Congressman Ryan Zinke said last week that he’d like to see more staff in the parks themselves rather than desk jobs at regional offices.

Zinke made the comments before a meeting at Lake McDonald Lodge in an interview with the Hungry Horse News.

“Why go to D.C. to hire a person?” when a superintendent could hire someone locally, Zinke noted.

He said less than half of Park Service employees actually work in a park and he’d like to see that change. For one, he said he’d like to see hiring authority brought back to the superintendent of Glacier National Park and other parks and would work with Secretary of Interior Doug Burgum on the matter.

While Zinke didn’t talk specifics, a 2024 report is telling. An inspector general’s report on Park Service hiring from Inflation Reduction Act funds found the individual park unit had to submit a request to the regional office, which reviewed the submission for budgetary analysis, after all requests were analyzed, associate and assistant directors reviewed the requests and then deputy directors gave final approval, a bureaucratic process to say the least.

Under that bill, which provided $500 million for the Park Service total, the Intermountain region, which includes Glacier National Park, was allocated about $92.735 million.

It spent, as of the end of May 2024, $2.939 million, hired 267 people, of which only 89 were actually onboard at the time. The law was passed in 2022. By 2024, the Park Service nationwide had only hired 1,418 people and had only spent $21.453 million of the $500 million allocated.

Congress then rescinded the remaining funds entirely earlier this year.

But the National Parks Conservation Association in an email to the Hungry Horse News disputed the assertion that more than half of Park Service employees work outside of Parks. 

“Based on the Interior’s workforce database, as of May 13, 2025, the Park Service employed just over 2,060 ‘office staff’ nationwide, including staff in Washington, D.C., regional and program-related offices, and fewer than 450 internet technology and human resources positions across the entire agency (only 2% of the Park Service’s workforce),” NPCA said.

The Park Service nationwide has about 18,000 employees.

Glacier this year is down in staffing, by many accounts about 25% due to Department of Government Efficiency cuts which included early retirement incentives, deferred resignation offers and other cuts.

On other Glacier Park matters, Zinke spoke to the reservation system, saying the Park was willing to work with him on the system. He said he would have liked to have seen the reservation requirement end at 1 p.m. But he’s softened his stance on the system overall after working with the park staff. He once threatened to defund it entirely.

Having said that, he’d still like to see a park-wide shuttle system and said it doesn’t have to be government funded and could be done by partnering with an outside entity.

The problem in Glacier, he noted was parking, not people. 

There’s plenty of truth to that. The Logan Pass parking lot fills each morning in the summer months so quickly that people get up hours before daylight to get a spot.

He was also critical of past responses to fires in Glacier, eyeing Howe Ridge that stood behind him and was razed in the Howe Ridge Fire.

He said the Park Service was too slow to act on the fire, which not only burned old-growth cedar forest, but destroyed more than a dozen homes and structures.

“The tragedy is kids won’t see the same park I saw (growing up),” he said.

In a panel discussion with Republican Congressman Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin, Congresswoman Celeste Maloy of Utah and Montana Director of Natural Resources Amanda Kaster-Averil, Zinke lamented a Washington that he said was out of touch.

As an example, he lamented forest policy. “We burned more 2 by 4s last year than we ever harvested,” he said.

The theme of the discussion was giving states more authority to manage lands.

Tiffany suggested more private funding in national parks.

“We need to capture more private money to go into our national parks,” Tiffany said.

He said there were many philanthropists willing to invest in parks.

But outside the park in West Glacier, a rally of about 30 people protested the current cuts to Park Service staff.

“If we want nice things we’ve got to pay for them,” said protester Rick Murphy. “Parks have been defunded and the visitors don’t see it but the lack of employees is incredibly difficult. ... Visitors are still No. 1 but the Park Service is stretched thin trying to keep a status quo. Losing critical staff is an everyday occurrence. We’re here to spread awareness of the budget cuts that the public eye may not see.”

“Scientists are having to clean bathrooms instead of working in the field where they belong due to budget cuts,” said protester Luca Welle. “(GNP) recharges our souls, and gives back to us all.”

Seth Anderson contributed to this report.