Trump’s Interior Chief Calls Many Employees ‘Redundant Overhead’

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum on Wednesday vigorously defended firing large numbers of Interior Department staff because he said too many work in offices and too few in national parks.

“I never entered an organization that has this much redundant overhead and outdated systems,” Burgum said.

Burgum spoke before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee, defending President Donald Trump’s proposal to cut Interior’s budget by 30.5%, from $16.8 billion in fiscal 2025 to $11.7 billion. The White House’s draft budget “blueprint” proposes steep reductions at the National Park Service and the US Geological Survey as well as tribal and conservation programs.

The deep cuts drew questions from lawmakers, including Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who said she’s concerned that staffing reductions at Interior could undercut the White House’s policy goals.

A nearly 40% budget cut for the USGS could harm its ability to map minerals the White House seeks to mine, said Murkowski, the chair of the Interior and Environment Subcommittee that hosted Burgum.

Burgum said he tried to find out how many people worked for each Interior Department agency, but the department didn’t have a way to quantify their employees. He said he decided to research staffing by agency, starting with the NPS, and learned that it had about 25,500 employees.

The number of office workers at Interior agencies, especially NPS, are far too high, he said.

“Slightly less than 50% of permanent employees actually work in a park,” and of the Interior’s 65,000 employees, 2,000 work in human resources, Burgum said.

“We got several thousand people working in IT, and I don’t know what they do,” he said, referring to information technology.

Burgum said he wants more staff working in national parks and less overhead and red tape.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said the mass firings across the Interior Department are “deep, painful cuts” that will prevent Interior from meeting its legal mandates.

“I can increase the number of people in the park and decrease the number of people at the National Park Service because we’re eliminating back office” HR and IT jobs, Burgum said.

Transferring Parks

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), the panel’s top Democrat, said the national park system is the “best idea we’ve ever had,” while one of the worst ideas is the White House’s plan to slash the NPS budget and transfer many of its 370 units that are not called “national park” to the states.

Burgum said the idea to offload national park units to states and tribes is “completely in the idea formation stage.”

None of the 63 “crown jewel” national parks are at risk, but there is no list yet of NPS units targeted for transfer. He said he’s targeting “places that have almost no visitors,” such as North Dakota’s Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site.

An average of 15,707 people have visited the historic site annually since 2004—more visitors than at two “crown jewels"— Kobuk Valley National Park and Gates of the Arctic National Park in Alaska, NPS data show.

Murkowski said visitation numbers aren’t a good metric for measuring the value of Alaska’s national parks because they’re so remote and difficult to access. Burgum assured her that Alaska’s national parks are not being considered for transfer.

“There’s a lot of interest with what may be forthcoming with regards to the park service and what it might mean for states to be managing some of these assets,” Murkowski said. “I certainly have a lot of questions. I’m not quite sure which national parks are considered ‘crown jewels.’”