Trump plans to offload national park sites, but states don't want them

Straits Times

5 days ago

The Trump administration may walk away from Florida's Big Cypress National Preserve and other areas that aren't among the 63 with 'national park' in their name. PHOTO: AFP
FLORIDA - Florida's Big Cypress National Preserve sprawls north from Everglades National Park over 729,000 acres of swamp, an ancient forest that protects the endangered Florida panther and the pristine waters of the Everglades – the source of drinking water for millions of south Floridians.
About 2.2 million people visited in 2024, roughly three times the number at Everglades National Park, according to National Park Service (NPS) data. The preserve and others like it are 'typically the places where the local people enjoy the most,' said Mr Neal McAliley, an environmental lawyer at Carlton Fields in Miami and a former environmental litigator at the Justice Department.
The Trump administration may walk away from Big Cypress and some other national monuments, historical parks, battlefields and protected areas that aren't among the 63 with 'national park' in their name.
The White House is proposing to cut about US$1.2 billion (S$1.54 billion) from the NPS's budget, including US$900 million from park operations, mainly by shedding sites that it considers too obscure or too local to merit federal management, transferring these to states and tribal governments. But some states with large numbers of such sites – there are roughly 370 in total – warn that they can't afford to manage and staff them, either, and that some could end up closing.
'It takes about 350 parks to wipe out in order to get US$900 million in budget savings,' said Ms Kristen Brengel, senior vice president of government affairs for the National Parks Conservation Association. 'So it's everything from battlefields to seashores, to recreation areas to monuments.'
The stakes are high: Big Cypress as well as Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, protect their regions' drinking water supplies. Park Service staff at Cape Hatteras National Seashore in North Carolina keep the sand on Outer Banks beaches in place and the islands from eroding away. Dozens of NPS locations preserve American history, from the birthplaces of Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln to Gettysburg National Military Park and the Flight 93 National Memorial in Pennsylvania.
It's not clear who wants the national park system to be trimmed, other than the White House and some conservative groups who say the plan promotes federalism.
But even some Republicans who are eager to see other federal lands developed or taken over aren't necessarily excited about breaking up the national park system.
Congress has long responded to members' requests to protect a historic site in their district by putting the NPS in charge of it, which has bloated the national park system, said representative Mike Simpson, an Idaho Republican.
But Mr Simpson warned: 'Let's not screw up the national parks because that's something the American people will never forgive us for.'
Birthplaces, battlefields scrutinised
The White House doesn't yet have a list of places to offload, although a more detailed budget for the Interior Department is expected in coming days. Asked at a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing on May 21 whether Big Cypress and other large NPS sites could be transferred, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told Bloomberg Law only that the 63 'crown jewel' national parks will be left alone.
Mr Burgum named a few possible transfer candidates: Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site in New York City, Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site in North Dakota and possibly 'a battlefield site someplace'.
Only about 25,000 people stopped by Roosevelt's birthplace in Manhattan in 2024. About 10,800 people visited Knife River Indian Villages in 2024, which puts it at number 370 on the NPS' ranking of 398 park units for which visitation statistics are kept. The park service spends less than US$2 million annually to keep each of these sites open.
Park advocates bristle at visitation numbers being used as a criterion.
'Regardless whether they're well visited or not, whether people can view it themselves or watch it on TV, they don't want to see them dismantled,' Ms Brengel said. 'These schemes to save a couple of nickels by getting rid of parks – it's unpopular.'
Republican Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma has offered Chickasaw National Recreation Area in Oklahoma as a candidate to be transferred to the Chickasaw Nation, which sold it to the federal government in 1902. Congress turned it into Platt National Park, until it stripped the park of 'crown jewel' status and changed its name in 1976.
Today, the park service spends about US$4.5 million to accommodate more than 1.5 million annual visitors at Chickasaw NRA.
Mr Cole's office said the Chickasaw Nation hasn't asked for the recreation area to be returned, but the nation's governor, Mr Bill Anoatubby, said in a statement that it's interested.
So far, though, there's little other interest in transfers.
States wary of taking on more
Many states have long been eager for Congress to designate their facilities as National Park System sites because that increases tourist traffic, boosts the economies of nearby communities and spares states the financial burden of managing those sites, said Ms K.K. Duvivier, a natural resources law professor at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law.
That's among the top reasons why Maryland, New Mexico, North Carolina and Colorado state governments say they oppose transfers.
New Mexico has 18 NPS sites at risk, including Valles Caldera National Preserve, one of the region's newest additions to the national park system. Any national park units transferred to the state would likely end up closing because it already struggles to maintain its parks with limited funding, outdated facilities and high personnel vacancy rates, said Mr Toby Velasquez, state parks director.
Maryland, which doesn't have a 'crown jewel' national park but has at least 14 other NPS sites, would step in to save them if necessary, but the federal government should continue to support them because of the tourist draw, said Mr AJ Metcalf, spokesman for the state's Department of Natural Resources. The state's NPS sites supported a total of 2,940 jobs in Maryland and generated US$344 million in economic benefits to the state, he said, citing 2022 NPS data.
'If the federal government does approve these cuts, Maryland will consider all options to obtain and manage these sites to ensure they remain open and accessible to the public,' Mr Metcalf said.
Mr Will Yeatman, senior legal fellow at the Pacific Legal Foundation, which has argued for federal land transfers in court, said more than half the Western US is under federal control. It makes sense to return some of that to the states, he said.
'In those states primarily, there is considerable political traction for policies like this,' Mr Yeatman said. 'I know Utah has passed a bill seeking the return of federal lands.'
Utah did try in 2024 to force the Interior Department to transfer 18 million acres of other federal land to it, but it hasn't asked for park service properties, said Mr Redge Johnson, executive director of the Utah Governor's Public Lands Policy Coordinating Office.
'Would we step in?' he said. 'Yeah, we'd want to make sure they stay solvent and operational. We're not actively seeking anything there.'
New legal questions
In some cases, the National Park Service was put in charge of some areas because residents didn't trust the states to manage them.
That's what happened at Big Cypress, which became the first national preserve in 1974. Congress agreed with many south Floridians that the Rhode Island-sized wetland needed to be protected from the state's plan to build what would have been the world's largest commercial airport.
Floridians 'wanted to protect it and they didn't trust the state,' Mr McAliley said. 'People wanted the Park Service because they trusted them to manage natural qualities.'
That's still true today, said Ms Eve Samples, executive director of the Friends of the Everglades.
'Every single year those of us engaged in environmental advocacy in Florida are fighting off bad bills in Tallahassee, and there's not a high degree of trust in the state legislature doing what's right for our public lands,' Ms Samples said.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican, didn't respond to requests for comment about whether state officials have discussed a possible transfer and if the state could afford it. Big Cypress's fiscal 2024 budget was about US$7.8 million.
Congress made Big Cypress a preserve, not a national park, because it wanted to allow hunting, oil and gas drilling, off-highway vehicle and swamp-buggy use, and other activities that aren't usually allowed in national parks.
Transferring the preserve to the state would open a host of legal questions, including how the federal government's duty of trust to area tribes would be handled, whether proposed wilderness areas in Big Cypress would be respected, and whether the land would be given or sold to the state, Mr McAliley said.
'If they're just going to be giving it, they'd be giving away a tremendously valuable asset,' he said. 'Then the state has to manage it. If the president is trying to cut the expenses of the park service, doesn't that assume the state is going to have to pay the money?'
'Whoever approved this,'' he said, 'this is like a meat-cleaver approach.' BLOOMBERG
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