As a steady stream of people marched through Yosemite National Park, homemade signs held high over their heads, they echoed a single unifying message: “Protect our parks.”
From the Grand Canyon to the Rocky Mountains to Yellowstone and beyond, thousands gathered at national parks across the country on Saturday to protest sweeping federal cuts to the United States’ historic public lands.
In recent weeks, President Donald Trump’s administration fired around 2,000 recently hired employees at the U.S. Forest Service and slashed an additional 1,000 jobs at the National Park Service.
The mass terminations, part of an ongoing push to cut federal bureaucracy and spending, have raised concerns about the future of these lands. Affected national park and forest employees that fewer workers will lead to longer lines, filthy bathrooms and unsafe hiking and camping conditions.
“We need to stop the nonsense,” John Goodwin, a now-retired longtime park service employee, told while protesting at Golden Gate National Recreation Area in San Francisco. “We need to hire back the people who were fired, not only at national parks but every federal employee who has lost their job in the last six weeks.”
Following initial backlash over the cuts, The Associated Press had that the administration would restore at least 50 jobs as well as hire nearly 3,000 additional seasonal workers.
Still, the discontent was visible leading up to Saturday’s nationwide protests. At Yosemite a week earlier, a group of laid-off park employees at the summit of El Capitan, a famed 3,000-foot vertical rock formation.
An upside down American flag is traditionally a sign of “,” according to the U.S. Flag Code.
On Saturday, protesters showed up at national parks large and small, spanning dozens of states from coast to coast.
“Public lands belong to all Americans, and federal agencies and federal employees work on behalf of the American people,” protester Peri Sasnett in Providence, Rhode Island, calling on the administration to “rehire illegally fired federal employees.”
She was demonstrating at the Roger Williams National Memorial, a 4.5-acre park in Providence.
And in Washington state, local resident Austin Woods was one of more than 50 people who gathered to protest at the Whitman Mission National Historic Site.
“Sometimes it feels like there’s not a whole lot that we can do in the current political environment,” he . “But one thing that we can do is be present, be vocal and be passionate.”
Since taking office in January, Trump’s administration has executed across numerous sectors of government, targeting workers who were in probationary periods. This came after the administration attempted to to nearly all government employees and for federal workers.
On Wednesday, a Trump administration memo directed federal agencies to , noting that “Trump has required “large-scale reductions in force.” A day later, a federal judge the memo was legally invalid and ordered that it be rescinded.
