A U.S. National Park Service lock keeps John Brown’s Fort at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park Lower Town closed and secured during the government shutdown on October 2, 2025 in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
According to public lands advocates, including current and former agency employees, tight staffing during the government shutdown at the Interior Department and the U.S. Forest Service leaves America’s precious natural assets vulnerable to indefinite damage.
National parks and most public lands remain open to visitors, including those operated by the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the Fish and Wildlife Service.
But the staff shortage has already led to reports of bad behavior illegal camping and BASE jumping in California’s Yosemite National Park, and park advocates and workers told States Newsroom they fear more to come as the closure, which began Oct. 1, continues with no end in sight.
Park staff adjustments aimed at “prioritizing visitor services” are intended to mask some of the long-term damage, said John Garder, senior director of budget and appropriations at the advocacy group National Parks Conservation Association.
Accordingly, the NPS has furloughed more than 9,000 of its approximately 14,500 employees a planning document published shortly before the shutdown began on October 1st.
This has resulted in those responsible for protecting “irreplaceable resources” and trail management staff having to tidy visitor centers and monitor parking lots instead, Garder said.
“This created a facade for visitors so that in many cases they don’t see the damage that’s going on behind the scenes,” he said in a telephone interview Wednesday.
Should parks be closed?
The NPCA, a nonprofit organization that advocates for national parks, has called for parks to be closed during the closure to avoid lasting damage. Others from the conservation community have joined.
Aaron Weiss, deputy director of the conservation group Center for Western Priorities, likened the situation to visitors strolling through an unstaffed Smithsonian museum.
“The national parks are practically museums,” he said. “That would be like the Smithsonian Museum saying, ‘Well, you know, we don’t have the staff to staff the Smithsonian Museum, but we’ll go ahead and leave the gates and doors open and come in and take a look and do whatever you want.’
“That would be terribly irresponsible of the Smithsonian, but that’s exactly what the National Park Service says.”
The nature of many parks makes closure complex.
The largest parks with sprawling grounds often lack extensive fencing or other means to keep people out. On public lands outside of the Park Service, including those managed by the BLM and the Forest Service, barriers to entry are even less likely to exist.
Still, the Interior Department under President Donald Trump has prioritized keeping parks open to a degree that other administrations had not planned during closures, transferring money intended for park maintenance to operations.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has downplayed reports of inappropriate behavior in the parks while blaming the closures on Democrats in Congress, who have largely opposed a stopgap bill to reopen the government. Democrats want Republicans to negotiate expiring health care tax credits.
“Of course, all of our many locations would be better run and better staffed if the Senate would simply bring us back into government,” Burgum said in an interview with Fox News on Tuesday. “Well done, Senate Democrats.”
NPS spokespeople did not respond to messages seeking comment this week. Many communications employees across the federal government have been furloughed during the shutdown and are legally barred from responding to messages.
BLM spokeswoman Alyse Sharpe said in an email that the agency will “keep public lands as accessible as possible” during the closure.
“Critical functions to protect life, property and public health remain in place, including visitor access in many locations, law enforcement and emergency response,” she wrote.
Sharpe did not respond to questions about concerns about the country’s long-term health.
“Demoralizing” atmosphere
Meanwhile, the shutdown has caused morale to continue to plummet among federal employees in charge of public lands. At least some of them are upset that the Trump administration doesn’t value their work.
More than half of Interior’s nearly 60,000 employees were furloughed during the shutdown. That reality, in addition to staff cuts earlier this year and the threat of further layoffs by Trump and White House budget director Russ Vought, has heightened the feeling among many resource managers that the government is not prioritizing their jobs.
Chris Tollefson, a former communications official with the BLM and the Fish and Wildlife Service who took over this year after nearly 27 years with the Interior agencies, said the administration’s stance is “demoralizing” for the agencies’ career employees who view their work on public lands as a calling.
“The people I know are committed to this because they care passionately about the land and the resources it protects,” he said. “Most of them have deep roots in the communities that they come from, and it’s really demoralizing to feel like your life’s work has been devalued and that what you do doesn’t matter, that those in charge feel like it doesn’t matter. So it was really hard.”
A furloughed Interior Ministry employee, who asked that her identity be withheld because she was not authorized to speak to reporters, said the ministry may have difficulty attracting qualified staff in the future.
“I went to the government to get a little more stability because I thought it would be a safer thing,” the furloughed worker said. “And that definitely wasn’t the case. You don’t feel as stable as other positions. … I think a lot of people who are in the federal government are there because of the perception of stability. If you take away that perception of stability, those positions aren’t going to be quite as attractive to talent that you would have attracted yourself.”
Oil and gas permitting continues
What further irritates conservation advocates is that the closure has not slowed oil and gas production, although science and recreation staff have been laid off.
As of Oct. 15, the BLM had issued an average of 19.8 oil and gas permits per day since the shutdown began at the beginning of the month. That’s about the same as a typical month during Trump’s second term and represents the highest daily average since May, according to an analysis of publicly available data by Weiss.
“It’s a statement of values,” Weiss said. “The Interior Department is telling the agency and America, ‘The people who manage drilling on public lands are more vital than the people who actually care for our public lands on a daily basis.’ There are no biologists, no land managers and no people to maintain the trails. Those people have all been furloughed, but the people who do the oil and gas permitting are kind of vital.”
Agencies and departments may classify some employees as exempt from vacation. These employees will remain on the job but will typically not receive a paycheck until the government reopens.
In a post on Instagram On the first day of the shutdown, the Interior Department said it would continue to issue permits “and other actions related to American energy dominance” despite the loss of funding.
