Public lands access and funding is more important than ever
2024 saw record-breaking visitation to America’s national parks, with more than 331 million visitors to parks across the country, surpassing a previous record of 330 million set in 2016. Yet despite their popularity, funding to support America’s parks and public lands has not kept pace with their maintenance needs, causing necessary infrastructure repairs to be indefinitely deferred. Insufficient funding has resulted in a significant maintenance backlog across all land management agencies, amounting to tens of billions of dollars. From the skyrocketing cost of fighting wildfires to record-level park visitation, increased investment in our public land management agencies is critical to providing a positive and safe visitor experience as well as protecting the integrity of cherished public lands and their resources, including the species that depend on these areas for survival.
Since the start of the second Trump administration in January 2025, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) operatives have taken over the management of America’s parks and public lands in pursuit of drastically cutting land management agency budgets and personnel, further hampering their ability to effectively protect and manage America’s parks and public lands. Since mid-February, thousands of land management agency workers, including park rangers and firefighters, have either been fired or forced to accept resignation or early retirement offers in response to DOGE’s indiscriminate and cruel cost-cutting measures, representing a loss of hundreds of years of institutional knowledge and expertise.
In addition, President Donald Trump’s 2026 budget request to Congress proposes cutting at least $5.1 billion from the Interior department and U.S. Forest Service budgets, to be achieved by disposing of National Park Service sites, eliminating protections for national monuments, and putting all federal wildland firefighters under the Control of a DOGE operative with no firefighting expertise. According to the 2025 Colorado College State of the Rockies Project Conservation in the West poll, three-quarters of Western voters—including bipartisan majorities—are opposed to reducing funding to land management agencies. More than two-thirds (69 percent) of self-identified MAGA voters oppose funding reductions for these federal agencies as well.
America’s parks and public lands are key economic drivers for communities across the country, and attacks on these treasured public lands are an attack on the local economies that depend on access to nearby public lands for survival.
Learn more:
Economic Impact of National Parks – Headwaters Economics
2025 Conservation in the West Poll – Colorado College State of the Rockies Project