No, Cutting the NPS Budget Won’t Fix the Deficit. Here’s Why

Imagine standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon, feeling the spray of a waterfall in Yosemite, or walking among the towering, ancient trees of Sequoia. These are our national parks, places that hold some of America’s finest beauty, history, and wildlife.

They’re essential spaces for outdoor recreation, reservoirs for cultural and environmental heritage, major tourism drivers, and places of deep meaning for millions of people around the world. Prominent novelist, historian, and environmentalist Wallace Stegner once famously called our national parks “the best idea we ever had.”

So why are politicians in Washington calling to slash their funding?

Despite their fame and near-universal appeal, the national parks have increasingly found themselves in the crosshairs of political debate. The controversy is mostly about (what else?) the budget.

Maybe you’ve heard that the National Park Service (NPS) has been overfunded for years. Perhaps people have argued to you that simply cutting the NPS budget could make a significant difference in tackling the massive national deficit.

Let’s take a breath and look at these claims critically. This article is here to cut through misconceptions, examine the actual facts about how our national parks are funded, explore their very real financial needs, and provide a clearer picture of what it truly takes to care for these irreplaceable spaces.

Myth #1: The National Park Service Is Overfunded

Let’s tackle the first myth head-on: the idea that the National Park Service has been somehow overfunded for years. While I understand the level of frustration with the federal deficit, the data just doesn’t implicate the NPS in making this situation worse.

When you actually look at the funding our parks have received over the past decade or two, it’s a picture of a budget that has, at best, only just managed to keep pace with inflation. In many years, when you factor in rising costs, the NPS’s purchasing power has effectively shrunk.

Importantly, while parks funding has remained stagnant or barely grown, the number of people visiting our parks has simultaneously soared, often reaching record highs. Parks are being asked to do more with relatively fewer resources than they had years ago.

Perhaps the most glaring piece of evidence against the “overfunded” myth is the massive and still-growing problem known as the deferred maintenance backlog. This term is the estimated cost of all the repairs and upkeep that our parks need but haven’t received because the funds simply weren’t allocated.

This includes necessary work on everything from roads and bridges to visitor centers, campgrounds, water systems, and trails — work that gets put off year after year.

The Great American Outdoors Act, enacted in 2020 during the first Trump administration, authorized funding to address deferred maintenance, but those funds are set to expire this year and the backlog isn’t even close to being resolved. It currently stands at a staggering multi-billion dollar figure, with estimates often place it upwards of $20 billion across the park system. That huge number is a direct result of chronic underinvestment.

You can see this underfunding play out in real life when you visit a park. It shows up as crumbling roads, visitor centers that are literally falling apart, campgrounds with outdated facilities that struggle to handle demand or close down altogether, leaking water pipes, eroded trails, and decaying boardwalks.

This is inconvenient, impacts visitor safety, limits access to certain areas, and hinders the park’s ability to protect the very land we go there to see. An agency with this multi-billion dollar list of essential repairs is, by definition, not overfunded.

Myth #2: National Parks Are a Luxury, Not a Necessity

Some see national parks as a “luxury” — maybe nice, but not really essential, especially when budgets get tight. This idea ignores the role these parks play as absolute powerhouses for our economy.

Every year, millions upon millions of people flock to the national parks. When they visit, they open their wallets in the towns and communities right outside the park gates, called “gateway communities.” Billions of dollars are poured into these local economies annually.

In fact, recent reports show visitor spending in these areas hitting over $26 billion in just one year. That’s money spent on hotels, gas, meals, groceries, gear, and all sorts of services.

“In 2023, 325 million park visitors spent an estimated $26.4 billion in local gateway regions while visiting National Park Service lands across the country. These expenditures supported a total of 415 thousand jobs, $19.4 billion in labor income, $32.0 billion in value added, and $55.6 billion in economic output in the national economy,” according to NPS. Much of this spending is concentrated n regions where economic opportunities might otherwise be limited.

The money the federal government puts into the National Park Service is a strategic economic investment that pays significant dividends. National parks function as crucial economic infrastructure for many regions across the country.

Thinking of them as “luxuries” ignores their reality as engines driving tourism, supporting local businesses, and creating jobs. Cutting their budgets threatens the economic health of the communities that depend on them.

National parks are far from an expendable luxury; they are, without question, an economic necessity.

