Interior Not Top-Heavy Enough To Relieve Field
National Park and Refuge HQ and Regional Offices Smaller Than Under Bush
Washington, DC — Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has repeatedly said he wants to fill growing staff shortfalls in national parks and refuges by moving employees from headquarters and regional offices to “front line” field positions. But figures obtained by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) indicate that there are not enough bodies in these agencies’ rear echelons to fill the gaps.
PEER looked at staffing in the National Park Service (NPS) and U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) in 2007, late in George W. Bush’s tenure, compared to 2017. Those figures show over the past decade–
Total headquarters staff fell 13% and 12.5% for NPS and FWS, respectively;
Total regional office staff levels fell 7% in FWS, for a net loss of 179 positions. In NPS, total regional office staffing grew less than 1% by a total of 9 slots; and
There was little evidence of grade creep. Each agency had fewer super-grade Senior Executive Service (SES) positions and approximately the same number of GS-14s and GS-15s, the top civil servant ratings, despite aging workforces with big Baby Boomer contingents.
“Not only are there fewer staff in many of these central offices, but the number of parks and refuges they support and the complexity of the management issues they face have both grown substantially during the past decade,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, pointing to Sec. Zinke’s recent controversial reassignment of an estimated 50 SES slots. “Arbitrary ‘my-way-or-the-highway’ moves without consultation or even a known objective will not serve either Mr. Zinke or Interior well.”
Putting these numbers into context, it seems clear that the hemorrhaging losses in the field cannot be stanched by transfers. Over the past decade, the entire NPS workforce shrunk by more than a fifth with those losses accelerating year-by-year. During the 2009-2014 period, the NPS lost a net of more than 470 employees each year. In 2014 alone, that NPS had a net loss of more than 800 positions.
“If Secretary Zinke emptied every single employee out of both Headquarters and all regional offices into the field it would not make up for the Park Service staff losses in just the past five years,” Ruch added, noting that the Trump budget calls for double-digit cuts in both agencies. “Tired generalities about cutting middle management no longer cut it. Secretary Zinke owes Congress, the public and his own employees a concrete plan with real numbers and performance measures.”
The personnel situation in national wildlife refuges managed by FWS is even more dire. More than half of the national wildlife refuges no longer have their own manager. Hundreds of wildlife refuges have been “complexed” – collapsed into each other – and many have no staff at all.
In a 2017 PEER survey of all refuge managers, inadequate staffing was by far the number one concern, with more than 9 out of 10 saying that their refuges had already lost so much staff that they could no longer fulfill their “core conservation mission.”
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Look at 2007 vs. 2017 NPS HQ and regional staffing
Compare 2007 vs. 2017 FWS HQ and regional staffing
See plummeting Park Service staff
View hollowing out of our National Wildlife Refuge System
Read 2017 PEER refuge manager survey results
ABOUT PEER
What We Are Most Proud Of
PEER has been around for more than two decades. Here are seven things we have done that are particularly noteworthy:
- Shut the pathway for lead poisoning for 1.4 million children under age 7 living in 5 million older residential units with lead paint. A PEER lawsuit forced long-overdue rules requiring that all repairs and renovations on these older houses and apartments be conducted in a lead-safe manner.
- Strengthened protections for federal whistleblowers through litigation, such as restoring U.S. Park Police Chief Teresa Chambers and negotiating the biggest federal whistleblower settlement. These victories not only created groundbreaking case law but also forced a measure of that most elusive element – accountability.
- Created safeguards for government scientists and the integrity of their research. This work includes not only new legal protections for scientists but our efforts validating their technical work and exposing official acts of scientific fraud and censorship.
- Won important government reforms, such as preventing losses of billions by insulating federal land appraisals from political influence and exposing how the Army Corps of Engineers cooks its books on cost-benefit analyses to falsely justify multi-billion dollar projects. This latter case caused the removal of two generals and a colonel, blocked Congressional authorization of any new navigation projects for six years and framed an issue carrying the shorthand name “Corps Reform.”
- Shielded public lands from abuse by uprooting all genetically modified crops from wildlife refuges, and halting off-road vehicles from destroying national forests, parks, and fragile desert lands.
- Defended wildlife by winning steps to prevent ship-strikes on the highly endangered North Atlantic right whale and harassment of manatees by “swim-with” tourists. PEER is a leader is fighting against the militarization of wildlife management.
- Forced adoption of safeguards for human exposure testing of pesticides and other toxins. This follows our expose of EPA endorsing testing insecticides on toddlers in an infamous experiment it was forced to cancel.
PEER needs to look at the structure of these agencies. For example, when I began work with the USGS, it had three regions with the Eastern Region co-housed with Headquarters in Reston, Va; now, it has seven. What I noticed is that people who had topped out in the regions/headquarters were then put in charge of a ‘new’ region – and so it went until USGS had seven regions – as does the USNPS whereas the USFWS has eight. I heard from someone in the USGS when it had five regions that it wasn’t working out very well and there was talk of going back to three, but just the opposite happened – it expanded to seven! Guess that was a good way to separate warring executives?? I believe Zinke is on the right track, but he needs to take it further and eliminate the excess regions in all his agencies, cutting all back to three. This would free massive amounts of money for more workerbees doing real work in the field and eliminate most of the paper shufflers.