With its proximity to the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, the Blue Ridge Parkway and multiple national forests, WCU attracts many students seeking careers in the National Park Service or related fields. However, with recent layoffs and federal funding cuts, these students are expressing concern, confusion and fear.
On Feb. 14, approximately 1,000 National Park Service employees were laid off as part of the Department of Government Efficiency attempt to reform the federal workforce. While some of these employees have since regained their positions, the Jan. 20 hiring freeze is still in effect.
WCU students shared many impacts that the NPS layoffs and funding cuts may have on them and society, like career prospects and Hurricane Helene recovery.
Career prospects
For most students, college is a path towards a career. Students pursuing degrees in parks and recreation management and other related majors often hope to seek careers with the NPS. With these layoffs and fundings cuts, many of these students are concerned about their future careers.
While parks and recreation management major Antonia Romano is only a freshman, she has already chosen to add a STEM minor to her degree despite wanting a career in PRM from a young age.
“I’ve wanted to do parks and rec since I was six. Not that I knew what a PRM major was, but I wanted to be outside, and I wanted to work with kids in the natural world,” Romano said. “Having the government tell me ‘well I don’t know if you can have a job when you graduate’ is like well that’s great. Now I got to figure out something else and I don’t know if I’ll be as happy as I could have been in the new path that I have to take.”
Graduating senior and environmental health major Jake Steelmen hopes to work as an environmental health specialist in Haywood County. While his career plans have not been impacted currently, he still has concerns that they will.
“As of right now, I would still be fine to go there. I do worry about being a new hire, I’m afraid that they won’t want to take any new people on and that they are just going to eliminate the people they already do have,” Steelman said.
Environmental impacts
Another big concern for students is potential environmental impacts as the Trump administration prioritizes energy production over preserving natural resources like the national parks.
Mary Jones, junior natural resource conservation and management major, plans to continue her education in graduate school with a specialization in ecology. She worries about deforestation and its impact on humanity.
“I work a lot with forests, so I study trees and that’s a hot topic, especially with lumber and the forestry industry. That’s a little bit scary; a lot can happen in a very short amount of time when it comes to cutting down trees,” Jones said.
“I worry that as we understaff these parks, and as we put somebody who is compl
etely over all the parks who has oil drilling interests in mind, rather than actually protecting our public lands for everyone, we are going to see problems arise,” Steelman said.
Students also express concern for the unique animals that live inside the national parks. Lizzie Hacker, junior PRM major, talked about the impact on NPS-protected biodiversity.
“We’re going to start seeing a loss of species diversity,” Hacker said. “Which is going to have impacts and it’s not just a fuzzy cute animal; it’s the different little insects and the salamanders and the plants.”
Public health concerns
Environmental health students shared their concerns over public health issues that may emerge as an indirect effect of decreased prioritization of the NPS.
“I really think that the quality of our environment is interwoven in the quality of public health and those things can’t be separated. When we’re taking into account how we’re treating nature right now, we have to take into account that we’re also a part of nature and there’s going to be consequences,” said Rhys Luffman, second-year environmental health major.
“On every aspect of environmental health, it’s just not looking very good, but especially in disease control,” Luffman said. “I just don’t think people understand how much work goes into preventing disease.”
Steelman shared that disease prevention is an environmental concern that should be approached globally, a concern now that the U.S. has pulled out of multiple international organizations.
“Two of my top concerns right now are avian influenza and measles.” Steelman said. “Short term, I feel like there’s going to be more waves of various pandemics or epidemics coming up. Long term, I’m truly just hoping whatever the next administration is that they can revoke some of these policies and get back in the Paris Climate Agreement, the World Health Organization, stuff like that. But if we do continue down the path that we are down, I think American is quickly going to become a second or third world country.”
Economic concerns
Students also shared a concern for local rural economics dependent on ecotourism, a multi-million-dollar industry.
“With the Appalachian trail, you have trail towns that are solely dependent on tourism. Ecotourism is a huge industry that both helps local ecosystems and gives people a greater appreciation for their natural environment,” Jones said. “I think that it’s definitely going to affect at least the economic side of rural towns, especially in Southern Appalachia, which is a historically underrepresented area.”
Lou Mitchko, freshman PRM major, shared that national parks’ visitors may be deterred from visiting parks with less park rangers available to manage the land. Mitchko, and other students, foresee less-maintained parks and more closures to public bathrooms, welcome centers and trails.
“The parks get so many visitors each year, they get millions and millions of visitors each year. You are going to see a decline in the upkeep of the parks and what’s available. We’ve already started to see some of it like trash piling up, people not taking care of the resources and not knowing what to do or where to go,” Mitchko said.
Hurricane Helene recovery
Hurricane Helene devastated WNC in September and recovery efforts are still in progress. Beyond the tourism industry and economic impacts, damage and debris are still a common issue in WNC. Many trails and segments of the Blue Ridge Parkway are still closed.
“We had this huge event in Western North Carolina where a lot of ecosystems were impacted by this hurricane. It’s already taking a lot more work than a normal year. The National Park Service was already understaffed and probably instead of laying off people, they needed to hire more people to deal with this debris, impacts on water quality and ecosystems and soil erosions and all these things,” Jones said.
Hacker explained that willing people are needed to clean up after the hurricane, but the NPS layoffs have made it harder to find these people.
“It takes people to do those things. It takes government contracts. It takes bodies that can do manual labor and fundamentally, the willingness that we have is lower and lower in the American society to do labor like that,” Hacker said. “We are currently reducing the population of people that is willing to do that.”
