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national parks
Dumbing Down America’s Best Idea: National Parks in Free Fall
Each week of the Trump administration, there is another action stripping the National Park System of its intellectual, institutional, and moral core.
Aug 16, 2025
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.
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Yosemite National Park Employees Worked Without Pay for Weeks Amid Trump Cuts
"It's definitely taking advantage of people who love their jobs and don't want the park to suffer," said one park employee.
Aug 04, 2025
NPR on Monday published a lengthy investigation that found seasonal workers at Yosemite National Park this year worked for as long as six weeks without pay amid the chaos caused by the Trump administration's massive staffing cuts.
Multiple Yosemite workers told NPR that they felt exploited and added that they haven't received any backpay for the work they performed for free earlier this year.
"It's definitely taking advantage of people who love their jobs and don't want the park to suffer," said one park employee who worked without pay for three weeks before being formally hired.
As NPR explained, major national parks typically hire seasonal workers as extra help from May until October, which are the peak months for visitors. This year, however, actions by the Trump administration threw the parks' hiring routine into chaos and left human resources departments unsure of how many people they could afford to hire.
"On February 14, 10 full time federal employees at Yosemite were fired when the federal government terminated about 1,000 newly hired employees throughout the National Park Service," wrote NPR. "In the weeks that followed, additional experienced workers left the park service voluntarily. Since January, the amount of permanent staff across the service has declined by 24%, according to data analyzed in July by the National Parks Conservation Association, a nonprofit that defends parks."
As if that weren't chaotic enough, the government had to rehire many of the workers it had previously let go after realizing they were indispensable to keeping the parks operational.
"We had the firing of probationary employees in February and then the rehiring, and this was a huge, huge burden on human resources to try to get people in and out," Emily Thompson, executive director of the Coalition to Protect America's National Parks, told NPR.
One park employee told NPR that this led to nonstop turmoil for workers who were unsure when, if ever, they would receive a paycheck.
"My supervisors were emailing people week after week saying, 'Hey, the update is there's no updates and we understand you guys need housing and you're relying on this and we're relying on you. And we don't know what's going on, but one option is to volunteer,'" the worker explained.
As bad as things are at Yosemite, the situation is actually even worse at several smaller national parks that were not able to hire any kind of seasonal help this year. In fact, NPR pointed to data from the National Parks Conservation Association showing that "only about 4,500 of the people expected to fill 8,000 seasonal positions across the park service were working in seasonal roles."
A report released last month by the Center for American Progress (CAP) projected that the Trump administration's additional proposed cuts to national parks would dramatically worsen the experiences of visitors.
"In total, the proposed budget includes a nearly $4 billion cut to national parks, national forests, wildlife refuges, wilderness and recreation areas, and more," wrote CAP in its report. "That is a 35% decrease from 2024 funding and will impact services such as maintenance, research, land conservation and restoration, recreation, cultural and historic preservation, and visitor services."
The report also said that the cuts already enacted under the Department of Government Efficiency have resulted in "closed ranger stations at popular recreation areas, closed campgrounds in the Great Smoky Mountains, and closed access to public lakes and park toilets nationwide."
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On This Earth Day, Get Out and Fight Against Trump’s Greed and Destruction
Americans who oppose Trump’s actions can get out and peacefully protest this Earth Day and call on their congressional representative and senators to fight back and rein in this lawless administration.
Apr 22, 2025
Since the day U.S. President Donald Trump took office, his administration has relentlessly pursued an agenda that puts the profits of his billionaire allies above the well-being of the American people and our environment.
Trump’s strategy seems clear: Do so much damage so quickly that no one can focus on one issue for long before something else draws attention away.
Yet Earth Day reminds us that our public lands, wildlife and, climate are priorities among the flurry of broad and harmful executive actions.
Wildlife Under Siege
The latest in Trump’s onslaught of attacks on our environmental protections came just days ago with a proposed rule change on endangered species.
Trump wants to gut the very core of these protections: preserving crucial wildlife habitat, even though habitat destruction is the primary driver toward extinction for most animals. Instead, Trump would limit what it means to “harm” endangered species to killing or hunting animals directly.
Endangered species rollbacks are just one of far too many Trump orders and actions that chip away at hard-fought protections for people and the planet.
If Trump gets his way, logging, mining, drilling, developing, or polluting the lands where animals live or breed wouldn’t be considered “harm” to imperiled wildlife. With such reckless action, we could lose endangered species like grizzly bears entirely, while species that have bounced back because of these protections—including bald eagles—could head back toward extinction again. It’s just not possible to protect animals and plants from extinction without protecting their natural home.
This comes after Trump already cut funds to life-saving international elephant and rhino conservation programs and fired thousands of workers across federal agencies who ensure endangered species are protected throughout the country.
Endangered species rollbacks are just one of far too many Trump orders and actions that chip away at hard-fought protections for people and the planet.
Attacking Science
Trump’s attacks on science and efforts to tackle climate change began on day one of his presidency, when he moved to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris agreement, an international treaty to limit climate-warming emissions.
Trump escalated his war on science with a plan to defund crucial NASA research and climate science. Trump forced the removal of government websites that map climate, pollution, and offer environmental justice resources.
Then Trump took steps to revoke the government’s basis for tackling climate change, a finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health and the environment.
Without leadership from the White House, we will have to rely on state leaders to take action on climate change.
Chopping and Burning Natural Resources
Trump’s greed is on full display with his efforts to expand and prioritize oil, gas, coal, mining, and logging operations on public lands.
Trump just unleashed the chainsaws on our national forests with a goal of ramping up logging and road building on public lands. This will pollute the drinking water of 180 million Americans and clear the forests that many wildlife species need to survive. Cutting down older, fire-resilient trees will also make wildfires worse.
The Trump administration declared a so-called “emergency situation” in 59% of our national forests. This is a phony declaration concocted to reduce protections against industrial logging and offer up about 112 million acres of national forests to become timber. Instead of majestic landscapes, we’ll be left with more flammable clear-cuts, polluted waters, and extinct species.
Trump promised to “unleash American energy” by offering up our public lands for oil, natural gas, and coal extraction. He’s eliminating protections and rubber-stamping approvals without environmental review or air pollution permits for oil and gas processing facilities.
It seems nothing is too sacred or precious to sell off for parts. Trump could even open up the Grand Canyon area for uranium mining and is likely to eliminate at least two national monuments, the Chuckwalla and Sáttítla Highlands national monuments in California.
Gutting National Treasures
In addition to the weakening all of these protections, national parks, national monuments, and public lands have taken other major hits from Trump’s mass layoffs, office closings, and freezing funds. Trump has gutted all the necessary resources to keep these spaces functional, yet is still requiring the public to have access.
Our beloved parks can’t operate or remain open without the necessary staff and Park Rangers to keep visitors safe. Even when normally staffed, an average of 11 visitors die each year at the Grand Canyon alone. What will happen now as Trump is willfully putting visitors at risk?
Rising Resistance
Like Trump’s harmful environmental moves, many other administration actions are deeply unpopular. Trump’s approval ratings are only getting worse. So people are rightfully taking to the streets to peacefully oppose the administration’s damaging policies and to say “hands off!” our planet, our home.
Our organization is fighting back in court. We will use every legal tool at our disposal to halt the Trump administration’s implementation of these reckless environmental actions. State lawmakers should rebuff the dismantling of our environmental safeguards and protect their lands, wildlife, and our climate.
Americans who see the greed behind Trump’s actions can get out and peacefully protest this Earth Day and call on their congressional representative and senators to fight back and rein in this lawless administration. We can’t lose hope. Today, we build momentum and fight for a greener future.
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