US national parks are being forced to stay open despite operating on a "bare-bones" crew after cuts to staff and funding. Rangers say they can't sustain it.
From the towering sandstone canyons in Zion, to the Rocky Mountain ranges at Grand Teton and the bubbling, rainbow geysers at Yellowstone — there's a reason millions flock to America's national parks every year, including 726,000 Australians in 2024 alone.
Famously coined "America's best idea" by Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist and environmentalist Wallace Stegner, the parks are "absolutely American, absolutely democratic … they reflect us at our best rather than our worst", he wrote.
But what happens when the "best" of America starts to fall apart?
Valentine's Day 'massacre'
To the untrained eye, Yosemite National Park hasn't changed a bit.
Neither has Glacier National Park, the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone National Park and America's other 59 national parks and 433 park units spanning 85 million acres.
But just six months into the Trump administration, the parks are dangerously understaffed and dangerously underfunded, all the while being forced by the government to remain open.
At least 1,000 probationary NPS workers were abruptly dismissed in February in what is known as the "Valentine's Day massacre" — part of US President Donald Trump and Elon Musk's DOGE efforts to shrink the federal government workforce.
An additional approximately 3,400 people from the US Forest Service (USFS), who were responsible for the preservation and health of America's forests and grasslands in conjunction with the NPS, were also fired.
Weeks later, a court ordered their reinstatement, but the damage had already begun.
[map of US national parks]Since January 2025, the NPS has lost 24 per cent of its permanent staff — 4,000 people — according to a report in July from watchdog-advocacy group National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), a "staggering reduction" that has left parks across the country "scrambling to operate with bare-bones crews" during peak visitation.
The Trump administration has initiated the most damaging budget cuts in Park Service history: in May, he proposed cutting more than $US1 billion ($1.5 billion) from the Park Service budget in fiscal 2026, stating there was an "urgent need to streamline staff".
His "Big Beautiful Bill" gutted the $US267 million of previously committed funding for staffing, and the NPS is set to take another $US176 million cut in budget for the 2026 fiscal year.
There are fewer rangers to educate and protect the public, slower emergency response times, reduced hours at visitor centres, delayed maintenance and conservation of the parks, and more strain on already overburdened staff who remain, according to the report.
Kristen Brengel, senior vice-president of government affairs at the NPCA, told the ABC that thousands of Park Service staff have been pushed out since January.
The losses were driven by an ongoing hiring freeze delaying seasonal hiring, terminations, early retirement buyouts, deferred resignations and pressured buyouts like the administration's "Fork in the Road" — an email sent to over 2 million federal employees by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) offering staff their full salary until September 2025 if they resigned.
And it's not sustainable, Ms Brengel said.
"They may have to close down some of the parks because they just don't have enough staff," she said.
"Park superintendents across the country are saying we can't do this long-term.
"We can't have this few staff, it's not going to be good for parks, especially with visitation so high."
The NPS recorded its highest summer visitor numbers on record in 2024, with a record-breaking 331.9 million recreation visits, according to data released in March.
[map tracking visitation]Yellowstone National Park reported that May was its busiest on record with 566,363 recreational visits, an 8 per cent increase from a year ago and a nearly 20 per cent increase from May 2021.
Australian travellers were among the top five visiting US national parks, accounting for 726,000 recreational visits across the country in 2024, according to new figures from the US National Travel and Tourism Office (NTTO).
"So many stories are told through our national parks," Ms Brengel said.
"Our national identity is wrapped in them."
Even while slashing budgets, the Trump administration is pushing for parks to stay open.
In April this year, Security of Interior Doug Burgum — a billionaire with ties to the oil and gas industry whose pick promoted backlash from environmental advocacy groups — ordered all parks to remain "open and accessible" and to ensure that the NPS provided "the best customer service experience for all visitors".
But past and present park rangers, advocacy groups and experts say the decisions across the past six months have left staff morale at an all-time low and devastated the agency's ability to ensure visitor safety, deliver basic services and protect park resources.
Alex Wild, a park ranger of 13 years who lost his job in the Valentines Day Massacre, said to imagine the park as a "human body" that had sustained a "major injury".
"It's doing what is called compensation, where it works extra hard to maintain basic functions," said Mr Wild, who was reinstated as Wilderness Park Ranger at Yosemite National Park in March.
"You can only sustain that for so long before things start to fall apart."
Becoming 'almost impossible' to do the job
Phil Francis was earning $US1.65 an hour at a textile mill in 1972 when a friend working as a seasonal ranger in the NPS encouraged him to apply to become a park ranger.
