The Trump administration is planning to significantly reorganize the National Park Service and other bureaus of the Interior Department, the second major shake-up of the nation’s public lands infrastructure in less than two years.
The agency is looking to reshape its most public-facing offices, according to draft internal agency planning documents from late August obtained by NOTUS and confirmed by an Interior executive involved in the reorganizations who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The reorganization plans across Interior were developed in a “very hush hush” manner, the executive said, noting that no one aside from the very top leadership of each subagency has been involved in the discussions. That secrecy has created a culture of fear and anxiety in the agency and among National Park advocates, who have been cautioning against another reorganization, as NOTUS reported last week.
The Interior Department has already lost more than 10,000 employees since President Donald Trump retook office, largely through voluntary resignation programs directed by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and the White House. Last year’s reorganization moved support staff into Burgum’s office.
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In its draft documents, NPS said that it anticipated it would avoid layoffs “in the short term,” but in prepared talking points tells officials to “avoid categorical promises; explain notification process” if asked about staff reductions.
The country’s 430 park units would experience a significant change under the proposed plans. The documents describe transitioning the park service to a new “hub and spoke” model, with some “hub” parks given the power to manage priorities, leadership and direction for “spoke” parks that would report them, according to the documents.
Currently park superintendents report to regional leadership. While the regional system will remain in place, the draft documents indicate that Interior intends for power to be centralized in the “hub” parks: They would direct priorities and vision, while “spoke” parks would be responsible for implementation.
The documents also indicate that the park service intends for resources to be shared more widely between the spoke and hub parks, with the hub carrying more responsibility for the management of those resources. (The draft plans included a visual representation of the reorganization created with Anthropic’s Claude AI tool, according to an internal note in one of the documents.)
The new organization is intended to “build a more efficient and effective operation, optimize resource sharing across parks and programs, and enhance accountability and supervision,” the draft documents read.
The Interior Department did not respond to a request for comment.
Details of the plan are still subject to change, according to the documents and people familiar with the plans. The Interior executive said last week a career official overseeing the effort introduced a new framework for bureaus to use to rearrange themselves. Previous deadlines were pushed back or removed altogether.
Rachel Borra, Interior’s human resources chief, who previously helped spearhead layoffs at the department last fall that were ultimately blocked in federal court, has been meeting with management in recent weeks to go over details of the various “realignments,” according to documents reviewed by NOTUS. She is scheduled to hold a progress meeting on realignment efforts on Tuesday.
Changes at National Parks could have disparate impacts, where functions range from the preservation of natural wonders in Yellowstone to the protection of rare ecosystems in Channel Islands to the preservation of historical and cultural memory at Valley Forge. While currently superintendents are largely responsible for ensuring that mission is met within their individual park, the new structure appears to centralize some management with the “hub” superintendent.
That centralization could come at the cost of each individual park’s needs, former officials said.
“It’s remarkable from A to Z how different units in the National Park Service are and how they have to adapt to location conditions, and that can drive people in D.C. crazy because they really like it when everything fits in neat boxes,” said Jeff Mow, the former superintendent of Glacier National Park and a 40-year veteran of the Park Service. “And there’s a whole lot about the National Park Service that doesn’t fit into neat boxes.”
“Any time you see these top-down initiatives come through — almost never in my career did I ever see one that can encompass the diversity within the organization,” he continued.
Russell Galipeau, who served as superintendent of Channel Islands National Park for 15 years, said that it is already difficult for the country’s smaller and lesser-known parks to advocate on behalf of their needs and priorities.
“We want to reorganize. We want to make things more efficient. You know what? We can do all those things, but how is that actually helping us be a leader and setting an example of how we protect our nation’s natural and cultural resources?” he asked.
The draft documents detailing the agency’s reorganization plans were not meant to be made public and stress the importance of delivering information to employees and stakeholders on the department’s own timeline.
While Interior in its internal communications insisted its plans represented common-sense solutions, declining to fully rule out layoffs, phrasing such as “reducing duplication” and demands that supervisors “not speculate about effects on specific employees,” coupled with previous efforts to slash staff and ongoing hiring restrictions, are likely to have staff and public lands advocates on edge about the administration’s intentions.
“National parks do not operate in a bubble, they are intrinsic parts of local communities. And if this proposed reorganization plan moves forward, it is going to jeopardize park relationships with communities, stakeholders, and partners,” said Emily Thompson, the executive director of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks.
The documents also lay out details of how individual offices within NPS are set to be restructured. The agency tentatively plans to remake its culture and science division into an office called Resource Stewardship. Employees have raised concerns that the administration would seek to de-emphasize its scientific and cultural work. A new Law Enforcement, Safety and Health Division would replace a Visitor and Resource Protection office.
The agency has been planning how to announce this reorganization since July 2026 but has not yet notified Congress of its intention to reorganize, according to the documents and a Senate aide. The Interior Department is legally obligated to notify Congress of any planned reorganization.
The secrecy of these plans have frustrated advocates, former officials and current staffers alike.
“This reorganization could fundamentally change how our national parks operate, without any clear communication about what ‘problem’ might be solved. It can’t possibly be addressing budgets or efficiency,” Thompson said. “There are going to be countless issues and challenges involving park funding, travel and other logistics — this will waste taxpayer dollars and further contribute to the chaos that already exists.”
The implementation of the plan has already changed in at least one regard from the schedule laid out in documents obtained by NOTUS: While planning meetings were scheduled with senior officials for this week and superintendents for the middle of September, those meetings have been canceled, according to multiple sources familiar with the change. NPS planned to begin implementing the changes this year, though it is not clear if that timeline remains operative.
The Interior Department intensified its reorganization process in early 2026, with upper management telling leadership at each bureau that the dramatic staffing reductions opened the door to rethink how they are organized. At least at some bureaus, internal leadership maintained autonomy in developing plans and new organizational structures. They then worked with the Office of Personnel Management on implementation of those ideas.
Department officials made clear to individual bureau leadership that “This is the time to take a big swing,” the Interior executive said.
While Interior was on the verge of laying off thousands of employees at multiple points last year, they never took effect due to various court orders. The department still successfully upended some parts of its workforce. Last month, top agency officials reassigned more than two dozen of its top career executives, requiring many people to move into new jobs with limited relationship to their background and expertise.
The Park Service has already been “bleeding,” both because Burgum directed national park resources toward D.C. beautification efforts and because of last year’s reorganization, said one current employee. Bureaus across Interior are still paying Burgum’s office to house employees it subsumed as part of that reorganization, employees said.
Through the renewed reorganization efforts, Burgum is continuing to exert his influence over the shape of the department. He has already merged the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, undoing a change under former President Barack Obama. The secretary has also merged all the department’s firefighters into a new component over some bipartisan reservations from Congress.
Between those changes and the staffing losses from the Trump administration’s push to reduce the federal workforce, advocates are already concerned what another round of changes will portend.
“We find a way to say it’s more efficient, and what we end up doing is finding out we have less and less resources to work with,” Galipeau said.
“Perhaps reorganization wouldn’t be necessary if these unnecessary cuts weren’t made.”
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