The National Park Service (NPS) has been tasked with preserving some of the most special places in the country for the public since 1872, when former President Ulysses S. Grant signed the bill establishing Yellowstone National Park as the world’s first national park. And it’s a big job—one that has historically relied on around 20,000 permanent, temporary, and seasonal employees, according to the NPS website.

Now, almost 153 years later, President Donald Trump initiated a mass firing of around 1,000 park service employees, many of whom were in a “probationary period,” meaning they were either new to the job or had recently moved parks or changed roles within the NPS. The February layoffs followed a hiring freeze and a buyout offer in January that was sent to over two million full-time federal employees to encourage early retirement and resignation, including members of the NPS.

After these massive NPS staff cuts, The Associated Press reported that the government is restoring some 50 NPS jobs and hiring up to 7,700 seasonal positions—an increase from the three-year average of 6,350 seasonal workers the park service typically hires.

It’s hard to know where the NPS stands after the flurry of firings, resignations, and hirings. But travelers can expect changes to their experience.

Where does that leave the NPS?

An NPS spokesperson told Travel + Leisure that while it’s implementing the federal hiring freeze, “the order does allow for exemptions for the hiring of certain positions” and that “the NPS is assessing our most critical staffing needs for park operations for the coming season and is working to hire key positions.”

Concern around staffing is compounded by the fact that park personnel have already been reduced in recent years, according to Philip Francis, who worked for the park service for over 40 years and now serves on the executive council for The Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks.

“I went back and looked at some budget data from fiscal year 2010 and compared that to the amount of people we had in fiscal year 2023, and the park service has lost thousands of positions over that time,” he told T+L. “And, all that at a time when more parks have been added to the system and visitation has grown to new records.” (The NPS welcomed over 281 million visitors in 2010 and 325 million guests in 2023, following an all-time high of over 330 million people in 2016.)

How will national parks be affected?

NPS staffing changes have already impacted several parks. Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument in Colorado announced on social media that it will be closed Mondays and Tuesdays due to “lack of staffing” effective Feb. 24. And Kristen Brengel, senior vice president of government affairs at the National Parks Conservation Association, told The AP that all but one of the supervisory positions at Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming were eliminated, leaving just one person to hire, train, and supervise incoming seasonal employees.

These are just two of the many parks affected by the federal order.

How will visitors be affected?

The looming question is what the park experience will look like for the 300 million-plus planning to visit a national park in 2025.

Francis noted that the hiring freeze, resignations, and layoffs “might affect the timeliness of opening certain facilities in the parks, such as the visitor center and campgrounds” and could lead to anything from trash-strewn campsites to dirty, poorly-stocked bathrooms.

Visitor safety is also top of mind for Francis. “Not everyone has had an experience in a park and sometimes it can be very hazardous,” he told T+L. (The NPS reported that between 2014 and 2019 there were 2,149 deaths within national parks, including 314 unintentional drownings and 205 unintentional falls.)

Alex Wild, who lost his permanent position as a park ranger at Yosemite National Park, called the firings “flat-out reckless” on Instagram, sharing, “I am the only EMT at my park and the first responder for any emergency.”

In a Feb. 7 letter to Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, 22 U.S. senators wrote, “Americans showing up to national parks this summer and for years to come don’t deserve to have their vacations ruined by a completely preventable—and completely irresponsible—staffing. And local economies don’t deserve to have their livelihoods destroyed for political gain.”