a day ago
- Politics
- Condé Nast Traveler
Visiting a National Park This Summer? Here's What to Expect
It's an unusual time for our national parks. I've seen it first hand. On a sunny spring day in Colorado, I walked down Rocky Mountain's Park Entrance Road with a protest sign as a barrage of car horns honked and drivers cheered in solidarity. Along with roughly 700 other concerned citizens, I spent the afternoon marching and chanting catchphrases like 'hands off our parks' and 'parks not profits.' The mood was energizing. And though the national parks had been all over the news for budget cuts and staffing shortages, if you could look past the commotion of the protest, the park's trails and visitor center seemed… normal.
While it's true that the country's beloved parks are currently operating with about half of their expected seasonal staff and are bracing for massive budget cuts under the current administration, it's also true that Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has gone to great lengths to maintain the façade that National Park Service (NPS) sites are doing just fine, even going so far as ordering them to stay open without enough staff to properly do so. As a result, important scientific research and services are being neglected behind the scenes so that visitors during the busy summer season don't notice the fallout from the dismantling of the current organization of the NPS. We may not see the negative effects of NPS cuts for months.
'We sometimes forget (that) managing a place like Yellowstone or Rocky Mountain or Yosemite is like running a city,' says Michelle Uberuaga, a Senior Program Manager for the National Parks Conservation Association. 'In addition to service and public-facing roles, these skilled Americans perform roles like wastewater management, IT, wildfire prevention, species and ecosystem recovery, and beyond.'
How Your National Park Trip Could Change Under Trump
Park advocates say staff layoffs and building lease terminations could have far-reaching implications for both the visitor experience and the protection of natural resources.
Still, if you look closely, it's possible to see the strain already facing top national parks. Carlsbad Caverns has temporarily suspended many of its ranger-guided cave tours. Denali has announced that it's forgoing its popular youth camps for the entirety of 2025. Since May 2, the Park Service's Alaska Regional Office has lost about one-third of its staff, the most of any support facility so far, just as an estimated 2.6 million visitors stream in during the summer high season.
'They're going to have no choice but to reduce services,' says Sheridan Steele, former superintendent of Acadia National Park and Black Canyon of the Gunnison. 'That could mean anything from dirty restrooms to emergency calls that are not answered swiftly… That could actually mean health and safety issues for visitors. It could mean fatalities.'
