Northern Michigan national parks prepare for summer visitors amid staffing, morale concerns

With a new tourism season upon northern Michigan, uncertainty remains about how national parks will handle millions of visitors amid lingering staffing questions because of back-and-forth federal workforce policies.

The National Park Service says both Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore and Isle Royale National Park expect to have the same number of seasonal employees as last year. It’s unclear if those employees are in place.

Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore has approximately two-thirds of the seasonal staff it typically needs to welcome more than 1.5 million visitors over the next three busy months.

National Park Service staff were given the green-light to hire in March after the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had earlier slammed the brakes on all federal hiring.

Leadership at the parks said they couldn’t comment.

US Rep. Jack Bergman (R-Watersmeet) represents Michigan’s First Congressional District, which includes all three parks. In an interview with WLUC-TV on Friday, he downplayed concerns about long-term effects to the parks.

“When you staff a park, or when you staff any entity, you’re always readjusting and redistributing your resources,” said Bergman. “There’s going to be a natural readjusting of how the park serves the visitors, and there’s going to be staffing in different levels, maybe a little bit less on the front end. It may be changed, totally different, as we provide those services to the visitors.”

Hiring typically begins in winter, leaving Sleeping Bear Dunes, which stretches for 35 shoreline miles through Leelanau and Benzie counties, behind schedule, said Tom Ulrich, the former deputy superintendent at Sleeping Bear Dunes who retired in 2023 but still stays in contact with leadership at the park.

“They’re still trying to get anybody else to accept a job, but it looks like there won’t be many more coming,” Ulrich said.

Since Trump took office on Jan. 20, National Park employees have been effectively gagged from speaking with journalists about federal policies and their impact on the national or the local level. In their absence, Ulrich has become a de facto spokesperson to the media for Sleeping Bear Dunes.

On May 17 Ulrich gave Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel a tour of the Treat Farm Trail south of Empire and shared with her the harmful effects that Trump’s policies and cuts made by DOGE are having on Sleeping Bear’s ability to hire staff and welcome the deluge of visitors. Nessel has joined other attorneys general in lawsuits against Trump’s policies.

The parks collectively attract millions of visitors each year, contributing millions of dollars in spending, including $197 million to Sleeping Bear Dunes, nearly $50 million to Pictured Rocks, and $12 million to Isle Royale in 2023.

Former Isle Royale National Park Superintendent Bill Fink said the park staffing is dynamic.

“The emphasis on maintaining visitor activities means the impact of the cuts will fall on natural and cultural resource management and protection activities, resulting in long-term, perhaps irreparable harm to the very things these park units were set aside to protect,” he said.

‘Your visit … will suffer’

Ulrich told the Glen Arbor Sun that staff across the park are filling gaps outside their areas of expertise: Tradesmen are doing custodial jobs. The piping plover monitoring crew has less capacity. The season will open with fewer campground hosts, visitors center workers and fee collectors than usual at the Dune Climb and Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive, the latter of which opened Thursday, a week later than usual, because of staffing issues and the removal of a popular scenic overlook structure.

Ulrich said the true impacts aren’t being felt yet because the park isn’t yet getting 400,000 visitors per month as they do in peak-season.

“Morale is low from people being jerked around for five months,” said Ulrich. “They won’t be able to give attention to bathrooms and trash cans like they have in the past. It’s a shit show.”

“When you don’t have the staff, you can’t make the rounds,” Ulrich said. “A bathroom at the Dune Climb that should have been cleaned at 2 p.m. on a Tuesday might not be cleaned.

Ulrich empathizes with National Park Service superintendents and staff, who must comply with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s April 3 order “Ensuring National Parks Are Open and Accessible” even though many Parks have been dealt a heavy hand.

“It’s one thing to issue an order that everything shall remain open. It’s another thing entirely if that order cannot be followed according to Park Service standards,” said Ulrich.

“It’s safe to say that your visit to Sleeping Bear Dunes this year will suffer.”

Greater Munising Bay Partnership CEO Kathy Reynolds says she hasn’t been made aware of any cuts at Pictured Rocks.

She said that, since the park has fewer than 30 full-time employees, it’s critical to maintain them.

“I think one of the things people don’t realize is the size of the park,” Reynolds told WLUC–TV. “The park is over 73,000 acres.”

July and August are also the busiest months at Pictured Rocks. Ahead of Memorial Day weekend, Reynolds expressed optimism.

“People are starting to come out, and it’s looking like it’s going to be a busy weekend,” she said. “It’s going to be pretty much typical of how it’s been in the last couple of years.”

Kimberly Renner Bielawski, of Ely, Minnesota, visited Miners Castle on Thursday.

“It might be the nation’s best-kept secret,” Bielawski said, while noting that her hiking trip was smooth.

‘We don’t anticipate any issues’

The least-visited national park in the continental US, Isle Royale National Park, is in the early stages of its season.

Fink, the former park superintendent, noted that, as of Friday, the federal government’s hiring website still shows a vacancy for a deckhand, which may limit the ability of the Isle Royale ferry, the Ranger III, to run full passenger trips from Houghton to the island.

Isle Royale Seaplanes kicked off its season Sunday. This will be its first full season at its newly built base in Hubbell following a partial season last year. The seaplanes run eight round trips per day to the island under a National Park Concession contract.

According to the business, over the course of its four-and-a-half-month season, it will transport more than 9,000 people.

“This is our first week,” Isle Royale Seaplanes Operations Director Jonathan Rector said. “Traditionally, it’s fairly light. That picks up starting this weekend. Then, by July 1, we’ll be fully booked.”

The business doesn’t foresee a decrease in traffic this summer.

“We’ve been assured by the park service that they will have adequate staffing,” Rector said. “That will be in operation the entire season, so we don’t anticipate any issues there.”

This reporting is made possible by the Northern Michigan Journalism Project (of which the Glen Arbor Sun is a member)— led by Bridge Michigan and Interlochen Public Radio, and funded by Press Forward Northern Michigan.