'Not about the money': Yellowstone’s gateway town fears for its future — thanks to Trump

On March 1, hundreds of people gathered in Gardiner, Montana, at the northern entrance to Yellowstone National Park. The crowd — which included residents from across the state and current and former public lands employees — was part of a nationwide protest against the layoffs of federal workers.

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Roughly 5 percent of National Park Service workers have been caught up in the sweeping layoffs carried out by the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. This isn’t counting the hundreds of others who are taking the “fork in the road” offer to resign from their positions. The staffing crisis facing national parks is felt not only within the federal workforce itself, but also in gateway towns like Gardiner, where the economy depends heavily on Yellowstone.

There, under the Roosevelt Arch — named for president Theodore Roosevelt, who laid its cornerstone and is known for preserving over 230 million acres of public land — protesters shouted chants like, “Public lands in public hands!” and “Hey, ho, Trump and Musk have got to go.” Organizers talked about what public lands mean to the local economy. The crowd even harmonized to Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land.”

The chaos and uncertainties that have come behind Trump’s executive actions reach all corners of the country and, as with the case of cutting funding to USAID, some other countries. But Gardiner, perhaps like no other place, can be seen as an epicenter of loss following Trump’s decisions. Shutting down federal funding through the Park Service could cripple the town.

Gardiner was established shortly after the park opened in 1872, to foster a symbiotic relationship that continues today. Yellowstone and Gardiner are inextricable. The western part of the town’s public high school is technically inside the park, with local businesses, the Gardiner community library, and the chamber of commerce building all abutting the park boundary.

“Gardiner is a company town and Yellowstone is the mill,” said Richard Parks, who serves as the chair to the Gardiner Resort Area District. “If somebody starts screwing with the mill, we have no choice but to be concerned.”

In 2023, Yellowstone hosted 4.5 million visitors, contributing an estimated $828 million and 8,560 jobs to surrounding townships like Gardiner. Industries like rafting, horseback riding, guiding, and hospitality services are all booming subeconomies that depend on tourism to the park. Yellowstone’s foot traffic also provides bedrock funding to town infrastructure and community development through its resort tax — a 3 percent charge on reservations during peak season, which has helped raise public dollars for things like updated water and sewer systems, bear-proof trash cans, and new fire engines.

The full extent to which federal firings, hiring freezes, and funding cuts will ripple throughout communities like Gardiner is still unclear, Parks said. “We can’t gauge the magnitude yet.”

With more than 60 percent of the area surrounding Gardiner controlled by federal land management agencies, deficits to entities like the National Park Service, or NPS, and U.S. Forest Service are felt acutely by the community.

To Parks, the biggest question is whether Gardiner will have the traffic it needs to sustain itself this peak season. Removing hands, and expertise, from the entities that support and manage the park could degrade the experience for visitors, while news of the struggles could be enough to keep some travelers away entirely.

“It’s like playing Whac-a-Mole,” said Parks. “The uncertainty is a massive problem because you just don’t know what kind of disaster to prepare for.”

For Parks and other community members, the memory of 2022’s devastating flood stokes worst-case-scenario fears for what life could be like without the driving economic force of the park. The flood washed out three miles of road from Gardiner into the park’s interior, severing the community from the park and barring public access for the entirety of peak season.

The slew of cancellations from the park’s usual large volume of visitors caused cascading damages to locals who had already invested in the season. A study conducted after the flood found that communities like Gardiner whose park access was cut off lost 75 percent of their income on average. The findings, corroborated by a survey of townspeople, indicated that the flood exceeded the economic losses from the COVID-19 shutdown two years prior, resulting in a net loss of $156 million.

Cara McGary, a local wildlife guide who has been in Gardiner for over 10 years, said the flood significantly impacted her business. Now, she is trepidatious about the money she has invested in permits and bookings for the upcoming season.

“In Gardiner, everyone in some way is directly or indirectly dependent on the NPS,” said McGary. “I need federal workers on federal lands for my business to function.”

