Of the roughly 1,000 National Park Service employees who lost their jobs Friday, several of them were from Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

Deb Yandala, president and CEO of the Conservancy for Cuyahoga Valley National Park, said four full-time positions were terminated. 

She said the affected workers included an engineer, a biologist, a maintenance worker and someone in the planning department. They were notified Friday, and Tuesday was the last day they received pay. Yandala wasn’t aware of any part-time employees who were also let go. 

Signal Akron reached out to several contacts at CVNP, including Public Information Officer Pamela Barnes. She said to contact the National Park Service’s Midwest region communications office for details on the cuts. As of press time, no one from the office had responded to our inquiry.

The firings at the National Park Service are the latest in a series of cuts across federal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration. 

As for future layoffs, those are up in the air. Yandala also cited concerns over how the federal hiring freeze will affect seasonal positions at CVNP. The Washington Post reported that the Department of the Interior said it will exempt 5,000 seasonal positions under the hiring freeze. Yandala said there are 40 seasonal positions at CVNP that have yet to be filled.

“Normally they’re filled by this time of year so that they’re ready to start [in] April and May when our busy season hits,” she said. “I’ve seen in the press that that freeze is going to end, but I don’t think that has come down to the park yet at this point, and we’re really anxious about those positions being open.”

In a statement posted online Friday, Theresa Pierno, president and CEO for the National Parks Conservation Association, said, “Allowing parks to hire seasonal staff is essential, but staffing cuts of this magnitude will have devastating consequences for parks and communities. We are concerned about smaller parks closing visitor center doors and larger parks losing key staff including wastewater treatment operators.”

While the Conservancy for Cuyahoga Valley National Park is a nonprofit entity separate from CVNP, the two work closely together.

“Our job is to work within and for and on behalf of the national park,” Yandala said. “So we’re deeply concerned about things like, will there be enough staff to maintain the facilities this summer? Some of the projects we’re working on may slow down, if not stop, because we really need that planning assistance from the park service.”

In 2023, CVNP received more than 2.8 million recreation visits, according to the National Park Service’s Visitor Use Statistics Dashboard. Nationwide, the National Park Service reported 325.5 million recreation visits in 2023, a 4% increase from 2022.

Yandala has worked with CVNP for 32 years and has served as CEO of the conservancy since 2002. (In October, she announced plans to step down in 2025.) She’s dealt with funding cuts before and called it an “ongoing problem” for the National Park Service. These new cuts only hurt an already understaffed agency, she said. 

“There’s a high expectation that we want facilities clean. We want visitor centers open. We want programs. We want to be able to access fast response[s] from law enforcement when there’s problems. And yet we keep cutting staff,” Yandala said. “I think this is not the way to fix any budgetary problems. I do not see waste. I see hardworking, dedicated public servants. And to see this kind of instability for them is really difficult.”