It’s a tough time for national park rangers.
Earlier this year, heavy-handed budget cuts gutted the National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service. In February, the USFS announced it would be firing around 3,400 recent hires, and the NPS would terminate about 1,000 employees under President Donald Trump’s push to cut federal spending, according to Reuters.
Since then, more cuts have been made, budgets threatened, and during the longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history, many employees were furloughed without pay, while park sites took a hit in the form of damaged property, visitor safety issues, and reduced maintenance.
Although furloughed workers are returning to the parks, many public land advocates say national parks — and the people who steward them — face a “nightmare.”
“For 43 days, many national parks were left open, vulnerable, and unprotected,” said Kristen Brengel, senior vice president of government affairs for the National Parks Conservation Association. “The National Park Service, already pushed to its breaking point after losing 25% of permanent staff, is left to pick up the pieces.”
The shutdown also presents potential long-term impacts from the loss of income from those 43 days, which could lead to delays in construction projects, more interruptions to visitor services, and the threat of even more layoffs.
NPR reported that some experts estimate the NPS lost about $40 million in revenue during the government shutdown.
“Even before the shutdown, national parks were already feeling the strain, forced to cancel ranger programs, close visitor centers, and halt essential maintenance and research,” said Brengel. “Secretary Burgum’s plans for mass staff terminations would only deepen the crisis, threatening the ability of parks to operate safely and effectively.”
For those who have been terminated from their ranger jobs — or those looking down the barrel of uncertainty — there are, fortunately, people who want to help.
One such person is Sandra Ramos, known as @nationalparkpatchlady on Instagram.
By day, Ramos is the Texas coastal program manager for the NPCA, but by night, she has created her own way to support national park rangers impacted by layoffs and budget cuts.
A week ago, she launched a grassroots “Adopt-A-Ranger” program.
“We are starting the holiday season off by adopting park rangers and other public lands current and furloughed staff and sending them care kits for Thanksgiving and the winter holidays,” Ramos wrote on Instagram.
Supporters can sign up to adopt a ranger, and rangers and federal public lands employees can sign up to be adopted in a separate form, while Ramos and friends take care of the matching part.
“Adopt-A-Ranger is an idea of community and mutual aid,” Ramos shared in a recent episode of “Rangers of the Lost Park,” a podcast hosted by two former park rangers and activists.
“I don’t personally have the capacity to give back, so I’m like, ‘maybe I can match folks up in the general public who want to help and support but may not know what to do.’”
Her hope was to ideally get around 50 followers to participate in the project, but within just a few days, over 500 people had signed up to support park rangers.
The support packages “don’t need to be elaborate,” instructions from Ramos share. Organizers recommend sending things like “shelf-table food stuffs, small tokens of appreciation, and a warm letter.”
Some volunteers signed up to send a Thanksgiving package or winter care kits in December — others signed up for both. And the desire to give back was so large that some people didn’t even get matched with a ranger in need.
Although the forms are still open to adopt a ranger, it appears the deadline to sign up has passed, based on Ramos’s Instagram feed. Fortunately, everyone who expressed a need will receive a care kit.
“We had a spectacular turnout for folks wanting to adopt rangers, and in some cases for Thanksgiving, we didn’t have a ranger to assign that met some particular criteria, or they signed up for only a winter box,” Ramos said in an Instagram update.
“What we can assure you is every ranger or public lands person that raised their hand is being adopted.”
While the “Adopt-A-Ranger” program does not make up for the systemic defunding of the park system, nor does it give people their jobs back, it does build a network of support in a time of need.
“Things are rough all around,” Ramos wrote on a later Instagram post, “but the generosity and abundance of spirit we are seeing on this project is so, so good.”
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Header image courtesy of NPS Photo