Myth #3: Cutting the NPS Budget Will Significantly Reduce the National Deficit

The idea of cutting the NPS budget may sound appealing on the surface, playing into the desire to cut spending, but when you look at the actual numbers, it just doesn’t make sense.

Let’s put things in perspective. The U.S. national deficit — that’s how much more the government spends than it brings in during a single year — has recently been measured in the trillions of dollars. These are figures with twelve zeros. It is truly an almost unimaginably large amount of money.

Now, let’s look at the annual budget for the National Park Service. This is the money allocated each year to run over 400 parks, monuments, and historic sites, covering millions of acres and hosting hundreds of millions of visitors. In recent years, that budget has been in the range of roughly $3 billion to $3.5 billion. That’s billion, with nine zeros.

Comparing the NPS budget to the national deficit is like comparing a single raindrop to an ocean. The entire annual budget for the National Park Service represents a minuscule fraction of the national deficit, less than one-fifth of one percent of the total federal budget (0.002%).

Even if you completely eliminated the entire National Park Service, it would barely register as a rounding error in the context of the trillions of dollars in the deficit.

Cutting funding for our parks isn’t a serious strategy for deficit reduction. What it does do is harm the parks themselves by hindering the NPS’s ability to protect resources, maintain facilities, and provide visitor services.

Comparing the NPS budget to the national deficit is like comparing a single raindrop to an ocean.

And, as we discussed above, it impacts the local economies that rely on park tourism. Thinking we can significantly reduce the deficit by cutting park funding misunderstands the sheer scale of federal finances and ignores the economic contributions parks make. It’s simply not where the big money is.

Myth #4: Other Lands Function Without NPS Intervention, So We Don’t Need Them in the National Parks

Other public lands like National Forests or BLM lands seem to function OK without the direct intervention of the National Park Service, so maybe we don’t really need the NPS managing our national parks either. This is an idea I frequently see in response to campsite and trail closures in national parks due to understaffing. But it misses a fundamental point: not all public lands are managed with the same mission.

Yes, other agencies like the US Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management oversee vast and important landscapes. They do fantastic work providing for things like timber harvesting, grazing, energy development, and a wider range of recreational uses, often balancing multiple, sometimes competing, demands on the land. State park systems also do vital work providing recreation and conservation on a state level, with mandates that can vary widely.

The National Park Service has a unique mandate, one spelled out in its founding legislation: to preserve the natural and cultural resources and values of the park system unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations. That word, unimpaired, is key.

The NPS mission prioritizes the long-term preservation of these specific, often iconic, places above all else, while also providing for public enjoyment in a way that doesn’t compromise that preservation goal.

This distinct mission requires a specific kind of management provided by the NPS. It means focusing on in-depth scientific research specifically for preservation, implementing strict resource protection measures, developing visitor management strategies designed to minimize human impact on fragile environments, offering educational and interpretive programs that highlight conservation, and maintaining infrastructure to a standard that protects the park’s unique assets.

In short, while they want you to have a nice vacation, the goal of the NPS places the health of the landscape over your ability to experience it.

You wouldn’t get this same level of focused preservation and specific type of visitor experience if these places were managed solely under a multiple-use mandate. The NPS is necessary because it is the only agency tasked with and structured to safeguard these places according to this highest standard of preservation.

And let’s take a moment to acknowledge that national parks are often built up around some of the nation’s most desirable landscapes and landmarks. National parks experience much higher visitation than other public lands types, adding to the challenge of managing these lands. Compare the NPS’s estimated 325 million annual visitors to the national forests’ 159 million, for instance.

So, where does all this leave us?

The evidence is clear: some common claims about our national parks’ finances just don’t hold up when you look at the facts. Our National Park Service is grappling with a massive backlog of overdue repairs and critical needs while trying to manage record numbers of visitors.

National parks provide a massive economic boost to their surrounding communities. Cutting their budget won’t even make a noticeable blip on the national deficit. And, relying on other land agencies wouldn’t provide the same level of focused, “unimpaired” preservation that makes these specific places so special.

These parks are too important to be subject to budget cuts based on faulty premises. Ensuring they are well-maintained, protected, and accessible is a fundamental responsibility we hold. It takes our support, donations, and vote today to keep these doors open and these landmarks healthy.

Featured image: Photo via Katie Jackson; graphic design by Chris Helm.