Saguaro National Park
Saguaro National Park (SNP) has announced that it will be closing its visitor centers on Mondays, until further notice.
The schedule change affects the park’s two districts in the Rincon Mountains and Tucson Mountains and comes ahead of the park’s busy season– it receives more than one million visitors annually.
This news comes a week after the Trump Administration fired more than two thousand federal workers at the Department of the Interior, including 1,000 National Park Service (NPS) employees.
Fred Stula, executive director of Friends of Saguaro National Park, a non-profit fundraising partner of the National Park Service, reported that two employees who worked at Saguaro’s visitor centers were let go last Friday.
“Within the last year, they were both hired by the Park Service to work in interpretation,” Stula said.
AZPM reached out to SNP to confirm the two layoffs– they could not comment.
Stula added that both former employees had started off as interns through the NPS’ Next Generation Ranger Corps partnership program, which helps interested young adults develop skills and experience so that they can apply for Park Service Positions.
“Since 2015, we’ve had about 127 interns that have worked at the park,” Stula said. “Then you’ve got 45 of those graduates work permanently for state and federal land management agencies and 17 of them work permanently here at Saguaro National Park.”
The non-profit is working with the two former park staff regarding potential contract work.
Stula said that the layoffs were immediate and impersonal via email.
The two former employees were working in permanent positions for about 8 and 10 months respectively.
He encourages local residents to reach out to their congressional delegates to express their disappointment with the layoffs.
“Ask them to reinstate some of these positions and invest in our parks because they’re critically important not just for tourism dollars but also for mental wellness,” Stula said.
SNP’s estimated total economic impact is $113 million.
It is still unclear how many NPS staff have been fired throughout Arizona’s 22 park sites.
Stula noted that since 2010, National Parks have seen a 16% increase in visitation and 20% reduction in staffing.
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