The National Park Service was established in 1916, and has 433 sites across the US. Each receives over 331 million visitors a year, employs around 20,000 workers, and plays a critical role in taking care of the environment. However, under the second Trump administration, the national government has significantly reduced federal funding for the parks and has continued to lower it each year, with 31% of last year’s funding cut for 2026 and 33% of this year’s funding removed in the 2027 budget proposal. The cuts have already created significant negative impacts for the parks, and many of the funding-related issues are only expected to deteriorate.
At Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California, efforts were underway to find ways to reduce wildfire risk, and at Lake Powell—one of the nation’s largest reservoirs located in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area in Utah and Arizona—the Park Service was working on researching and handling record-low water levels. With the parks’ funding cut, however, these programs had to be cancelled.
National parks not only offer the public access to safe, affordable, and healthy ways to learn about and appreciate nature, but also conduct crucial scientific research, support biodiversity needs, protect wildlife habitats, reduce the impacts of natural disasters, and much more. Defunding agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)—the agency responsible for enforcing laws like the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act—increases pollution, harms air and water quality, and endangers environmental health. It has become unmissably evident that the Trump administration is purposefully repealing decades of environmental progress.
In addition to nature-related harm, the funding cuts have also affected the thousands of employees working for the National Park Service and the safety and quality of park visits. Since Trump took office, the National Park Service has lost 24% of its employees, from park rangers to emergency responders to janitors. As a result, routine tasks like cleaning and stocking the bathrooms are not completed, fewer rangers give tours and lectures, visitor centers have reduced hours, and parks have lost millions of dollars due to their inability to staff entrances and collect visitor fees. Unfortunately, an understaffed law enforcement unit at Voyageurs National Park in Minnesota was forced to cut emergency services from seven days a week to four.
The funding and staffing cuts are putting a greater strain on the parks’ employees and making it much harder than it should be to provide memorable experiences for millions of Americans. Meanwhile, larger corporations are thriving under these changes.
It should come as no surprise that national park layoffs and budget cuts primarily benefit private developers and extractive industries. This became apparent to the American public last August when the Trump administration announced that it was considering a land swap in Yosemite with Kingsbarn Realty Capital. The firm owns an 83-acre plot of land outside the park’s western border; however, it wants to build a road to connect the property with a Yosemite public road, which would expand the property’s public access. In exchange, Kingsbarn Realty Capital would be required to relinquish an equally-valuable land parcel to the National Park Service. On the surface, it seems to be a fair deal; in actuality, the road would pose serious challenges related to habitat fragmentation. Paving the road would permanently destroy native vegetation, sever migration routes, increase road mortality, and introduce noise and chemical pollution. In short, Yosemite’s ecological structure would face significant degradation.
Additionally, funding cuts allow extractive industries to sidestep environmental restrictions since protections are minimal and fewer staff are available to enforce them. These industries also profit from redirected federal funds, as the government hopes to stimulate job creation and reduce energy costs by investing in these areas.
Due to the federal government’s power of the purse, the authority of Congress to raise taxes and authorize all federal spending, it can constitutionally cut funding to national parks. However, selling or privatizing federal land violates the Constitution, and short-term economic gains cannot justify long-term environmental destruction.
