President Trump wants to slash $1.2 billion from the National Park Service budget and transfer many NPS sites over to state control. The massive cuts represent a nearly 40% reduction in NPS annual funding, which most recently stood at $3.1 billion total.
“It’s nothing less than an all-out assault on America’s national parks,” said Theresa Pierno, president and CEO of the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA). “This is the most extreme, unrealistic and destructive National Park Service budget a President has ever proposed in the agency’s 109-year history.”
Trump’s budget proposal argues that some of the 433 NPS sites across the country, “receive small numbers of mostly local visitors, and are better categorized and managed as state-level parks…there is an urgent need to streamline staffing and transfer certain properties to state-level management to ensure the long-term health and sustainment of the National Park System,” Trump’s budget proposal continued.
Currently, there’s no specific list of which parks would be targeted for transfer, but the NPCA estimates that Trump’s plan would wipe out budgets and staff for at least 350 national park units, including national monuments, battlefields, memorials, and preserves. It’s not clear how any of the 63 traditional national parks, like Yellowstone, Zion, or Acadia, would be affected.
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