Proposed budget cuts threaten National Park Service and tourism economy

Travel Weekly

25-05-2025

Over $1 billion in federal funding for the National Park Service (NPS) could be slashed in the proposed 2026 federal budget, in what would be the largest funding cut in the agency's history.
Advocates say tourism in and around the 433 parks and sites in the NPS system will suffer, along with the tour operators that offer national park itineraries.
The proposed budget would cut almost a third from the $3.1 billion the NPS has for fiscal year 2025. It would remove $900 million from NPS operations alone, much of it targeting sites that the budget request submitted May 2 described as not being parks "in the traditionally understood sense," suggesting that some smaller sites would be "better categorized and managed as state-level parks."
Advocates sounded the alarm.
"We worry [about] places like Flight 93, presidential birthplaces, Civil and Revolutionary War battlefields and places that preserve and teach Americans about some of the more difficult chapters of history, like Minidoka, the Japanese internment camp," said John Garder, a senior director for the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Association.
He said the NPS creates "significant economic value," with $21 in visitor spending for every $1 Congress invests.
Garder said "countless" local economies depend on park tourism from visitors spending money in "hotels, restaurants, gas stations, souvenir stores" nearby and along the way. According to the NPS, the 2023 economic output for economies around the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park near Hodgenville, Ky., was $23.4 million. The Blue Ridge Parkway generated $1.8 billion along the 469-mile Appalachian Mountains drive from Shenandoah National Park in Virginia to Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina.
The Department of the Interior already terminated 1,000 full-time NPS employees earlier this year, and Garder said its workforce has been reduced by 13% since January.
National Tour Association (NTA) president Catherine Prather said putting national parks "on the chopping block" will only further diminish the tourism economy, not only for gateway communities but for tour operators: More than 75% of NTA members operate tours in national parks.
Caleb Lawson, vice president of Sunrise Tours, which offers national parks itineraries, said the company has fielded calls from clients about the impact of NPS budget and staffing cuts. Despite the concern, he said, the tours continue to "have very strong reservation numbers."
"I'm not sure what to attribute that to, other than that we are all in a wait-and-see situation in so many ways right now," Lawson said, citing everything from park funding to tariffs.
Tauck is "cautiously optimistic about the upcoming season," a spokesperson said, adding that one product manager was recently in Yellowstone and had visited Bryce and Zion during spring break and saw no long lines or anything amiss.
"While it's still early, we've been running some of our national parks tours [for] the past several weeks now without experiencing any real issues at all," the spokesperson said.
Xanterra Travel Collection, which handles concessions and lodging in several national parks, is also the parent company of tour operators Country Walkers and VBT Bicycling Vacations, which offer park tours. Both operators have more guests booked for 2025 than they did for last year.
Todd Walton, director of marketing and sales for Xanterra's Yellowstone offerings, said the company's Yellowstone National Park Lodges have seen few cancellations this year. Guests typically book six months to one year in advance, he said, but the company is now noticing a 60- to 90-day window for bookings. Like Lawson, he attributes this to a "wait-and-see" mentality from guests.
Walton said that NPS superintendents recently shared at a meeting that Yellowstone and Grand Teton are both fully staffed for the season and that "NPS is doing a fantastic job making sure people have a great experience."
But Garder said the impact of cuts are not just what's visible to visitors.
"What's critical for people to understand is that it's not just the things they notice, like trash cans and bathrooms and visitor centers, but the work that's being done to protect those resources," he said -- for example, the monitoring of invasive species. "People may not see it, but there's damage."
Intrepid Travel's president of the Americas, Leigh Barnes, said he hopes the proposed and previous NPS budget cuts will serve as a "rallying cry" that pushes consumers and other brands to take action in support of the NPS. Intrepid expects impacts to maintenance and scheduling to be visible on its tours but is also waiting to see what happens.
The company is hoping to inspire more travel to the U.S. and its parks with a 20% discount on U.S. tours, including to 18 national parks.