As the National Park Service ramps up for a busy summer season, the Trump administration is proposing cutting hundreds of millions of dollars from park budgets while diverting billions to beautification projects in the Washington D.C. area.
The Trump administration’s 2027 budget proposal seeks to reduce NPS’ funding for park operations by more than 25 percent — a reduction of around $736 million, according to the National Parks Conservation Association. Meanwhile, the administration recently offered a $17.4 million no-bid contract to a company to restore two fountains in Lafayette Square in Washington D.C. This was $12 million more than what the projects were estimated to have cost, according to a recent investigation by the New York Times.
The financial redirect comes at a time when the National Park Service’s 433 parks and historical sites are languishing among severe budget and staff cuts already enacted, and as the agency struggles to keep up with a massive deferred maintenance backlog. For park advocates, it’s another sign of the administration prioritizing D.C. aesthetics over the country’s natural and cultural resources, says Kristen Brengel, a longtime national park policy expert whose office overlooks the recently repaired fountains.
Read Next: The President’s Budget Proposal Slashes BLM Staff, Refuge and Migratory Bird Funding, and Much More
“The reality is, here in Washington DC, these fountains are lovely and part of an experience when you come here. Does that need to be expedited and funded to the highest degree? Right now? Is that the highest priority? No,” Brengel says. “It’s more about vanity than protecting park resources.”
Questionable Contracts
While national park advocates acknowledge that many sites in the nation’s capital should be fixed and maintained, they question not just the prioritization but also the lack of transparency.
According to the Times investigation, the Interior Department gave the $17.4 million no-bid contract to a company called Clark Construction to fix the fountains quickly in time for the country’s 250th anniversary celebrations. But a 2022 construction bid listed the project’s estimated cost at $3.3 million. Interior officials justified the increased cost by citing inflation and a short timeline. They also said the construction company was one of the only ones qualified for the job.
Clark Construction is the same company hired by the Trump Administration to complete the controversial $400 million White House ballroom that the president says will be paid for by private donors.
The money for the fountain repairs, however, likely came from a pot collected through national park visitor fees and earmarked for critical projects around the nation’s parks. Those include everything from building trails and other infrastructure to habitat restoration and educational programming. Advocates welcome an administration interested in investing in repairing parks, says John Garder, a senior director of budget and appropriations with the National Parks Conservation Association. But he and others question how those investments are being made.
“There is a significant lack of transparency about all of these projects,” he says. “It would be inappropriate, to say the least, to direct the fee dollars to large, new construction projects. That is not what the money was intended for.”
What’s Going On with the National Park Service?
The NPS should be faring better than it is. Visitation rates are at historic highs at many of the flagship parks. Public opinion polls show general love for the country’s parks and other national treasures. And after years of neglect, the Great American Outdoors Act, signed and touted in 2020 by President Trump during his first term, offered $1.3 billion per year for five years for deferred maintenance as well as to improve “opportunities for recreation, education and enjoyment for current and future visitors,” according to the National Park Service. That money, along with the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, were part of a “concerted effort to address extensive maintenance and repair backlog in national parks.”
According to Garder, it “was money our parks need and much bigger than [what] fee dollars could provide by an economy of scale.”
For years parks took advantage of those big pots of money. But over the course of 2025, new investments stalled while the Department of Government Efficiency hacked away at staff. The loss of people through deferred resignations has been so severe, in fact, that the total amount of full-time staff at national parks is down 24 percent. And that’s on the heels of losing 2,000 positions between 2011 and 2024 due to insufficient funding from Congress.
That means fewer people manning visitor stations and fee stations, and fewer people working on maintenance issues. It also means fewer biologists, archeologists, air quality specialists, and other experts.
At the same time, the Department of Interior has prioritized boosting visitation. Most parks stayed open during the 43-day government shutdown last fall, though no one manned fee booths to collect money from visitors. Interior also ended timed entry at Arches National Park and will no longer require advanced reservations at Glacier and Yosemite national parks, both flagship parks for the NPS.
Then, on April 3, the White House announced its 2027 proposed budget calling for a 72 percent cut to the NPS’ general construction budget while establishing a $10 billion slush fund for a new “Presidential Capital Stewardship Program in order to carry out priority construction and rehabilitation projects in the Washington, D.C. area.” The proposed budget also calls for cutting another 3,000 permanent NPS staff.
What This Could Mean for Fish and Wildlife
Hunting and fishing aren’t often touted as priorities for our national parks, but hunting is allowed in 76 properties the NPS manages, and fishing is allowed on 213 of them. And even if hunters aren’t chasing wildlife in the parks themselves, many of these protected areas offer crucial habitat for game species, says Bill Wade, executive director of the Association of National Park Rangers, who spent his early life and career working in and eventually supervising various national park units.
“Wildlife and fish don’t recognize the boundaries of national parks, so anything that occurs that can have some impact on whether or not wildlife can navigate in and out of parks is an issue,” Wade says.
Which means that when the Department of Interior cuts research positions, the impact will reverberate far beyond the boundaries of our national parks. Healthy habitat and thriving fish and wildlife populations need management from seasoned biologists, Wade says. They also need experts monitoring air and water quality. And if the department wants to increase visitation, it also needs to focus resources on improving park infrastructure through all the park sites.
Read Next: Interior Department Plans to Open All Its Public Land to Hunting and Fishing — Unless Specifically Closed by Site Managers
“The best thing the administration can do for our national parks,” Garder says, “is to retract their draconian budget, rehire the thousands of people they pressured to leave, and push for both the staffing and the repair money that can restore parks not only in our nation’s capital, but throughout the country.”
Read the full article here
