Brilliant protest. Yosemite National Park workers hung an upside-down American flag — traditionally a symbol of distress or a national threat — thousands of feet off the ground on the side of El Capitan. pic.twitter.com/jWOBfV4sRa
— Dr. Lucky Tran (@luckytran) February 23, 2025
Yosemite National Park employees showed their frustration with the Trump Administration’s federal employee cuts by hanging an upside-down flag from El Capitan, symbolizing distress. Those who visited the park on Saturday, February 22 to watch the annual “firefall” event were met by the protest at the top of Yosemite’s iconic monolith.
Six demonstrators, including current and former Yosemite National Park employees, rigged the 30-by-50-foot flag and left it hanging for several hours before taking it down themselves later the same day. The protest was in response to President Trump’s federal employee slashes that saw around 2,000 recent hires fired from the U.S. Forest Service and 1,000 employees let go from the national parks system.
“The purpose of this exercise of free speech is to disrupt without violence and draw attention to the fact that public lands in the United States are under attack,” read a statement released by the demonstrators. “The Department of the Interior issued a series of secretarial orders that position drilling and mining interests as the favored uses of America’s public lands and threaten to scrap existing land protections and conservation measures. Firing thousands of staff regardless of position or performance across the nation is the first step in destabilizing the protections in place for these great places.”
One of the demonstrators identified himself as Gavin Carpenter, a maintenance mechanic at the park who supplied the flag and helped hang it.
“We’re bringing attention to what’s happening to the parks, which are every American’s properties,” Carpenter told the San Francisco Chronicle. “It’s super important we take care of them, and we’re losing people here, and it’s not sustainable if we want to keep the parks open.”
The employee cuts have left national parks across the country frazzled and understaffed in recent weeks. Yosemite’s only locksmith was let go. The only EMT ranger left at Devils Postpile National Monument told NBC that he’s the park’s only remaining EMT certified ranger which could mean “life or death for someone having an emergency.” Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument in Colorado announced that it would be closing for two days per week due to a lack of staffing. A park ranger who was fired wrote a heartfelt message that has been going viral on Facebook with more than 240,000 shares.
The Trump administration has walked back on some of its firings, restoring 50 of the slashed jobs and promising to hire an additional 3,000 seasonal workers for the National Park Service.
