6 Worst Things That Happened to National Parks Last Month

After a disastrous first 100 days that targeted National Park Service staff, threatened conservation rules and attempted to rewrite our nation’s history, the Trump administration made new and deeply concerning announcements in May.

If enacted, these harmful policies could impact national parks for generations. You can read a full tracking of actions taken against the Park Service since Jan. 20, 2025, in our online administrative tracker.

Parks are already stretched thin, and the pressure only grows now that many parks are in peak visitation season. Many of them are applying a Band-Aid approach, forced to stay open and accessible under a recent secretarial order, even as they remain dangerously underfunded and understaffed. Department of the Interior’s own workforce database shows 16.5% fewer employees than in fiscal year 2023 and 39% fewer seasonal employees than in fiscal year 2023.

Without urgent action to restore staffing and resources, our parks — and the people who protect them — could be pushed to the breaking point.

1. Gutting the National Park Service budget

The Trump administration’s 2026 budget plan, released May 2, would gut the National Park Service, jeopardizing the protection, maintenance and operation of the country’s more than 430 national parks. The administration’s budget calls for cutting more than $1 billion from the National Park Service — if enacted, it would be the largest cut in the agency’s 109-year history.

Cuts of this magnitude would devastate our national parks, further pushing them into a financial hole. NPCA calculates a budget reduction of this magnitude equates to the loss of at least 350 park sites, which the administration proposes unloading onto states.

NPCA President and CEO Theresa Pierno said the budget proposal “strikes at the heart of who we are as a nation.” In a press release, she added, “Americans love their national parks and want to see them protected, but this administration’s actions do not match the will of the people. This administration is trying to dismantle the Park Service from the inside out.”

2. Threatening how our history is told

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum issued Secretarial Order 3431 in mid-May, which instructs the bureaus under the Department of the Interior, including the National Park Service, to post signage at all sites that request visitors to identify and report “any signs or other information that are negative about either past or living Americans.” The order implements provisions in President Trump’s “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” executive order.

Burgum’s order sets timelines for land management bureaus to review, identify and remove, “images, descriptions, depictions, messages, narratives or other information (content) that inappropriately disparages Americans past or living (including persons living in colonial times), or, with respect to content describing natural features, that emphasizes matters unrelated to the beauty, abundance, or grandeur of said natural feature.”

Asking visitors to report negative information at park sites established to tell America’s complex history “sets a dangerous precedent of prioritizing nostalgia over truth at our parks” and could have a “chilling effect on rangers just trying to do their jobs,” Pierno said in a press release. “When the Trump administration tries to rewrite American history, it is the American people who will suffer most.”

3. Supporting single-use plastics

For years, NPCA and other groups advocated for eliminating the sale and distribution of single-use plastics in parks — such as food and beverage containers, bottles, straws, cups, cutlery and disposable plastic bags designed to be used once and thrown away — because plastic pollution kills birds and wildlife, negatively impacts water quality and makes its way into the oceans. NPCA supported the Biden administration’s June 2022 order to phase out all single-use plastics on Department of the Interior-managed lands by 2032.

Sec. Doug Burgum reversed that order May 20, citing operational and logistical challenges.

However, as NPCA points out, “Some concessioners at parks like Yosemite have eliminated the use of single-use plastics already — it can be done. The lessons we learn from our parks can serve as best practices and be leveraged to reduce plastic pollution more broadly,” said NPCA’s Sarah Gaines Barmeyer, deputy vice president for conservation programs, in a press release.

Burgum’s decision also runs counter to an NPCA wildlife poll that found most Americans (82%) believe reducing or eliminating the sale of single-use plastics in national parks helps protect marine wildlife, and that nearly all Americans (92%) support reducing water pollution to better protect marine wildlife.

4. Cutting funding that protects parks and public health

On May 7, The New York Times reported the Trump administration was taking steps to cut dozens of National Park Service grants, totaling $26 million, that safeguard the health of national parks and the public. The list includes federal funding for water quality research, archaeological monitoring, Tribal stewardship and more.

NPCA believes such action would weaken conservation efforts across the National Park System.

“The National Park Service has long been a leader in environmental science, with deep expertise in areas like water and air quality, erosion control, ecologic health, biology and so much more,” Kristen Brengel, NPCA’s senior vice president of government affairs, said in a press release. “Park staff have stretched every grant dollar to deliver outsized results that have greatly benefited parks and communities across the country.”

5. Decimating the Alaska regional office

Alaska’s 24 national parks protect 54 million acres of land — ranging from remote wilderness to popular cruise ship voyage paths. Sixty percent of all land protected by the National Park Service is in the state of Alaska, which makes the Park Service’s Alaska Regional Office essential for park operations.

Since May 2, this regional office has lost an estimated one-third of its staff, the most of any regional support office so far, as the Trump administration has transferred more than 1,600 national park staff from regional offices and park sites and reclassified them solely as Department of the Interior employees.

From Gates of the Arctic to Glacier Bay, Alaska’s national parkland creates a dream destination for people around the world and generates a $5.6 billion outdoor economy. “People who visit those parks expect a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Visitors cannot have that experience if these stunning, irreplaceable places do not have the staff to protect them,” Alex Johnson, NPCA’s Alaska campaign director, said in a press release.

The Alaska Regional Office is one of seven regional offices that provide vital oversight and expertise to the park units within those geographic areas. Threats to close other regional offices continue.

6. Advancing the reckless ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’

Amid national parks’ peak visitation and ongoing staffing crisis, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the controversial One Big Beautiful Bill Act May 22. It claws back promised Inflation Reduction Act funding for essential national park staffing and greenlights mining development in Voyageurs National Park’s watershed, among other reductions in government spending and extensions of tax cuts.

Fortunately, thanks to thousands of park advocates speaking up, the House’s final version of the bill did not include a provision that would have forced approval of the Ambler industrial mining road through Gates of the Arctic National Preserve in Northwest Alaska, or provisions that would have transferred thousands of acres of public lands in Utah and Nevada to counties and other local entities, which could have auctioned off the lands to the highest bidder without any public process, environmental review or community engagement.

“Rather than provide support for our overwhelmed park staff, Congress is pushing a bill that will only make matters worse for Americans who not only love their public lands, but pay taxpayer dollars to ensure their protection and care,” NPCA’s Daniel Hart, director of clean energy and climate policy, said in a press release.

The bill is now in the hands of the U.S. Senate, which has the power to amend the legislation or write a new bill that does not include damaging anti-park provisions.

“NPCA will not stop fighting. Congress committed this funding for our national parks, and they owe it to the public to follow through,” Hart said.

Kyle Groetzinger, Angela Gonzales, Lam Ho and Alison Heis contributed to this report.