"After a summer of giving programmes, hiking trails and interacting with the public, I sort of fell in love with it," he said, going on to serve for 41 years in the NPS as a ranger and superintendent in parks across the country, including Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Yosemite, Shenandoah and Kings Mountain National Military Park.
He said park staff had "a great mission and a great purpose".
"As they say, our breath starts turning green because we love the job so much."
The NPS staff have "an array of responsibilities to protect and preserve", says Mr Francis, who serves as the executive council chair of the Coalition to Protect America's National Parks after retiring in 2013.
"Whether it's maintenance of parks, design of buildings, law enforcement responsibilities, administrative responsibilities or safety of employees and visitors — we need the whole team to be present," he said.
"And when you're trying to do it with fewer and fewer people, it becomes almost impossible to do the same job we once were able to do."
At the time Mr Wild was fired, he was the park's only EMT (Emergency Medical Technician).
"I honestly can't imagine how the parks will operate without my position, I mean, they just can't," he said.
Mr Francis said park employees had saved people's lives with their training and commitment.
"So, it's a political decision to try and keep the public happy, but they're also putting the parks and the public at risk," he said.
He warned the effects were already beginning to manifest: beaches left unpatrolled, interpretive programming reduced, historic buildings shut down, campgrounds closed and higher-graded staff being redirected.
"National parks cannot properly function at the staffing levels this administration has reduced them to," said NPCA's president and CEO, Theresa Pierno.
"And it's only getting worse."
Staff stretched thin
The secretary of the interior pledged in February to add nearly 8,000 additional seasonal positions to the NPS, but halfway through the summer, only about 4,500 have been filled.
It came too little, too late, says Ms Brengel, accusing the secretary of the interior of "band-aiding the situation".
She said that the order from Mr Burgum to keep the parks open, combined with the seasonal hiring process beginning too late, meant that staff were being pulled from their specialised projects.
"So instead of trail maintenance or revegetation, staff are being placed on visitor centres because they don't have enough people," she said.
It also means law enforcement staff are being moved to work in the visitor centre and forgoing other functions, she added.
Mr Francis also pointed to the dangers of losing the more experienced park rangers.
"Everybody is trying to be an asset — but it's not the same as someone who's been working there for 20 years."
The NPCA said the loss of older rangers to early retirement buyouts represented "not just a staffing shortage, but also the loss of decades of institutional knowledge and specialised experience".
Impact on economy and tourists
America's National Park System exists as less than one-fifteenth of 1 per cent of the federal budget — despite contributing over $US55 billion to the nation's economy.
The local economy in Utah had grown from "frozen burritos at the gas station" to a world-class food and dining economy that relied on the millions of tourists who streamed into the parks every year, Ms Brengel said.
"Even the smallest park unit in America benefits the gateway community, the community just outside of it," she said.
"If the visitation ever comes down, even in the next year or so, it would hurt so many people's business model," she added.
"The price to pay for making bad decisions on the parks is pretty high."
In July, Mr Trump signed an executive order called Making America Beautiful Again by Improving Our National Parks, calling on the NPS to charge foreign visitors an increased entrance fee.
According to the order, the price hikes will only occur in parks that already charge admission, which is only about 100 of the 433 park units across the country.
"The increased fee revenue from foreign tourists will raise hundreds of millions for conservation projects that improve our national parks," the White House wrote.
Mr Francis said the fees wouldn't be enough to compensate for cuts to staffing and budget, though he wasn't opposed to the idea as long as it didn't turn off visitors.
"Parks are for everyone," he said.
Those with green breath can't look away
Ms Brengel said that current staffing levels could not be maintained.
"We can get away with it for this summer, but people will start to notice by next summer," she said.
And while many would turn and run from such a problem, those with "green breath" can't look away.
Protests have broken out across the country, while advocacy groups and rangers alike — dubbed Park Protectors —say Congress needs to "step in to reject these ideas of both understaffing and underfunding the parks".
On August 23, Park Protectors across the country will take part in a nationwide one-day event organised by the NPCA, which they say will be a "national moment to show love for our parks and demand accountability for the devastating impacts threatening them".
"Something nature has taught me resonates in this moment: creatures together accomplish what lone ones can't," said Mr Wild.
"Sequoias join roots to support each other; herds of bison protect their young by encircling them; geese migrate in flocks with a shared direction and purpose; and it takes all types of creatures to complete an ecosystem, not just the strongest or most abundant."
