LAS VEGAS — On West Bonanza Road near Martin Luther King Boulevard, not far from the glittering casino lights of the Strip, motorists pass a dire message for the upcoming summer tourism season.
A billboard mimicking a postcard from one of the most extreme places on the continent reads: “Greetings from Death Valley National Park,” before a more sinister warning: “Heat deaths rise. Safety staff cut. Made possible by D.O.G.E.”
It’s one of around 300 billboards placed across Arizona, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida by More Perfect Union, a nonprofit labor advocacy organization seeking to bring attention to staffing cuts brought on by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
The National Parks Conservation Association, an independent advocacy organization, estimates that around 2,500 employees — roughly 13% of the National Park Service’s staff — took buyouts or accepted early retirements or deferred resignations as part of DOGE’s efforts to significantly slash the size of the federal government.
There are concerns that deep cuts across the National Park Service could jeopardize public safety.
“In far-flung places like Death Valley, park rangers are there to help maintain your safety,” said Faiz Shakir, More Perfect Union’s founder and executive director. “If you pass out from heat exhaustion, they’re the ones making sure you’re taken care of.”
In Nevada alone, 19 billboards are on display in Las Vegas and Reno, highlighting the public safety risk of heat-related illness and death for park visitors this summer.
Death Valley National Park extends from eastern California to Nevada and is about a 2.5-hour drive from Las Vegas. The area is often known as the hottest place in North America, with temperatures often reaching 130 degrees Fahrenheit or higher in the summer.
An early-season heat wave has scorched much of the West with dangerously hot conditions, prompting an extreme heat warning that extended from Friday to late Saturday. Triple-digit highs were widespread across southern Nevada, and temperatures over 115 degrees were expected in Death Valley.
Such extreme heat weeks before the official start of summer added urgency to More Perfect Union’s message. The organization’s billboard campaign is targeting broad impacts of DOGE’s layoffs and cuts to the nation’s most popular national parks. In the Southwest, that meant zeroing in on extreme heat, Shakir said.
“We had to tailor the message to get at where the rubber meets the road,” he said.
The full consequences of National Park Service reductions remain to be seen, and peak summer tourism season is looming.
Abigail Wines, acting deputy superintendent of Death Valley National Park, said park employees are working to keep the public safe and raise awareness about the dangers of extreme heat. She encouraged people to take necessary precautions before visiting Death Valley, such as checking for weather alerts or closures and packing adequate water, sunscreen and other essentials.
“As always, the National Park Service is working to provide visitors with amazing, safe and memorable experiences in Death Valley National Park, and throughout the country,” Wines told NBC News in a statement.
More Perfect Union’s bigger goal with its billboard campaign is to bring attention to DOGE’s controversial work and the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts to federal agencies. Shakir said the organization purposefully used the bipartisan support that national parks enjoy as a way to provoke debate.
A 2024 poll from the Pew Research Center found that the National Park Service was the most popular federal agency, with 76% favorability among the more than 9,400 Americans surveyed.
“A lot of places we put the billboards in are in red areas, where it’s assumed that a lot of people may have voted for Donald Trump, like Donald Trump and even like components of DOGE, quite frankly,” Shakir said. “But with national parks, we thought this was a good example of where they’ve gone way too far.”
