The vast swaths of American wilderness protected as public lands have long been treasured by travelers. Newly released data shows that US national parks welcomed a record number of visitors last year. Yet park advocates are warning that the visitor experience is now under threat. Following last month’s firing of thousands of National Park Service (NPS) and US Forest Service workers, additional proposed budget cuts from the Trump administration could terminate more than 30 leases of buildings that house National Park Service operations such as visitor centers, museums, and law enforcement offices, the Washington Post reports.
The National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), an advocacy group aimed at protecting national parks, published documents on March 3, 2025, summarizing 34 planned park lease terminations that would shutter NPS offices. "Quite simply and astonishingly, this is dismantling the National Park Service as we know it, ranger by ranger and brick by brick," Theresa Pierno, NPCA's President and CEO, said in a statement.
Among the buildings on the list are the Fairbanks Alaska Public Lands Information Center; one of two French Quarter visitor centers for New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park; the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park visitor center in downtown Seattle; and the headquarters for the Buffalo National River national park site in Harrison, Arkansas. NPCA says that if facilities like these are indeed eliminated, eight national park visitor centers and several museum collections will be left without suitable alternative locations.
The Fairbanks facility, for instance, is noted for its exhibition space and theater offering education on Alaskan culture and federal lands to millions of annual visitors, while the Buffalo National River site houses the park’s water quality testing lab and emergency services, according to the NPCA. “These closures will cripple the Park Service’s ability to operate parks safely and will mean millions of irreplaceable artifacts will be left vulnerable—or worse, lost,” Pierno says.
The US government's General Services Administration (GSA) tells Condé Nast Traveler in an emailed statement that “to the extent these terminations affect public facing facilities and/or existing tenants, we are working with our agency partners to secure suitable alternative space. In many cases this will allow us to increase space utilization and obtain improved terms."
The GSA (which published—and has since unpublished—a list of more than 400 federally owned “non-core” properties that may be sold off) expects that most of the lease terminations would occur within the timeframe of a year, the Washington Post reports.
The GSA says terminating the building leases would save taxpayers millions of dollars. But park experts say the move is notably out of sync with the parks’ increasing popularity.
“There seems to be little connection with the fact that 331 million visitors enjoyed the parks last year—a new record—and [having] open facilities and enough staff to ensure that visitors have a safe, enjoyable visit,” says Phil Francis, a former National Park Service official and current chair of the nonprofit Coalition to Protect America's National Parks. “It appears that little analysis is occurring to determine how parks can best operate.”
Park advocates say the lease terminations would only compound the fresh staffing cuts that the parks have recently faced. On February 14, the Trump administration terminated the positions of 1,000 National Park Service (NPS) workers and 2,000 more from the US Forest Service, with stated aims of cutting federal spending via government downsizing.
Helen Dhue, a 23-year-old park guide at Palo Alto Battlefield National Historical Park in Texas, was one of them. “I was gutted,” Dhue says of learning about her termination in February, while at the airport on a work trip. While she suspected her job might be vulnerable after hearing about the Forest Service layoffs, she was still hopeful that her relocation to Texas for a permanent park guide position this past August—following three previous national park roles in Virginia, Mississippi, and California—wouldn’t be in vain. “I was sobbing on a plane,” she says. “It was my dream job.”
Dhue says that with her role at Palo Alto Battlefield National Historical Park now gone, she expects there will be diminished manpower to greet guests and to put on interpretive programs.
“Between staff being fired or resigning under duress, the National Park Service has lost 9% of its staff in a matter of weeks,” Pierno said in a statement on March 3. “The park staff that remain are stretched thin. And now, the administration is making their jobs even harder. Canceling these leases and firing more than a thousand staff do nothing to make our Park Service more efficient. These moves by the administration are pushing our parks past the point of no return.”
The staffing cuts are poised to affect beloved national sites like Yosemite, Yellowstone, and Sequoia National Forest. The public lands system was largely established in the early 20th century, which today includes 63 national parks (as well as hundreds of other sites managed by the NPS), and 150-plus national forests throughout the country. As the high season of spring and summer fast approaches, park stewards say that slimmed-down staffing, combined with new lease terminations, will carry far-reaching implications for both the immediate visitor experience and long-term protection of natural resources.
