“This is good for our souls. It’s good for our business. It may be good for our climate,” he said explaining the value national parks have to people. He said a medical study concluded visiting parks was good for physical health too.

Francis noted there have been funding troubles for a while. He said the total budget for the National Park Service was $3.1 billion in 2010, but notably it was also that in 2023 despite inflation. This coming fiscal year 2025, a proposed budget would only $2.8 billion. That may still seem like a lot, but Francis said repairs to damage to the Blue Ridge Parkway from Hurricane Helene alone would cost over a billion dollars.

“Our people will be working for a long time before things are back to normal,” he said. 

While he traced back worrying trends for park funding to earlier presidential administrations, including that lack of funding to keep up with inflation, he said there is more immediate fear now of people losing jobs and not finding enough staff.

He said the Great Smoky Mountains National Park funding cuts had resulted in campground and picnic closures and reduced schedules, which he said had occurred in other parks as well.

He praised and advocated for volunteers and donations but called them the icing on the cake. 

“Now we’re way down in the icing and we have very little cake,” he said.

“People are resigning and retiring,” he said, without people replacing them. He said it was likely there would be more direct cuts later. “We’re going to add to that loss so it’s going to become greater. Over 3,000 positions were lost between 2010 to present already because the budget did not keep up with salary expenses.

“It takes a team of people to get this job done. It’s not just one division or another,” he said. “It takes more people than you think to carry someone out of the woods. And if you got a fire going on, sometimes there’s more than one. And we’ve got people in all the divisions who are trained to do firefighting or assist in the firefighting. So it’s important that we have a complete cadre of people that are needed to do all the jobs.”

He also spoke of visitor center staff as important go-to people during emergencies.

He said the key was making the right kind of appeals.

“If you say, ‘they need a bunch more money,’ they probably won’t do it, maybe,” he said. “But go back to the mission statement. This is about protecting special places,” he said referring to the Organic Act of 1916. 

“The American public loves our National Parks,” he said adding that a survey showed it to be the most popular government agency. He said the public needed to let the staff know that appreciation when talking to them at the parks.

“The morale is really down because employees don’t have enough resources,” he said. “Just tell them thank you for their service.”

Previous stories continue below.

Abrams Creek, Look Rock and Cosby campgrounds closed; evidence mounts that Great Smoky Mountains National Park cuts will negatively affect visitors; reports of cuts at Big South Fork; Obed spared

GATLINBURG — Six campgrounds remain closed this spring and the popular car-free Wednesdays each week on Cades Cove Loop Road has been delayed until at least June as the nation’s most-visited national park grapples with February staff losses that remain unclear to this day.

A Smokies official said the week of March 21: “We'll open additional campgrounds as operational capacity allows.”

Meanwhile, protestors at two demonstrations within two weeks demanded accountability and stressed the importance of proper upkeep and stewardship of the 522,000-acre national park. At least 12 positions were slashed at the Smokies during the initial round of Department of Government Efficiency firings, according to multiple sources.

Official details on the extent and affects of the cuts on staffing and park campgrounds and infrastructure has not been readily available, and a Smokies official offered only an anodyne statement in response to questions.

In Townsend, about 40 protestors gathered March 15 along East Lamar Alexander Parkway near a major gateway to the Smokies.

Many carried signs, such as “Forests Not Fascists,” “Save Our Parks” and everyone’s favorite: “Resisting Bitch Face.” 

B.B. Alley, the protest organizer said, “I have friends in the park that have been fired. People have dedicated their lives to this park and we love this park and want to protect it. Their work allows us to enjoy the park.” She continued, “I think for me the reason I protest is that I just love the park. My earliest memories are being in the mountains. Those who have dedicated themselves to protect it cannot withstand the menace from mankind.”

Other sentiments: The park is chronically short-staffed. These layoffs are a severe blow to manpower, operations and morale. The GSMNP is the most visited park in the country and now there will not be enough staff to clear trails, perform search and rescue, education and myriad other functions necessary for the park.

One former state employee at the Townsend protest warned DOGE-style tactics may trickle down to the state.

“Its just a matter of time before these Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) create spin offs to find their way to the state level. Which is just tragic,” said Jeff Wells, a retired Tennessee State Parks employee. “Our public lands are our resource and should not be privatized.”

About 40 people protested against cuts to Great Smoky Mountains National Park at the Townsend entrance to the national park. Garry Shores/Hellbender Press

Local media also reported protests in Gatlinburg on March 22, where protestors voiced similar warnings and complaints along US 441, another major entry point to the park.

