President Donald Trump’s push to slash federal spending could have devastating consequences for America’s national parks, with proposed budget cuts threatening to gut the Park Service and dismantle protections for the country’s most treasured landscapes, the New York Times reported Sunday.
In 2023, the latest year with available data, an estimated 325 million people visited national parks, monuments, and historic sites, spending around $26.4 billion in nearby communities. That number grew even higher the following year, with park visits reaching an all-time record of nearly 332 million, per the article by Ted Kerasote, a nature and wildlife writer.
Theresa Pierno, president of the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), an advocacy organization, cautioned last month that the park system "would be completely decimated" if the proposed cuts go into effect.
"Even before he took office, the Park Service was running lean, on a slim operating budget of about $3 billion. But since January, an estimated 13 percent of its staff has departed through pressured buyouts, early retirements and deferred resignations," the Times piece noted.
According to the NPCA, the Trump administration’s proposed $900 million cut to the Park Service’s operating budget could force the closure of more than 80 percent of the 433 parks, monuments, historic sites, and other areas under its care.
Such a drastic move would mark the unraveling of a system that for over 100 years has safeguarded the nation’s most iconic natural and cultural treasures. Long seen as a global example of public land preservation, the national parks represent a legacy of conservation and shared heritage that could be severely compromised, Kerasote argued.
"Mr. Trump has proposed hacking the Park Service’s operating budget by roughly 30 percent, which would be catastrophic, and transferring less visited national parks and other Park Service locations to states and tribal governments," he said.
The writer said Trump "seems bent on eroding one of the country’s greatest achievements, a national park system open to all."
He continued: "As the Western writer Wallace Stegner once put it, the national parks are 'absolutely American' and 'the best idea we ever had.'
Will the millions of Americans who cherish their parks allow Mr. Trump to destroy them?"