How Many Workers Has Everglades National Park Lost Under DOGE?

A beloved Florida national park is among the hardest hit by recent layoffs at the United States National Park Service.

As the Trump administration and Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) move to slash federal jobs left and right, hundreds of national park employees have been laid off across the nation.

According to a spreadsheet shared with Axios by a U.S. park ranger, Florida’s Everglades National Park is one of the most affected sites.

The data shows that while parks like Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina and Tennessee and Rocky Mountain in Colorado have each lost an estimated 12 workers, Zion National Park in Utah has seen 11 employees fired, and Everglades National Park has lost 15 employees — tied for the most nationwide with Shenandoah National Park in Virginia.

The spreadsheet, compiled using crowdsourced reports from rangers and other park employees in online groups, likely underestimates the full scope of the layoffs.

The National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), an independent advocacy group, estimates that more than 1,000 park employees were laid off on February 14 alone. The terminated staff performed a range of tasks, from protecting wildlife and natural resources, to cleaning bathrooms, conducting research, and fighting wildfires.

According to the spreadsheet, the 15 fired Everglades employees were among those laid off on Valentine's Day.

The Everglades — the largest tropical wilderness in the nation, as well as the third-largest national park in the contiguous U.S. — spans 1.5 million acres across parts of Miami-Dade, Monroe, and Collier Counties. The sprawling park is home to a number of important habitats and endangered species like the West Indian manatee, American crocodile, and Florida panther.

An average of one million people visit the park each year.
In addition to the layoffs among Everglades National Park employees, the Everglades National Park office in Homestead is slated to shutter under Musk's DOGE. The 21,000-square foot office houses scientists working on Everglades restoration.

At the research center at Everglades National Park, half the team working on Everglades restoration efforts is leaving, sources told WLRN. Sources said three staffers were cut and three took early retirement.

"We're worried about them going in and deleting everything," one scientist who is leaving told WLRN.

New Times has reached out to Everglades National Park for comment and will update this post as events warrant.