Chuck Sams, former National Park Service director, stands for a portrait at Willamette Park in Portland, Ore., on Feb. 11, 2026.
Eli Imadali / OPB
In January 2025, after four years directing the National Park Service, Chuck Sams stepped down from his post and moved from Washington, D.C. to his home in Pendleton, Oregon. Back at the agency, where he’d just served as its first Native American director, 1,000 workers had just lost their jobs.
By that summer, then under the leadership of acting director Jessica Bowron, NPS had lost nearly a quarter of its permanent staff. The layoffs came as the Trump administration sought to reduce the federal workforce to make agencies more efficient.
On Feb. 12, 2026, Trump nominated Scott Socha, a hospitality executive, to become the next official NPS director.
The day before that nomination, Sams spoke to OPB’s “Think Out Loud.” He denounced layoffs and deep cuts by the federal government that he says have stripped the agency of valuable knowledge.
“I heard from many members of the National Park Service family all across the United States talking about how they’ve lost their supervisors, their institutional knowledge,” Sams said.
Gone from the agency are scores of scientists — from botanists to climatologists — and field supervisors who well understood NPS and the knowledge needed to carry out its work.
“That has dramatically affected the ability to do the work that the National Park Service does under its mandate: protection of natural resources and protection of cultural resources,” Sams said. “That type of long-term memory, which is crucial to the understanding of how we combat climate change, how we manage these places in situ, has a dramatic effect on each and every property of the National Park Service.”
But Sams said most park visitors likely wouldn’t have noticed the changes since NPS backfilled public-facing roles with staff from finance and administration. Instead, he said the real damage was happening behind the scenes.
“Where maintenance is supposed to happen, where cultural resources and natural resource protection is supposed to be taking place, those things were suffering in the park,” he said. “We’re going to see the accumulative effects over the next few years of that being neglected.”
Sams also said more visible changes under the second Trump administration are underway.
That includes removing signage at national parks related to climate change and mistreatment of Native Americans following an executive order by President Donald Trump.
For Sams, removing signs “has meant changing the narrative again, really just drawing on pulling back from the diverse stories that we were telling in the parks.”
He said such dramatic shifts at the agency have sapped morale from current staffers, and he’s heard from staffers that they’re concerned about the future of their work.
“They’re worried about their own ability to continue on to serve,” Sams said. “These folks took an oath of office. They are public servants and the civil servants. They do this job not because of the money, but because of their passion that they have to be of service to the American people. It’s hard to hear those calls and those discussions.”
But for those staffers who he says have had to take on new roles and responsibilities, Sams sees a silver lining in how much they’re bound to learn.
“I remind some of them who have been thrust into the supervisory or the superintendent role: When we come out of this, you will be well positioned to start building out your career and teaching others the lessons that you learned,” he said.
After leaving the park service, Sams was nominated by Gov. Tina Kotek to co-chair the Oregon Environmental Restoration Fund. He is also a member of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.
Chuck Sams spoke to “Think Out Loud” Host Dave Miller Feb. 11, 2026. Click play to listen to the full conversation:
