Treasures
2025
Treasures, American treasures so rich in so many ways.
It’s hard to imagine how we have failed to protect them.
And yet, as a nation, we continue to shortchange, skimp and abuse our National Parks.
As Americans, aside from our Constitution and our Bill of Rights, there’s probably nothing we should protect with such immutable intensity as our National Parks.
But we don’t.
This isn’t all about Trump and it’s not all about Biden. It’s about all of us. How, as a nation, as citizens, we have allowed politicians, lobbyists and bureaucrats to deprive our National Parks of the funding they need.
It’s been happening for at least a decade but our negligence is now picking up steam.
Our hands are dirty and our neglect becomes more evident with each passing year.
Our hearts break when we learn that staffing in the parks has been cut by 24% this year alone. More than 90 parks report serious problems.
One of these problems… park employees who used to collect visitor entrance fees have been fired. Millions of dollars in revenue have been lost. More than three quarters of this money goes toward maintaining park buildings, trails and campgrounds.
How’s that for smaller, more efficient government?
Visitor centers have cut hours. Campgrounds have closed.
Phil Francis is the chair of the Coalition To Protect America’s National Parks. He says…
“Some of the impacts of the staff cuts are visible to the public, but many are not yet. And all of this is only going to get worse.”
There is no permanent leadership, no director of the National Park Service.
(Jessica Bowron is the current acting director, yet to be confirmed.)
For Americans who want to help and do something to protect our treasures, opportunities to volunteer are drying up. At least one National Park can’t hire a staff person to train and manage volunteers.
It’s all a mess, an avoidable mess, shameful and entirely on our shoulders. We allow Washington, no matter which party is in power, to treat our treasures with disdain.
Of everything we as Americans have imagined, created and built since 1776, does anything rival our National Parks?