McGary also underscored trickle-down effects that occur when the community is cut off from the park, like during the 2022 flood and another partial closure in 2018 and 2019 due to the 35-day government shutdown. Lack of access meant a lack of attendance to basic public lands infrastructure, leading to what McGary called a “shituation,” evoking scenes of overflowing pit toilets and trashed campgrounds. When that happened, volunteers throughout the community pitched in to maintain the integrity of the park that is their bread and butter.

“Having a love for this place, whether that is working the land as a producer, ranger, hunter, visitor, hiker — it’s a value you can’t put money on,” said McGary. “This place is held together by people who give a damn and everyone plays a critical role.”

Disasters like that 500-year flood won’t be so few and far between in the future, according to a Greater Yellowstone Climate Assessment led by researchers at Montana State University, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the University of Wyoming. The assessment was a first of its kind focusing on climate change impacts on the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

Cathy Whitlock, a co-author of the report, emphasized the ways in which climate change and its impacts will influence Yellowstone in years to come. She highlighted the increasing likelihood of high-profile disasters, but also the more gradual changes that could disrupt the ecosystem balance. “In Yellowstone, projected changes are largely driven by rising temperatures and the reduction in snowpack,” she said. “Current trends including warming, less snow, more rain, earlier snowmelt, and drier summers are expected to continue.”

According to Whitlock, every resource management decision for Yellowstone should consider the potential effects of climate change. The park’s vegetation, lakes, streams, fish, and wildlife are all vulnerable.

“The ecosystem will continue to experience climate change no matter who is in the White House. But our ability to monitor, adapt, and plan for environmental consequences will be at risk without sustained funding,” Whitlock said.

On March 20, Mike Tranel, deputy superintendent for Yellowstone, gave an updated forecast for the season to the Gardiner chamber of commerce. He highlighted concerns over staffing, with layoffs resulting in a shortage of equipment operators, and people taking severance package offers leading to delays for hiring seasonal positions like entrance station workers.

“Those are key people,” said Tranel. “The positions pay for themselves.”

Although he did not specify, he also noted that the federal workforce reduction would likely cause effects behind the scenes, especially pertaining to scientific work on species like bears and wolves. Tranel said that the park was getting its full complement of seasonal workers, however — an exception to the current federal hiring freeze — and that the NPS remains confident it can pull off the upcoming peak season.

“We will do our best, with the circumstances, for the 4.75 million visitors,” Tranel said.

Tourism to Yellowstone typically starts in March for the north entrance and ramps up by mid-April, when the west entrance road into the park opens. So far, Gardiner is experiencing a worrisome start, according to Chester Evitt, the owner of Mama Bear’s Armory, a local gunsmith and outdoor gear shop. Evitt said he has had only a handful of customers since January, forcing him to use his disability checks from his time as a combat veteran to pay the shop rent.

Evitt said that he and his family voted for Trump, but if he could take his vote back now, he would.

“I’ve been alive for 11 presidents and I haven’t seen one that has been as destructive as this one,” said Evitt. “These cuts are affecting our little town more than the 500-year flood.”

Evitt said that he tried to go to the local bank to get a loan to help him make it to May, but when he arrived, there were several other business owners there for the same reason. The bank told all of them that it couldn’t offer any monetary assistance until things were more certain.

Back at the Roosevelt Arch, three weeks after the first protest, a committed band of locals again gathered to make their voices heard — this time braving sheets of wet snow and 30-mile-an-hour winds. Richard Midgette, one of the protest organizers, was recently hired back as an IT specialist for Yellowstone after being a part of the probationary firings. But he remains frustrated and fearful, as NPS employees anticipate further payroll cuts.

Meanwhile, as Gardiner begins to wake up this spring, locals say that they are open and ready for the season. The community is working diligently to navigate the chaos handed down to them from afar the best way they know how — continuing to serve in the best interest of the park whose vitality is so closely tied to their own.

“It’s not about the money, it’s about the community’s psyche,” said Evitt. “We’re hoping that despite the odds, we can survive.”

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/economics/yellowstone-gateway-town-fears-future-economy-trump-funding-cuts/.

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