The National Park Service is now hiring seasonal workers to fill positions at parks across the country. But experts say the push to start hiring may be too late as the popular spring season gets underway.
After the Park Service laid off 1,000 employees earlier this month, the agency announced Thursday that it’s looking to "embrace new opportunities for optimization and innovation."
And it’s looking to do that by hiring thousands of seasonal employees.
Cassidy Jones is with the National Parks’ Conservation Association, a nonprofit that advocates for national parks. She said normally the service hires seasonal employees by February.
"And that was just halted and delayed and thrown into a whole lot of uncertainty for this coming very busy season for parks," she said.
But seasonal employees don’t replace the 1,000 employees who lost their jobs.
"A small example might be now a park is authorized to hire seasonal employees, but the person who is supposed to supervise and train those people lost their job and is no longer there," Jones aid.
The Park Service has begun reinstating people it initially fired after those workers proved they weren't probationary and they’d been fired in haste.
