The Government is Gutting the National Park Service. Will We Just Remain Silent?
“The service thus established shall promote and regulate the use of the Federal areas known as national parks, monuments, and reservations… which purpose is to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”
—The Organic Act of 1916, creating the National Park Service
By Michael Lanza
With the widespread, deep cuts to federal spending, which have often seemed chaotic and not even remotely thought out, since President Trump began his second term in January, I’ve occasionally heard from readers of this blog asking what they should expect visiting the national parks this year. I haven’t really had a good answer, in part because there seemed neither any plan behind the cuts nor much information about how and where funding would be slashed.
I backpacked in the Grand Canyon in late March and, besides one unusually long line to board a shuttle bus, I didn’t see evidence of any deterioration of public services or natural resources. Like, perhaps, many people, I wondered whether the parks would somehow, miraculously, dodge a death by a thousand cuts.
Now it’s clear that is not at all true.
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According to excellent reporting in The Atlantic, published Sept. 26, 2025, “the real crisis is happening beyond the trails and campgrounds, where visitors can’t see it” and “the Department of the Interior sacrificed long-term stewardship of American lands to maintain a veneer of normalcy for this summer’s crowds.”
If that sounds bad, the full tale about what’s going on behind the visitor centers and public bathrooms is even worse.
The Atlantic story’s broad conclusion is that the National Park Service—in the face of calamitous budget cuts—has adopted a strategy of applying enough makeup to maintain appearances at points where the public interfaces with parks, while abandoning the many kinds of critical work that keeps our parks functioning well.
Maintaining the parks while following the Park Service’s sometimes competing objectives of preserving fragile natural resources and enabling hundreds of millions of visitors to enjoy the quite varied experiences available in our parks is a tall order in the best of times.
But some specific details from that story illustrate the shortsightedness and sheer lunacy of this approach:
- The National Park Service lost about a quarter of its permanent staff to mass firings, buyouts, early retirements, and resignations just in the winter and spring of 2025. A report in The New York Times places the figure at 24 percent (see below).
- The senior director of conservation science at the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Association is quoted saying that the Park Service’s science arm, which once employed hundreds of people in land, water, air, wildlife, and climate-change programs, is “pretty much dismantled.”
- Layoffs have left one employee overseeing archaeology and cultural-resource protection for Alaska’s 23 park sites.
- In April, biologists in Yosemite National Park were cleaning toilets.
The government shutdown will likely magnify the crisis. A recent story in The New York Times reported that a government shutdown “would be the latest in a series of blows to the National Park Service, which has lost at least 24 percent of its permanent staff since January,” attributing that statistic to the National Parks Conservation Association. Nearly one million park visitors would be turned away every day if the government shuts down, and communities surrounding the parks could lose as much as $77 million each day parks are closed, according to the NPCA.
This alarming news occurs at a time when interest in national parks only continues to mushroom. According to the National Park Service, total visitation to all U.S. national parks set yet another new record in 2024 with nearly 331.9 million recreation visits, a two percent increase over 2023—and nearly 14 percent higher than the slightly more than 287 million visits a quarter-century ago, in 1999.
The NPS also projects that climate change will have impacts not just on natural environments, but also on how and when people visit parks, as unbearably and dangerously hot seasons lengthen in some parks while comfortable seasons grow longer in other parks.
Planning for visitor growth and change on that scale requires much more than just keeping toilets clean.
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Falling in Love With National Parks
My first national park backpacking trip was in Yosemite almost four decades ago. (We made textbook rookie mistakes, including hanging our food so poorly in a tree on our first night in the backcountry that a black bear easily stole some of it; but we had also so overpacked food that we had plenty left to finish our hike.) The Teton Crest Trail and Denali were, if I remember correctly, my second and third. I aimed high.
Before we married, my wife and I spent an entire summer traveling around the West, living in a car and a $75 tent for three months without a night indoors until that tent basically disintegrated on one of our trip’s last nights (and we sprang for a cheap motel room and cooked dinner on our camp stove). We spent much of that summer backpacking, dayhiking, and climbing in national parks: Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce Canyon, Arches, Canyonlands, Rocky Mountain, Grand Teton, Glacier.
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It was magical (and helped convince me that I could spend my life with this person, the best decision I’ve ever made besides deciding to have children with her).
Our kids, now in their twenties, have been enjoying family adventures in national parks since they were too young to remember. I’ve heard the same question from them both many times and it always begins, “Dad, have I ever been to (fill in a national park name)?” The times we’ve had together in America’s parks and other wild federal lands were fun and beautiful, yes, but so much more than that: My wife and I, having been to many of these places before becoming parents, saw them fresh again, reliving that depth of wonder and awe through our kids’ eyes, words, and expressions.
