Trump Ushers In A Bleak Future For Our National Parks

Deeply experienced National Park Service staffers are leaving in the face of budget cuts and uncertainty, and they might never be replaced.

The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park started this year with 70 employees working across its 184.5-mile length. Just a few months into the Trump administration, the park is already down to 65. Among those it lost were its only arborist, its only carpenter and the superintendent who ran the park for five years.

The superintendent, Tina Cappetta, decided to retire early at the end of May. Cappetta suffers from chronic health conditions that are exacerbated by stress. She realized that managing a highly visited federal park through President Donald Trump’s workforce cuts was literally making her sick.

“What I was noticing, as this year progressed, is that I was having more bad days,” said Cappetta, who lives in rural Maryland, about 60 miles northwest of Washington, D.C., right across from the park. “I could see the writing on the wall, health-wise, that it was better for me to leave.”

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Cappetta worked more than three decades across eight sites within the National Park Service, a career spent not in Yellowstone or Denali but in the less-flashy historical parks that make up a large chunk of the National Park System. She’d planned to work three more.