Abrams Creek, Look Rock and Cosby campgrounds in Tennessee and Big Creek, Balsam Mountain, Cataloochee campgrounds in North Carolina are closed, according to the park website. Big Creek and Cataloochee were already closed by damage from Hurricane Helene. Cades Cove, Elkmont, and Smokemont are open. Deep Creek will open as planned on April 18.

Most Smokies amenities, including horse camps and pavilions, were listed as unavailable on the government website.

When asked specifically about the reason for the delay of Cades Cove’s car-free Wednesdays, Smokies chief of staff Katie Liming said via email: 

The original story continues below:

GATLINBURG — If federal cuts were a color, in this case they’d be Smoky gray.

Fans and supporters of Great Smoky Mountains National Park have struggled to assess the effects of firings on the most-visited national park in the nation since the Trump administration terminated thousands of federal workers in mid-February.

(Three workers were also terminated from Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area, according to a shared spreadsheet seen March 5. Hellbender Press has not verified its authenticity, but it tracks with other sources).

Executive Director of the Association of National Park Rangers Bill Wade estimated 12 employees were fired in the Smokies.

(The spreadsheet referenced above also lists 12 terminations at the Smokies).

An anonymous source with knowledge of the firings estimated 15. Exact numbers were not available from the National Park Service, and it’s unclear what types of positions were eliminated.

“The numbers we’ve received are from employees in the parks or others who have contacts with employees in the parks, and they are not verified by the National Park Service,” said Wade. “NPS won’t respond to inquiries for specific information, so we report on the information we have, qualifying it as unverified, but we are generally comfortable with the numbers as being representative of what we know and how we got it.”

What is known is that among the fired in the NPS overall were approximately 1,000 workers. Approximately 4,700 employees were terminated at other public land management agencies, including the U.S. Forest Service and the Department of the Interior. These probationary or provisional workers were in the first one or two years of employment or had been promoted or transitioned to a new position. 

After the firings, reporting and social media stories revealed a common pattern as employees across many federal agencies described their ordeals. Many reported having very little time to prepare before they were locked out of their computers and email accounts, and kicked out of their offices. The administration’s rationale cited poor performance, despite workers saying that their personnel files showed otherwise.

Jeff Hunter, Southern Appalachian Director for the National Parks Conservation Association, works on a mix of advocacy and evidence-based projects to help the parks of the Southern Appalachians, such as the Blue Ridge Parkway and Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Hunter said that the firings represent 9 percent of the park service across all departments. “Big parks like the Smokies have sewage treatment plants, so they have staff members that are essentially running a city, with historic housing, infrastructure, and roadways,” he added. “These cuts are not going to help the visitor experience.”

Hunter emphasized these are public lands for all to enjoy. “Personally, I have a deep sense of gratitude for the sacrifice that these people make,” he said. “It’s not an easy job to deal with 13 million visitors a year in the Smokies. The process right now is not showing them that they are valued. That’s really hard on morale.” 

“For every dollar that is spent on the parks, $15 is spent in local communities,” Hunter added. “Not that you can’t find efficiencies in any large organization, you can. But laying people off is not going to do it. Not when the park is already understaffed and stressed.” 

Park statistics show that visitation in GSMNP generates over $2.2 billion in economic spending in surrounding communities while operating on a base budget of $22 million. 

Until the new parking tag fee was implemented in 2023, funding for the park came from a combination of federal funding, camping and rental fees, concessions, and donations.

As Hellbender Press previously reported, this Park it Forward program generated $10 million in revenue in its first year to help offset some of the growing maintenance costs from high visitation. This revenue now helps make up for some of the deferred maintenance backlog of approximately $262 million, which grew in large part from years of stagnant or decreased funding from Congress. However, the loss of a dozen or more employees further hinders the park’s ability to provide a quality visitor experience and manage the environmental resources.

Hunter encourages the public to contact their elected representatives if they are concerned about the mass firings at NPS. He notes that the NPCA’s position is that everyone who has been fired should be rehired and there should not be an additional reduction in force. 

Likewise, the AANP, together with the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, issued a recent joint statement appealing to the NPS to reinstate all of the recently terminated employees. Collectively, these two organizations have 4,000 members that include current NPS employees, retirees and volunteers.

When asked to comment about the firings, a spokesperson for the NPS told Hellbender Press, “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.”

The mass firings of probationary employees was found to be illegal, both by Office of Special Counsel/Merit Systems Protection Board as well as by U.S. District Judge William Alsup.