The National Park Service superintendent left his position after less that 5 months, frustrated with what he considered the dismantling of Crater Lake National Park.
KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. โ Crater Lake National Park Superintendent Kevin Heatley has resigned, citing deep staffing cuts he says are unsustainable and damaging to one of the nationโs natural treasures.
Heatley stepped down Friday after just five months in the role. In an interview with KGW on Tuesday, he said the decision was difficult but necessary given the direction of federal staffing policies.
โI did not want to be empowering the current administration to cause that kind of impact on the people that Iโm responsible for,โ Heatley said. โAnd I also did not want to participate in the dismantlement โ effectively a dismantlement โ of the National Park Service.โ
Heatley criticized what he described as a systemic effort to shrink the Park Service workforce, pointing to early retirement incentives for veteran employees, and terminations of newer staff without clear cause. He said policies initiated under the Trump administration continue to erode the agencyโs ability to function.
โWeโre being told, for instance, when people leave, they only want to replace 25% of those permanent positions,โ he said. โYou canโt run an organization like that.โ
READ MORE:ย National Parks struggling as federal workforce cuts take their toll, former director warns
While Crater Lake is expecting a seasonal bump in staffing โ about 60 to 65 temporary workers to handle summer crowds โ Heatley said thatโs not enough to preserve the parkโs infrastructure or long-term health.
The full-time team that maintains Crater Lakeโs roads, buildings and trails has already been hollowed out, he said, with only a few of its eight ranger positions currently filled.
โCrater Lake is on the precipice โ no pun intended โ of collapse if one of those permanent facilities management-type people ends up leaving,โ Heatley said. โCrater Lake does not have the built-in resiliency to deal with that kind of situation.โ
With decades of experience in management in the public and private sector, including roles across the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service, Heatley said he left to avoid becoming complicit in what he views as the undermining of the very system he sought to protect.
โAm I empowering the destruction of the thing that Iโm trying to protect in the first place โ not only my employees, but Crater Lake, and on a larger level, the National Park Service itself?โ he said. โAm I empowering it by pretending to do it โ doing the best we can to navigate all this mercurial decision making, all this … basically what amounts to amateurish decision making?โ
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