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The hours and days we spent walking trails and sitting in campsites together comprised many of the rare moments in our modern lives when we didn’t have cell service or wifi or the distraction of our devices—we had only one another for entertainment and we fully immersed ourselves in word games on the trail and storytelling in camp and the boundless joy and laughter and love of it. Those experiences brought us closer together as a family.
It pains me to imagine my family without those memories because some past president or Congress had arbitrarily decided our cherished parks were not worth the relative pittance, in the context of the total federal budget, that the country spends to maintain them.
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What We Can Do Now
In his first term, in a speech about national parks (when he famously mispronounced “Yosemite”), President Trump said, “Every American has, truly, a duty to preserve this wondrous inheritance.” Now he has an opportunity to demonstrate that he believes his own words.
I don’t generally delve into politics or current events at The Big Outside, for various reasons (and not because I lack interest in and strong opinions about politics), but mainly because I see the mission of my blog as more of a resource for information and expertise about, primarily, backpacking and dayhiking.
But this crisis facing the National Park Service represents an immediate existential threat. And it’s relevant and important to all of us.
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Our parks don’t protect themselves. They exist in as pristine a state as is possible in the modern era because the NPS has countless staff dedicated to studying wildlife, botany, natural environments, climate, and cultural and historical sites, among many other subjects; clearing downed trees and brush from trails and rebuilding them and footbridges over creeks after washouts and storm damage; maintaining roads and the bridges along them; determining policy and budget priorities with an experience-guided understanding of the specific needs of their own park; driving shuttle buses; giving ranger talks and guided hikes; and working in public safety with a host of challenges not seen by their counterparts in cities and towns. That’s just a short list of the people without whom our parks would—or will—quickly degrade.
And if enough Americans respond immediately, we can head off and eliminate this one grave threat before the injuries to our parks become chronic and much harder and slower and far more expensive to fix.
But we must act before much of the damage becomes irreversible.
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First of all, I recommend you read the story in The Atlantic and share it with anyone and everyone you know whom you feel would or should care about it—because even people who don’t visit the national parks often still support protecting them. National parks are about as iconic an emblem of America as anything.
Then call the office of your representative in Congress and both of your senators or write to them. (Those links open pages where you can find and contact your own representative and senators.) Ask them directly and specifically to fully restore the funding of the National Park Service, reversing the deep cuts of this year and opposing the proposed further cuts to the NPS in the fiscal year 2026 budget: President Trump has proposed cutting another $1.2 billion, which would be the largest budget cut in NPS history.
Individual people contacting members of Congress to voice our views remains the most effective way to have an impact on what Congress does. When they hear from enough of their constituents, they listen and react. (Remember that, in June, a proposal by Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee to sell millions of acres of federal land was defeated because of widespread opposition from Democrats and Republicans.) They also understand the economic impact that national parks have on nearby communities, which are often rural and small and not economically diverse. Cuts to national parks hurts real people.
Lastly, share this blog post if you feel I’ve made a strong argument for speaking up and standing up for our national parks. And share your thoughts in the comments at the bottom of this story, which I always try to respond to; tell us which representatives in Congress you’ve contacted and if you’ve received a response. Share your own strategies for persuading a reluctant representative or senator.
If enough people speak up, we can change the dangerous direction our national parks are heading in. Democracy does still work that way sometimes.
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I’ve thought hard about this issue and come to the conclusion that this could be the one cause that could unite all Americans, no matter their backgrounds, where they live, or their politics. National parks have always had bipartisan support—and appreciation.
If we fail to protect our national parks—if we cannot summon the will to save these natural treasures that we’ve worked so hard and invested so much in protecting and preserving for a century and a half, since the creation of Yellowstone, the world’s first national park, in 1872—then I think the only question that remains is: What will be left that’s important enough that all Americans can come together and agree to save it?
It’s time to say no. This is important enough.
Fantastic post Michael. We can all stand behind our National Parks. I recommend watching Ken Burns film about the National Parks on PBS. I just viewed it again recently and realized that the people before me fought and championed for establishing many of our National Parks. It was not easy to establish this wonderful heritage. There was extreme resistance in many cases from industry, ranchers, and members of the government. The thing is: this is now our fight. Right now. We must speak out and not waver. People years from now will thank us. I plan to write and will continue to write faithfully.
Thank you, Elaine, and I completely agree with your comment, of course. This is now our fight and it’s on us. I appreciate you getting engaged and contacting your representative and senators.