How the Trump Administration’s 2026 Budget Request Could Affect National Parks
Analysis shows that up to 350 National Park Service sites could be lost.
The Trump administration’s Fiscal Year 2026 Budget Request, which was published on May 2, 2025, contains countless cuts to numerous government departments, agencies, services, and programs. This includes the Department of the Interior (DOI) and the National Park Service (NPS).
Specifically, the document calls for a massive $900 million cut to the budget for the “Operation of the National Park System,” along with a number of other cuts affecting the National Park Service.
If approved by Congress, it would be the largest budget cut in the 109-year history of the Park Service.
At the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), President and CEO Theresa Pierno called it “the most extreme, unrealistic and destructive National Park Service budget a President has ever proposed in the agency’s 109-year history. It’s nothing less than an all-out assault on America’s national parks.”
The description in the FY 2026 Budget Request that goes with those unprecedented budget cuts is as follows:
“The National Park Service (NPS) responsibilities include a large number of sites that are not “National Parks,” in the traditionally understood sense, many of which receive small numbers of mostly local visitors, and are better categorized and managed as State-level parks. The Budget would continue supporting many national treasures, but 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.”
There are a few different things going on in that statement, so let’s break it down. Let’s take a facts-based look at what this would actually mean to the National Park System.
In order to do that, I downloaded federal funding, visitation, and economic impact reports from the NPS and compiled all the data in one sprawling spreadsheet.
In total, I ended up with 339 NPS units that have reliable data on funding, visitation and economic impact. The data dates from 2023, which is the latest year for which those statistics have been published by the federal government (in the National Park Service’s Visitor Spending Effects Report and the Interior Department’s FY 2025 Budget Justification).
It’s also worth noting that several of those 339 “units” are consolidated units, meaning that they consist of two or more individual units that are funded and managed collectively. So, those 339 units actually represent many more individual units.
Additionally, I should mention that a number of NPS units do not collect or report these statistics and are, as such, excluded from the overview.
What Would a $900 Million Cut to National Park System Operations Mean?
One of my earliest and, to be honest, most striking conclusions was that many National Park Service units actually don’t get all that much federal funding. Approximately half of those 339 units (163 to be precise) receive less than $2 million of federal funding per year.
So what would have to happen to cut $900 million from the “Operations of the National Park System” budget?
NPS Units Ranked By Federal Funding
Let’s look at the lowest-funded NPS units and add up their annual federal funding until we get to $900 million.
How many park budgets would have to be eliminated to end up with $900 million of “savings?”
Based on the Interior Department’s own FY 2025 Budget Justification report, a total of no fewer than 310 of the lowest-funded NPS units would have to lose their annual funding to get to $900 million.
Shockingly, this would include iconic parks like Acadia, Death Valley, Dry Tortugas, Badlands, Crater Lake, Arches, and Joshua Tree, as well as units with other designations, such as Pearl Harbor, Santa Monica Mountains, Chaco Culture, and even Mount Rushmore.
Put differently, out of those 339 park units that have comprehensive data available, only 29 would survive these cuts.
Considering that some of those units are actually groups of individual parks, the grand total of individual park budgets to be eliminated is actually closer to 350.
This was reported earlier by the National Parks Conservation Association and National Parks Traveler, and my own calculations—which, again, are based on official federal government data—back this up.
This PDF file shows all NPS units (in red) that will need to be eliminated in order to cut $900 million from the NPS budget (ranked by annual federal funding).
NPS Units Ranked By Economic ROI
Of course, there are many ways to get to $900 million in budget cuts. So, let’s try a different way.
Let’s sort all the park units by ROI (which is their annual economic output divided by their annual federal funding) and see which of the lowest-ROI parks will need to lose their funding.
With this approach, we’d actually be able to keep more park units and get to that proposed $900 million. This would eliminate the budgets of the least “profitable” park units.
So, which less “profitable” park units would be on the figurative chopping block?
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