Timeless favorite national monuments and/or parks could be in jeopardy. As the summer concluded and came to a halt, so did the jobs of the National Park Service’s quarter of permanent staff. This is all due to the extremely lackluster structure and decision-making of the Trump administration
The second term of President Donald Trump has served as an indication of danger to the tenures of thousands of staff members, parks, funding, and many more issues to be addressed along the way.
The Trump Administration has proposed unprovoked and unprecedented budget cuts to the National Park Service that measure up to a one billion dollar reduction, which is set to begin next year. According to the Center of American Progress (CAP), a 35.43% decrease has been estimated to occur for parks, forests, wildlife refuges, and other public lands.
This comes from the actual 2024 budget sum, accumulated by the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service, the U.S. Forest Service, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, standing at $11.21 billion, compared to the proposed budget sum of 2026, standing at $7.24 billion.
This is extremely reckless and detrimental to the availability of park access. Closed campgrounds and ranger stations are already appearing in notable areas such as the Great Smoky Mountains, and AmeriCorps and the National Civilian Community Corps are experiencing poorly maintained trails.
The Grand Canyon National Park made an announcement that visitors should not expect immediate rescues and searches for lost and injured visitors, since their staff is limited. Imagine having a child or young relative in danger, and because of the irreparable damage by the Trump Administration, your relative is not able to be saved or rescued properly. This is such a major issue that harms so many families and animal-based lifestyles.
Furthermore, according to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), hundreds of rangers and land managers have been unfairly dropped from their jobs.
This results in more demand for these parks, but barely any reciprocated performance and treatment. If these national parks are so poorly run and poorly managed, and these major positions of work are vacant due to staff reduction, what does this lead to?
This leads to diminished resources for visitors and makes for a low-quality visit. The inability to structure well for the already diminishing visitor numbers makes for an unacceptable situation and something that affects not just wildlife, not just visitor rates, but the overall system of the national park.
And this budget cut comes at such a terrible and inconvenient time. National public lands have been growing for the past 20 years. 2024 saw a record 331.9 million recreational visits, that being an increase of two percent from 2023 (6.36 million recreational visits).
Why defund these parks now? We can find an answer in the Bureau of Land Management’s Public Lands Rule, where the policy is intended to bring balance between preservation and uprooting use, but Trump has promoted and endorsed the extraction of areas over places of historical preservation and upkeep.
When we have a president who is completely unaware of the damage he dishes out, this is a result. We have to take into consideration the removal of wildlife, as well as visitor hours, and staff employment. So much more needs to be said and done about the already terrible administration that is barely holding America in place.
Even going deeper into the wrong type of endorsement and promotion, Trump ordered the National Park Service to review certain national exhibits for review, to which they flagged multiple exhibits displaying the bare horror of slavery (Independence National Historical Park), language about the public flogging of enslaved people (Cane River Creole National Historical Park), and panels that tell the description of Native American imprisonment. (Castillo de San Marcos National Monument).
This is a huge hit for citizens who are eager to learn about the horrific realities of our country. Trump is actively making the wrong moves with his administration and intentionally trying to erase the history that holds our founding fathers accountable.
