Park Rangers on the Chopping Block: Florida Rangers Feel the Heat

HOMESTEAD, Fla. – In an effort to cut back on federal spending, the Department of Government Efficiency headed by Elon Musk has recently made the decision to fire 1,000 National Park service employees that will hinder the operating efficiency of national parks across the country.

Rangers and park enthusiasts have gathered for protests across America to speak up against the mass layoffs in the National Park Service. In South Florida’s Biscayne National Park, over a dozen activists assembled in front of Dante Fascell Visitor Center on March 1, holding up signs reading “Save Our Parks” and “Parks Over Profit.”

Gary Bremen, a retired National Park ranger of 29 years, organized the protest here with a goal in mind. “There are 433 national parks and today the goal is 433 protests, one in each national park,” Bremen said.

“Our primary goal today is to make people aware that the National Parks and their staff are under threat,” added Bremen, who held up a homemade sign reading “PARKS WORTH FIGHTING FOR” and stenciled arts of park ranger hats. 

“We’ve had rangers and other staff fired from all four of the national parks in South Florida and all around the country.”

Another protester, Maria Beotegui, served as park ranger at Biscayne National Park for 19 years.

“The current situation is very unsettling,” Beotegui said, adding that the cuts seemed to be coming without consideration for the vast and valuable expertise of the nation’s park range. “[They] just come in and make sweeping decisions that impact people’s personal lives, impact the services that are provided on public land, and then set this precedent for other decisions that have long-lasting impacts on things that took at least decades to build.”

President Donald Trump announced that he was taking measures to reduce the federal bureaucracy and signed an executive order to that effect on Feb. 11 The goal, the order said, was “To restore accountability to the American public, this order commences a critical transformation of the Federal bureaucracy.  By eliminating waste, bloat, and insularity, my Administration will empower American families, workers, taxpayers, and our system of Government itself.”

Then on Feb. 14, which critics refer to as the “Valentine’s Day massacre”, 1,000 National Park Service employees woke up without a job.

An anonymous ranger who has been verifying the mass firings confirmed with SFGATE , a San Francisco-based organization that the Everglades has lost 15 employees. A South Florida ranger who asked not to be named confirmed that approximately 15 Rangers at the Everglades location were terminated in the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts.

“Here in South Florida, about 20 or so folks have lost their positions for no reason other than that they were in their first year of employment which means their probationary period,” said Bremen.

Yosemite National Park ranger Alex Wild has gone viral on Instagram shortly after receiving a termination email, which stated: “The department determined that you have failed to demonstrate fitness or qualifications for continued employment because your subject matter knowledge, skills and abilities do not meet the department's current needs, and it's necessary and appropriate to terminate, during the probationary period, your appointment to the position of Park Ranger.”

“This is the biggest slap in the face imaginable,” said Wild. “I am the only EMT at my park and the first responder for an emergency.”

Cara Capp, the Greater Everglades associate director with the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), an independent nonpartisan group devoted to advocacy on behalf of national parks, said the mass firings have created chaos across the nation. 

“I work very closely on Everglades restoration and really restoring the Everglades is kind of the keystone environmental issue in Florida that people are really passionate about and a lot of people agree on,” Capp said. “And so it really doesn’t align with our values as Floridians to fire the park rangers and the scientists who are helping us restore the Everglades.”

“There are folks that are doing these jobs that are out protecting the resources, doing the science monitoring, planning projects who are going to be impacted by these federal employment changes,” Capp said in an interview. “So it just seems very counter to the major investment we’re making in restoring the Everglades to fire all the park rangers who are protecting this ecosystem.”

Projects actively being worked on concerning how to clean our water, how to flow water south, to reconnect habitats, are going to be hindered. “If one day you wake up and a third of your team say has been fired, well those projects are not going to be able to move forward,” added Capp. 

For park rangers, this is their livelihood. The rangers who were let go now face concerns and uncertainty heading into the summer season.

“They're rangers who are people, who have families, who have needs,” Capp said, explaining her frustration and the fears park rangers are feeling. “ Folks are realizing now, ‘I don't have work for the next five months.’ And so, do they lose their housing? How will they pay their bills? What are they going to do?  For people who make a living being a seasonal ranger traveling from park to park, they are really struggling to figure out what comes next.”

In response to a request for comment, the National Park Service Press Team said: “The National Park Service is hiring seasonal workers to continue enhancing the visitor experience as we embrace new opportunities for optimization and innovation in workforce management. We are focused on ensuring that every visitor has the chance to explore and connect with the incredible, iconic spaces of our national parks.”

None of the actively employed park rangers at the Everglades or Biscayne were given permission to give a formal interview or comment on this topic.