在非值班时间将一面跨性别骄傲旗帜悬挂在酋长岩上而被解雇。

乔斯林说，人们在酋长岩上临时悬挂旗帜由来已久。“只要有人攀登酋长岩，它就一直是行使宪法第一修正案赋予的言论自由的场所，而且从来没有人因为悬挂旗帜而受到任何惩罚。”

乔斯林是非二元性别者，使用他们/她们的代词。他告诉 CNN，2025 年 5 月，这面旗帜挂在岩壁上一个天然形成的心形物体上，距离地面 800 英尺，大约挂了两个半小时，之后乔斯林和同行的其他人把它取了下来。

“重点在于，这是一块标志性花岗岩巨石上的心形图案，我们把爱的象征物挂在了心形图案里，”乔斯林说。

第二天，优胜美地国家公园代理主管签署了一项新规定，禁止人们在指定为荒野的地区悬挂大型横幅和旗帜，其中包括酋长岩。

前一年还发生过其他一些引人注目的事件，有人在岩壁上悬挂横幅或旗帜。2025年2月，一群优胜美地国家公园的员工将一面美国国旗倒挂——象征性地发出求救信号——以回应公园的裁员。据《旧金山纪事报》报道，2024年6月，有人悬挂了一条写着“停止种族灭绝”的横幅，以引起人们对以色列在加沙地带军事行动的关注。

针对询问，国家公园管理局发言人没有对乔斯林的解雇发表评论，但表示该机构“绝不容忍”任何影响公园资源或游客体验的违法违规行为，并且在指定的宪法第一修正案区域之外进行示威活动需要获得许可。

如今，乔斯林仍然住在优胜美地附近，还没找到其他工作。在阵亡将士纪念日周末，他们去公园捡垃圾。他们说，当他们试图在公园做志愿者时，却被非正式地告知他们的名字“不可触碰”。

CNN采访的那些在公园里度过了一生的人担心的，不仅是已经发生的事情，还有那些难以重建的东西。

亚当·奥尔巴赫曾是科罗拉多州落基山国家公园的一名季节性护林员，他花了几个月的时间申请总统管理奖学金，这是一项已有近50年历史的联邦领导人才培养计划。然而，在他进入申请流程的最后一轮之前，政府就终止了该项目。

奥尔巴赫现在眼睁睁地看着原本五年工作经验的人才能胜任的职位，转而落入拥有十五年工作经验和博士学位的求职者手中，因为市场上充斥着大量失业的联邦雇员。

“他们不仅裁减了今天的公务员，”他告诉 CNN，“而且还切断了晋升途径，以便让合格的人能够接替他们的工作。”

国家公园管理局预算主管加德纳直言不讳地说：“你可以在一两年甚至四年内系统性地摧毁国家公园管理局……但你不可能在这么短的时间内重建它。”

彼得森说他希望有一天能重返赛场，他把过去对这份工作的兴奋感比作“13岁时学校组织大型郊游前夜的激动心情”。但他的妻子已经为此放弃了很多。

“我对当公园管理员的经历有很多美好的回忆，”彼得森说。“但她只有不好的回忆。她只记得她丈夫丢掉了梦寐以求的工作，我们不得不搬家，以及所有这些糟糕的事情。”

与此同时，彼得森仍然在公园做志愿者。他游说国会维持公园的资金，而且他仍然戴着他的护林员帽子。他希望有一天能让妻子体验嫁给一名公园护林员的美好感受：下班后一起徒步旅行，观赏野生动物，住在公园里的房子里。