Trump Asks Congress To Ruin Our National Parks

The Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge in southwest Nevada harbors four endangered species, including the Amargosa pupfish, a tough little fish that has been around since the Pleistocene era. The Wyoming toad, which makes its home in southeast Wyoming’s Mortenson Lake National Wildlife Refuge, is one of North America’s most endangered amphibians. And the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge protects one of the world’s largest onshore denning sites for polar bears.

All these bumpy, feathery, furry and increasingly rare species are part of the astonishing biodiversity in the United States that helps keep our planet alive and healthy. Now, every bit of that biodiversity — the fish and wildlife and the land and water that they all need to survive — face what conservation advocates call an existential crisis owing to draconian budget cuts proposed in the name of improving government efficiency. 

President Donald Trump’s recently released federal budget asks Congress to slash more than $900 million from the National Park System, $564 million from the U.S. Geological Survey’s science and research programs, and almost $200 million from the Bureau of Land Management, along with $170 million in U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service conservation grants. And while the president’s budget is far from final — Congress ultimately controls the power of the purse — advocates say the past 100 days of Trump’s presidency have shown that the current Republican-led Congress is either unable or unwilling to stand up for public lands and wildlife protections. In fact, a House committee voted last week to begin selling off hundreds of thousands of acres of public land in Utah and Nevada. 

If Trump’s current proposals become reality, advocates warn that the West as we know it will be permanently changed, home to neglected and shrinking public land with fewer national parks, diminished fish and wildlife, and increasingly out-of-control wildfires.

“This is short-term thinking at its absolute worst,” said Walt Gasson, a fourth-generation Wyoming hunter and outdoorsman. “We are standing by letting people make decisions for us that don’t reflect our own legacy, what we want to leave for our grandkids.”

‘No more hiking, no more biking, no more grazing’

The proposed cuts to the National Park Service are some of the most alarming so far and a shocking omen for anyone that goes outdoors.

Slashing $900 million from the agency budget is the equivalent of closing 350 national park sites, said Kristen Brengel, with the National Parks Conservation Association. And, in fact, Trump’s budget calls for “transferring smaller, lesser visited parks to state and tribal governments.”

The White House cannot unilaterally sell off parks, but it can cut staffing, and that is something that has Brengel seriously worried. This year alone, the Park Service has already lost at least 2,700 employees through buyouts and deferred resignations, and she expects more layoffs soon. 

“They will make it impossible to open the parks to the public,” she said. 

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum signed an executive order in early April saying that parks and historic sites would remain fully open, but Brengel noted that this contradicts the White House’s priorities, which include shuttering those sites and transferring control of them to the states. And while Burgum promised to fully staff parks for the coming summer, many remain critically short, some still lacking superintendents and maintenance chiefs.

The White House’s proposed cuts will hit more than the parks, though: They will impact all federally owned public lands, including wildlife refuges, said Christian Hunt of Defenders of Wildlife. A leaked Department of Interior strategic plan called for national monuments to be “correctly sized” and “heritage lands and sites returned to states.”

Meanwhile, the House Natural Resources Committee voted last week to sell about 11,000 acres of public land in Nevada and Utah, at the same time requiring massive increases in timber production and coal, oil and gas extraction while deeply cutting the royalty rates companies pay to lease public lands. 

“In the dead of night, 26 members of Congress, with no debate or explanation, voted to sell off public land that belongs to all Americans,” wrote Aaron Weiss with the Center for Western Priorities. “Once these lands are gone, they’re gone forever — that means no more hiking, no more biking, no more grazing, no more habitat for wildlife.”

All the changes to public lands and public-land agencies come on top of deep cuts to scientific research. The president’s proposed budget would also probably cancel out all cooperative fish and wildlife units and focus instead on “achieving dominance” in energy and critical minerals. And some worry those cuts will come even before Congress considers the president’s recommendations; sources tell High Country News that 1,000 employees in the USGS Ecosystem Services will be laid off soon.

The scientists whose jobs are on the chopping block identify and map big game migrations and figure out the best locations for constructing the wildlife over- and underpasses that save countless human and animal lives. They monitor grizzly bear numbers and perform annual migratory bird counts to set hunting limits, said Ed Arnett, CEO of the Wildlife Society. They are critical to maintaining healthy fish and wildlife populations.

Part of a plan

To Land Tawney, all this is part of a plan to “dismantle, defund and divest” federal public lands. It’s why the president’s budget calls for consolidating all wildland firefighting operations under the Interior Department, he said, which is being managed by DOGE operative Tyler Hassen. 

“Chaotic is one word for this,” said Tawney, co-founder of American Hunters and Anglers, “but crisis is another.”

Regardless of political party, the general public does not, as a rule, support transferring national parks, historic sites or wildlife refuges to states, or reducing permit oversight on oil, gas and mining development. But if public lands are mismanaged badly enough for long enough, Tawney said, selling them off may become inevitable. And selling places like national wildlife refuges will mean no more homes for fragile — and not so fragile — fish and wildlife populations, including the Wyoming toad and Nevada pupfish.

While Tawney said this is one of the darker periods in U.S. history, he hopes that all the federal staff firings, cuts to scientific research and other efforts to devalue and sell public lands will finally galvanize anyone who cares about the outdoors and conservation. 

“I think we’re starting to coalesce around pushing back on these ill-fated ideas,” he said. “And collectively, not just the hunting and fishing community, but the entire outdoors community.”