The National Park Service (NPS) is the federal steward of America's natural wonders. It is the most popular federal agency: 76% of Americans viewed it favourably in 2024, according to Pew Research Centre, with Democrats and Republicans almost equally enthusiastic. Nearly 332m people visited the parks in 2024, a record high.
The world's first national park, Yellowstone, was established in 1872 by President Ulysses S. Grant.
The NPS has been shrinking since 2011. Its budget stood at $3.3bn before cuts proposed by Donald Trump's administration, which requested a 37% reduction. By July 2025 the service had lost nearly a quarter of its permanent employees since Trump took office, according to internal documents leaked to the National Parks Conservation Association. Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, ordered parks to remain open and said trail or campground closures must be reviewed by the department's top brass.
Trump's Department of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk, contributed to a mass exodus. DOGE deactivated hundreds of thousands of federal credit cards; smaller parks had to rely on larger ones to pay their heating bills. In at least one park, purchasing plastic bags for scientific samples requires filling out a form explaining why the purchase is "mission critical".
Congress created an "inventory and monitoring" programme in 1998, staffed by researchers in the NPS's regional offices who collect weather, climate and species data to track the parks' ecological health. These positions are among those threatened by planned cuts.
He is a man capable of turning any colour into grey.