Dumbing Down America’s Best Idea: National Parks in Free Fall

Often been referred to as America’s Best Idea, our National Park System has played a key role over the years in inspiring a global conservation movement.

But consider the plight of the National Park Service (NPS) today, nearly 10 years into its second century since its 1916 founding. Even as it sets new all-time visitation records, no one could claim our national parks are basking in a golden age.

Much has been made of the NPS hemorrhaging staff under Trump 2.0, with an estimated 25% overall workforce reduction just since January. At the same time, daily decisions governing national parks are made by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, a former software executive and South Dakota governor with no park management experience. Despite plummeting staff levels, Burgum has issued orders directing that

• All park units remain open;
• Parks should take steps to maximize visitation and recreational opportunities; and
• Accommodate desires of gateway communities in park operations.

At the same time, Secretary Burgum has “consolidated” most all NPS administrative, human resource, and IT staff to work for all Interior agencies, a move costing NPS another 5,700 employees, approximately one-quarter of its remaining workforce. The disruptive impact of this internal move is now just starting to be felt, and its impact is magnified by new restrictions on park purchasing and contracts.

All of this is taking place without an NPS director, or even a nominee to serve as director. Even its chief deputy director is a career Army officer, with no prior national park experience. In addition, the entire chain-of-command through the secretary is almost completely devoid of any official with any background in national parks.

Meanwhile, most of the NPS regional director slots are vacant, and there are an unknown but large number of empty park superintendent positions. Compounding matters is the decision to shutter the two national park academies, which provide training to current and future NPS leaders in the laws, policies, and practices guiding park management. These shutdowns are major blows to the professionalism of this institution.

Even more profoundly, President Donald Trump’s budget plan proposes to divest as many as 350 of the 433 national park units to state or local governments. Meanwhile, the Trump mega-bill leaves NPS on even shakier fiscal status, while the few park investment proposals are highly questionable at best, and do little to help the park system, such as creating a new “Garden of Heroes,” filled with statuary depicting Americans the Trump administration deem as great.

Meanwhile, edicts issued under Trump and Burgum have gone further, such as demanding that all park interpretative displays be stripped of anything that could be interpreted as “negative” or “disparaging.” These orders have the effect of casting aside such essential notions as historical accuracy and cultural context. They also inject a corrosive politicization into park interpretive displays, lectures, and tours which had been designed to educate rather than merely placate.

The first and indispensable step for renewal will be recruiting a new generation of leaders who truly understand and appreciate the unique role of our national parks.

Compounding all of the above is the eviscerating of park planning, with National Environmental Policy Act requirements for considering long-term impacts and alternatives undergoing radical truncation. Consequently, road building and other development projects within national parks will be harder to stop or moderate regardless of damage to park resources. Moreover, since the scientific specialists within NPS are fast disappearing, there will be little capacity to even assess those impacts.

One example of this scientific retreat is the cessation of air quality monitoring at national parks. Maintaining the air quality of our most pristine places is apparently no longer of value, but it is far from the only scientific research work in our parks grinding to a halt.

In short, the combination of these developments means that our park system is being hollowed out. Each week there is another action stripping the National Park System of its intellectual, institutional, and moral core. The damage done in the past few months is both dramatic and cumulative, in many cases building on a slow degradation over the past 30 years. It will not be easily or quickly reversed.

Nor has the system touched bottom yet, as the impact of several of these moves has yet to be full felt. This descent will be long and painful with a turnaround not yet on the horizon.

The first and indispensable step for renewal will be recruiting a new generation of leaders who truly understand and appreciate the unique role of our national parks. They will have to rededicate our park system to an ethic of public enjoyment that also safeguards conservation of these resources for the balance of national parks’ second century. It cannot happen soon enough.