Last week, the supervisor for Crater Lake National Park resigned, just five months after taking the job.

Kevin Heatley said he could no longer be party to the dismantling of the federal government, and he expressed concern for the mental health of workers who are working long hours to keep the park operating.

That prompted U.S. Rep. Maxine Dexter, D-Portland, to demand answers from the U.S. Department of the Interior, which oversees the park service.

“When a dedicated public servant resigns because they feel their team is being pushed past the brink, it’s a flashing red warning sign that something is very wrong,” Dexter said.

Heatley joined OPB’s “Think Out Loud” on Wednesday to explain why he started working at Crater Lake this January, how the Trump administration directives affected the park, and why he decided he had to leave.

Here are highlights from that conversation:

Worries about Project 2025 brought Heatley to Oregon

Heatley said he first decided to leave a federal policy job in Washington, D.C., after reading Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for reshaping the federal government that the Trump administration has often followed.

As a high-profile staffer at the Bureau of Land Management, “I recognized immediately that the headquarters staff would be targeted if Project 2025 came to fruition,” he said. “So I started to look for alternative employment within the federal government and the National Park Service — when Crater Lake became available, I did not hesitate to apply.”

He’d already spent time at the Southern Oregon national park.

“It’s iconic, it’s phenomenal — an amazing place, and the National Park Service is a beloved agency that I was really excited to be a part of,” he said. “I took the opportunity to move to Crater Lake when I had the honor of being selected.”

He assumed the beloved National Park Service would experience minimal disruption under a new president, he said.

“Unfortunately that assumption was in error.”

Memos, directives and staff cuts

Not long after President Donald Trump took office, senior National Park Service leaders began to receive memos from the Office of Personnel Management, which handles human resources for the federal government, Heatley said.

Memos announced a hiring freeze, changed the performance review process, and repeatedly changed federal policies. An email to nearly all federal employees ordered staff to start sending weekly memos to the Trump administration about their work.

And then there was what Heatley calls “Feb. 14 — the Saint Valentine’s Day massacre, where probationary employees were unceremoniously jettisoned.”

When a federal employee is on “probationary status,” it means the worker is new to the government, or has been recently promoted or moved to a new role. But the Office of Personnel Management told staff that probationary status meant they were not meeting performance standards. A thousand National Parks Service workers were fired nationwide, prompting lawsuits, court orders, and whiplash for the agency.

“We did get a directive from the Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum — Burgum’s office — and we were told, ‘Keep the parks open. Keep the parks open,’” Heatley said. “At the same time, you’re not allowed to hire any people, and if people leave, you’re only allowed eventually to hire one for every four, but keep the parks open. That was the directive.”

Burgum has downplayed concerns about national park staffing, according to data reviewed by the Washington Post.

A short season and long work days

“Crater Lake is one of the snowiest places on the planet,” Heatley said. “I think this year we got over 36 feet of snow.”

Roads won’t be fully cleared until later this month. And then in September, it will start snowing again.

That means the park’s visitor season is short. In a normal year, staff who offer interpretive talks or give educational presentations might already be hired by now. This year, seasonal hiring is delayed and the park is relying on volunteers to do some of that work for the moment.

“Over the last 10 years or so, Crater Lake has seen a flat budget, flat funding,” Heatley said, adding that federal hiring limits have increased the strain.

Staffing is so lean, he said, that if a plow operator were to quit the park would not be able to keep roads open through the winter.

“We have the services,” Heatley said. “The problem is, it’s not sustainable — the workload for the amount of people we currently have.”

With too much work to do, and not enough people to do it, Heatley said, many workers are logging 60 hours of overtime over a two-week pay period.

“I mean, the train is still running on the tracks, but it’s not heading in the right direction,” Heatley said. “I cannot, in good conscience, manage an operation that I know is moving in the wrong direction.”

OPB reporter April Ehrlich contributed to this report.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/06/05/crater-lake-former-leader-why-quit/