Among the federal workers that’ve been laid off in the first several weeks of the Trump administration are an estimated 1,000 National Park Service employees.
That includes some at one of the country’s most visited parks — Grand Canyon National Park.
Adrian Skabelund, a reporter and producer at KNAU in Flagstaff, spoke with one of those employees who was let go.
Skabelund joined The Show to talk about what he learned.
Full conversation
MARK BRODIE: Adrian, what did this now former employee say about how they found out they'd lost their job?
ADRIAN SKABELUND: Yeah, so they were actually in the field. This all happened a couple of weeks ago, they were let go on Valentine's Day, like so many others, and they were in the field and so I think they got a call from their supervisor, letting them know because they had missed the email that so many others had had received. They worked on the project that the park has been working on, the waterline project to repair the Transcanyon waterline, I should say, and we're actually planning that next day to head into the canyon to start planting trees down, down at the bottom of the Grand Canyon as part of an effort to to plant vegetation, restore vegetation within the campground there at the bottom of the canyon near Phantom Ranch. So.
BRODIE: Was this employee one of those probationaries? Were they fairly new in their job?
SKABELUND: Yeah, they had been only working for the Grand Canyon National Park in a full-time position for about six months, but they've worked for two years in seasonal positions for the Grand Canyon since about 2022. So they've had a relationship with the canyon, they've seen the canyon and seen the park and the Park Service as, you know, their career, steady work for them, but they were just working seasonally, like a lot of folks do. Flagstaff's a kind of a hub for science and a lot of canyon-related industries, and so it's not unusual for up here that folks will work seasonally in one way or another, whether that's for the Park Service or another federal agency before moving into a more permanent position, if that's something that they're hoping to do.
BRODIE: Yeah, well, so what did this person say about what they plan to do? I mean, this sounds like somebody who is clearly dedicated to doing this kind of work. What's next for them?
SKABELUND: Yeah, they're not quite sure. They're hoping to get their job back. They, like a lot of folks that I've talked to, have said that they want to fight to get their job back. That said, they also have bills to pay, and I think it's not quite clear how long or what the process is going to look like for these folks who have lost their positions. He lives in park housing, up in Grand Canyon Village, so his housing is tied to his job, so he's not quite sure how. he'll be able to stay there. His partner actually worked for Glen Canyon Recreation Area about 130 miles north up by Page on the Arizona-Utah border. Two days after he was laid off or his job was terminated, she called him and she had the same thing had happened. She had been terminated.
BRODIE: Well, so, in addition to the human impact here, what might the impact be? What are folks saying about what the impact of people losing their jobs will have on the park itself and park operations?
SKABELUND: Yeah, so, I mean, what we know now, and I should note that Grand Canyon National Park and the Park Service have not answered any of our questions. We've been told by local officials that 10 people were laid off from Grand Canyon National Park, but that's not coming from the Park Service. So in terms of impacts to the park, we've seen many days since these terminations, longer lines at the South Rim of, or the entrance, I should say, to the South Rim. ... We've seen lines that are about double the length that they normally are. That's not every day, but it's certainly ... an increasing trend of longer lines.
And then obviously this Transcanyon water line that supplies water to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. It had been under, I guess it still is under this project they're trying to fix it up and, and really retrofit it. That project appears to be on hold. That's a $200 million project that has been years and years in the making. It's pretty common up here to be hearing about breaks in that line, or in that water line, which forces Grand Canyon officials to implement water restrictions. And that means that the faucets that tourists rely on are not always able to provide water on these hot trails. So that's definitely one of the impacts that we've seen so far. I think it's also unclear how these impacts, I mean, we're, we're going into the spring break season, obviously it's coming up, summer season, Grand Canyon sees huge, huge amounts of tourism. It doesn't appear like this is going to change that necessarily. And so folks will be managing this park, managing this landscape with fewer hands.
The National Park Service was approved to hire about 7,700 seasonal workers, but I talked to a man named Bill Wade. He's the executive director of the National Park Rangers Association, and he says that it might be a little bit too late. I mean, you'd really be wanting to hire these seasonal folks already, and these parks are, generally speaking, they're already not fully staffed. The number of permanent park employees, I think, has fallen about 15% over the last decade. So, we're talking about parks that are already stretched.
BRODIE: All right, we'll have to leave it there. That is Adrian Skabelund with KNAU Public Radio in Flagstaff. Adrian, thank you, I appreciate it.
SKABELUND: Yeah, of course, great to be with you.
