The National Park Service has been given the OK to hire fill some positions, but won't say which ones/NPS file

The National Park Service has been given permission to hire "certain positions" previously blocked by President Trump's freeze on government hiring, though the agency didn't say Wednesday which positions or how many it can fill.

"The National Park Service is implementing President Donald J. Trump’s Hiring Freeze Executive Order across the federal civilian workforce," the Park Service told the Traveler in an email. "The order does allow for exemptions for the hiring of certain positions. The NPS is assessing our most critical staffing needs for park operations for the coming season and is working to hire key positions. The NPS is committed to protecting public lands, infrastructure, and communities while ensuring public access."

Further information would be relayed when available, the email said.

There have been media reports that the Park Service has received permission to fill some law-enforcement and dispatcher jobs across the National Park System, and the Traveler has confirmed that at least one park has been allowed to hire a law-enforcement ranger.

Still, the uncertainty over whether the Park Service will be allowed to move forward with hiring the thousands of seasonal workers who greet visitors, staff visitor centers and information kiosks, patrol trails, fight wildfires, clean restrooms, and lead interpretive tours has filled those whose job offers were rescinded last month with stress and dread.

"I am a seasonal ranger and would have been getting ready for my fourth season with the National Park Service this summer before the hiring freeze took effect. While I did not receive the 'offer rescinded' email that many seasonal rangers received, my hiring process has nevertheless grinded to a halt," one seasonal ranger told the Traveler in an email. "This experience has been the most demoralizing thing I've gone through in my time with the Park Service and possibly in my entire life. I am sure that many of the rangers you speak to will talk about how much of their work is a work of passion - how much they truly enjoy being stewards for our amazing public lands.

"That feeling of pride and love for our work is what makes this hiring freeze sting so much more, because not only are we being removed from work that brings us fulfillment and provides a valuable public service, but we are also being met in some sectors of media with criticisms that federal workers are lazy, unproductive leeches. It is mentally and emotionally draining, especially since there seems to be disorder at the Washington level as to what is actually happening as far as exemptions to the freeze for seasonal hiring are concerned."

Julia Rudlaff has worked on trail crews in the White Mountains of New England and had hoped to land a job with the Park Service this year.

"Even one summer season without trail crews would be catastrophic for the national parks’ trails – it would mean that next summer’s crews (if they are hired) would only be doing log-outs and tread clearance, working on none of the essential maintenance construction that happens every summer in the form of rock work, erosion control, and bridging structures," she wrote in an open letter she shared with the Traveler. "Parks workers are not decorative, they are essential.

"If immediate action is not taken to lift the hiring freeze on seasonal workers, for the Park Service and beyond, the implications will be enormous. Not only will thousands of Americans like myself be without work – work that we are highly skilled in and have taken years to learn, work that we love, and work that the parks need – but the parks themselves will disintegrate," she wrote. "This is not speculation, this is fact. The national parks cannot function without their seasonal workforce."

Another individual hoping for a permanent job as a dispatcher was told their offer had been pushed off until late March.

"Many people feel that this is just a bump in the road and things will work themselves out. I fear this is not the case," they said in an email.

On a Reddit page followed by rangers, one wrote that "I accepted a really cool seasonal research position at a top 5 national park. I was told I would know more the week after Valentine's Day. I'm not getting my hopes up."