Thousands of people gathered on Saturday at national parks from California to Maine to protest the Trump administration’s firing of at least 1,000 National Park Service employees last month.
A group called Resistance Rangers — consisting of about 700 off-duty rangers, including some who were fired from the National Park Service — tried to organize protests at each of the country’s 433 national park sites on Saturday to stand up against what they see as threats to public lands, including the job cuts. By the afternoon, there were protests at at least 145 sites, according to Nick Graver, a 30-year-old graduate student who helped organize the demonstration at Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California.
Protests were held in popular spots like Yosemite in Northern California, the Grand Canyon in Arizona, Acadia in Maine, Yellowstone in the Northwest, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and Great Falls Park in Virginia, as well as lesser-known places like Effigy Mounds National Monument in northeastern Iowa. Tensions have been particularly high at Yosemite, where employees have unfurled upside-down American flags in protest across iconic sites like Yosemite Falls and El Capitan.
Mr. Graver said his group was concerned not only about the firings but also about resource extraction on public lands and possible threats to national monuments, such as a proposal to remove the president’s power to designate national monuments.
The National Park Service said it was working with protest organizers to allow people to “safely exercise their First Amendment rights,” while protecting its resources.
At Joshua Tree, about 400 people gathered to protest. Six rangers at the park were among those dismissed last month, part of a wave of cuts targeting federal employees who had started work within the last year, in what the Trump administration said was an effort to reduce government spending.
Deborah Anderson, who lived in the area for decades, protested with a sign that said “Protect Our Parks.”
“What’s happening right now is wrong,” said Ms. Anderson, 52. “I get if people want to make the government more efficient, but how they’re doing it — these are illegal firings.”
Up north, at Yellowstone, dozens demonstrated near the Roosevelt Arch in Gardiner, Mont., chanting “Public lands are not for sale” and “Down with DOGE,” referring to the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk’s outfit overseeing the job cuts.
David Uberuaga, who worked for the National Park Service for more than 30 years, including as superintendent of Grand Canyon National Park, before retiring in 2016, urged people to take action, including by protesting and calling their representatives and senators.
“We can’t continue to just let things happen,” said Mr. Uberuaga, 74. “We have to really push back very hard, and that is effective over time. And we just can’t get disillusioned.”
About 100 people protested at the Grand Canyon. Sean Adams, a 29-year-old seasonal worker who electrofishes invasive trout and conducts conservation studies on native fish, said visitors have been surprised by the park workers’ firings.
“They didn’t realize that it was affecting people like us, people who work 10-plus-hour days consistently for way too little money,” he said. “The money that they are saving by cutting people like us is a drop in the bucket.”
Halfway across the country, at Effigy Mounds, about 150 people gathered, some with signs depicting the Lorax, the Dr. Seuss character who “speaks for the trees,” and Smokey Bear, the symbol of the U.S. Forest Service’s wildfire prevention efforts. Among the demonstrators was Brian Gibbs, 41, who was fired from his job as education technician at the monument.
For Mr. Gibbs, the forested landscape along the Mississippi River that is home to the monument holds a lot of sentimental value. He said his father took him camping there when he was a child. Later in life, Mr. Gibbs told his wife he loved her for the first time in the area. And this is where they took their 4-year-old son on his first hiking trip.
After all of his experiences at the monument, Mr. Gibbs said, it was striking to see it become a protest site.
“It was just a volcanic moment to me,” Mr. Gibbs said. Regarding the parks, he added that “it never crossed my mind that they would become a target” of a presidential administration.
Mimi Dwyer contributed reporting from Yosemite National Park and Los Angeles, and Jennifer Brown from the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.