Science In The National Park System Taking A Hit From Employee Firings
By
Kurt Repanshek
February 23, 2025
Among the 1,000 National Park Service employees fired on Valentine's Day were researchers and scientists who monitored the health of natural resources, like the forests at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park in West Virginia/NPS, Volunteer Devin Taggart
Go past the visitor center and the restrooms and leave the parking area and you'll enter a realm of the National Park Service that isn't in the public's eye but which is being hit hard and disrupted by the Trump administration's hatchet approach to shrinking federal government.
For while many visitors to the National Park System encounter helpful rangers at information desks and along the trails, those not often seen or heard from are the researchers and resource managers who work to uphold the National Park Service Organic Act's mandate that the Park Service "conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wildlife therein and to provide for their enjoyment in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations."
There are geologists, archaeologists, paleontologists, botanists, wildlife biologists, fisheries biologists, and historians. The list goes on and on. Their ranks were not spared when 1,000 employees were cut from the Park Service ranks on Valentine's Day.
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"Plants are the foundation of food webs, they provide food for insects," Moxley explained last week, pointing out that caterpillars native to the Appalachian Mountains where Harpers Ferry lies feed on native plants. In turn, chickadees feed on those caterpillars, she said.
More:
https://www.nationalparkstraveler.org/2025/02/science-national-park-system-taking-hit-employee-firings