A rainbow emerges from the mist at the base of Bridalveil Fall in California’s Yosemite National Park.

The National Park Service has withered under the second Trump administration, losing a large chunk of its funding and a quarter of its workforce. Heading into 2026, the country’s national parks and their visitors will be safeguarded by 4,000 fewer employees, and in his 2026 budget proposal, Donald Trump asked Congress for the largest cut in the Park Service's 109-year history, amounting to more than $1 billion.

Yosemite National Park — the sixth most-visited park, at over 4 million visitors per year — has been hit especially hard by Trump’s policies, including recent changes to employee evaluations that could preclude them from raises and promotions, plus a procedural shift that will see many employees’ pay decline by as much as $4 per hour. These disruptions are straining an already exhausted staff, many of whom took on extra, unpaid work during the recent government shutdown. In addition to the immediate impact of these changes on employee well-being, the fear, many say, is that poor ratings could also be used to justify further layoffs in the future. 

Advertisement

Article continues below this ad

“After the National Park Service was decimated by mass firings and pressured staff buyouts, park rangers have been working the equivalent of second, third, or even fourth jobs protecting parks,” Theresa Pierno, president and CEO of the National Parks Conservation Association, said in a statement. “... Ordering superintendents to arbitrarily grade their staff lower than they deserve, with little regard for the truth or the agency’s own standards, is wrong. This very well could be an attempt to set up Park Service staff to be cannon fodder during the next round of mass firings.”

FILE: A limited number of National Park maintenance workers continued to work during the shutdown, cleaning the bathrooms in the campgrounds in Yosemite National Park on Monday Jan. 22, 2018, in Yosemite, Calif.

Each year, Park Service employees are evaluated through a process called the employee performance appraisal plan, or EPAP. Employees meet with their supervisors early in the year to set expectations, and follow up to determine whether employees are meeting their goals. Toward the end of the year — or the end of a seasonal employee’s contract — supervisors will assign each person a score between 1 and 5, with higher scores denoting better performance. EPAP evaluations are used when determining promotions and wage increases, while the ratings for seasonal employees also inform whether they’ll be rehired the following year. High ratings also typically come with bonuses or other perks such as vacation time.

This year has been far from typical, however. One seasonal wilderness ranger, who asked to remain anonymous to avoid retaliation and was granted anonymity in accordance with Hearst’s ethics policy, told SFGATE it wasn’t clear whether EPAPs would take place at all in 2025. When word did come down that there would be an evaluation tied to job performance, “we were so late into a season with no established expectations or criteria that it all felt like a farce and a box check for our bosses,” he said.

Advertisement

Article continues below this ad

The farce became a tragedy when senior leadership announced significant changes to the EPAP system earlier this month. Evaluations were due on Dec. 12, but two days before, Yosemite Superintendent Raymond McPadden sent an email to park supervisors. In the message, a screenshot of which was shared with SFGATE, McPadden stated that “the best course of action” would be to award every employee a score of 3 for the year, denoting a........

© SFGate