Kristen Brengel, NPCA’s senior vice president of government affairs, says that, this year, park visitors “are going to have to lower their expectations and really be patient with the park staff that are still there.” She and other park experts say delayed park openings, adjusted park operating and visitor center hours, as well as decreased campground availability are all likely consequences, with park superintendents now facing tough decisions.
“If they have far fewer staff, it may be a choice between keeping a visitor center open seven days a week or running a campground,” Brengel says. The parks themselves are likely to be “a far less pleasant experience for the visitors,” predicting potential problems to include unclean bathroom facilities, overflowing trash bins, unmaintained roads and trails, longer entrance lines, and decreased park programming.
Since the firings, Yosemite has suspended its reservations system, while waits to enter the Grand Canyon’s south entrance have reportedly been twice as long. Brengel says that park closures could also ultimately be necessary, too, particularly in smaller parks with fewer staff to help absorb cutbacks. “We're concerned about the potential closure of certain parks because they simply won't have enough staff to do basic visitor services.”
A spokesperson for the NPS says the agency is “committed to upholding our responsibilities to visitors and is working with GSA to ensure facilities or alternative options will be available, as we embrace new opportunities for optimization and innovation in workforce management. As always, NPS will continue to provide critical services, deliver excellent customer service and will remain focused on ensuring that every visitor has the chance to explore and connect with the incredible, iconic spaces of our national parks.”
Park advocates caution that the workforce reduction poses public safety concerns, with reduced staff to properly manage preventative visitor safety, wildfire risk, or even search-and-rescue operations. Understaffing, they say, also makes parks vulnerable to neglect and reduced oversight on park usage, which can lead to long-term environmental damage from overcrowding, littering, and vandalism. “During one government shutdown, people were chopping down Joshua trees for firewood,” Brengel recalls.
Reuters reports that those targeted for termination were newer hires and those in new roles still in a probationary period, which was the case for Dhue; and that certain public safety positions, like firefighters and law enforcement, were being exempt from the firings. Brengel described the terminations as seemingly indiscriminate, lamenting that they spanned many essential roles, like wastewater treatment operators. “No one wants our parks to smell like a sewer over the summer,” she says.
There’s more to the story though: In addition to the firings, 7,700 seasonal park positions, which had initially been subject to the federal hiring freeze initiated on January 20, have reportedly been reinstated. Unfortunately, the hiring process is now far behind schedule with a lack in staff supervisors to train them, experts say.
“The National Park Service is hiring seasonal workers to continue enhancing the visitor experience as we embrace new opportunities for optimization and innovation in workforce management,” the NPS tells Traveler in an emailed statement. “We are focused on ensuring that every visitor has the chance to explore and connect with the incredible, iconic spaces of our national parks."
A spokesperson for the US Department of Agriculture, which oversees the US Forest Service, justified their terminations in an email to Traveler, outlining budgetary constraints and stating that the department’s head “fully supports the President’s directive to improve government, eliminate inefficiencies, and strengthen USDA’s many services to the American people.”
Francis questioned the validity of any economic gains to be made from job cuts, particularly given the parks’ importance as “economic generators for those communities that surround the parks.” National parks added some $56 billion to the US economy in 2023, inclusive of output like spending at lodging and restaurants near national parks.
Park experts like Francis say the moves are demoralizing an already understaffed and underfunded parks workforce. According to the NPCA, national park staffing was already down 20% since 2010.
“It’s pretty depressing” for park workers today, Francis says. He recounted that in the heyday of his own national parks career, “we looked forward to coming to work. We didn’t want to go home necessarily at the end of the day,” and cited the rewarding natural setting, camaraderie, and public service appeal. But, he says, “that's been pretty much destroyed because of scaring the employees . . . they never know if they might be fired.”
And the expertise that’s being lost is not easy to replace. “This was a real brain drain for the park service,” Brengel adds.
Francis advises that park-goers should be mindful when visiting this year. The workers who remain “really care about serving the American public and protecting the parks.” He adds, “You might say ‘thank you’ to those folks.”
This article has been updated with new information since its original publication date.
