The risk of losing a national Treasure

       I spent four summers right before and during college working either in or right outside the entrances of our national parks. At 18, a new high school graduate, I pumped gas at Flagg Ranch, located a few miles south of Yellowstone National Park and just north of the Grand Tetons. At 19 and 21, I worked as a bellhop and desk clerk at Grand Lake Lodge, on the western slope of Rocky Mountain National Park. And at 20, I worked at Many Glacier Hotel in the heart of Glacier National Park, rotating between day and night shifts as a desk clerk and night watchman.

      These were life-shaping experiences.

      For one thing, in 1968 in Colorado, I met the girl who would become my wife of nearly 54 years. During these summers I also climbed the Grand Teton and rafted on the Snake River in Wyoming, climbed Longs Peak and Snowmass Mountain in the high Colorado range and hiked miles of trails on multi-day treks in Glacier, making noise in wooded areas to let the bear know we were coming. There were steak rides, mini-golf soirees, poker games and trips to Frontier Days and the Calgary Stampede, rodeos where cowboys would hone their craft and show their skills.

      But what has stayed with me most so many decades later is the natural beauty of the parks, their lakes, forests, pristine streams and snow-covered mountains, all under big western skies that seem to stretch forever.

      Sadly, America’s National Parks are endangered these days, in part because of growing crowds and the ravages of climate change, but most starkly because of accelerating cuts in the National Park Service staff and maintenance budgets. As NPR noted in a story a few days ago “as visitors flock to [the] parks, deep cuts leave rangers and wildlife at risk.”

      The National Park system has been around since 1916. Today there are 63 National Parks and 423 National Park sites, which include the parks, national monuments, battlefields and other designated locations. In 2024, a record 331.9 million individuals visited these sites in aggregate, the largest number ever, according to the National Park Service.

      Despite this, the Trump Administration has proposed a 30-percent cut in the National Park budgets. By May 22, according to an article by the National Park Conservation Association, the park service already has shed 13 percent of its staff under the Trump Administration as a result of “pressured buyouts, deferred resignations and early retirements,”. Then, the House version of Trump’s big budget bill cast the parks “into even further crisis,” the Conservation Association reported.

      Now, as the Senate version of the same budget bill enters its home stretch, it is not a question of whether, but how deep, cuts will be. Trump, the association writes, has proposed an additional $1 billion cut in the National Park Service budget in 2026—even though visitors to the parks contributed $55 billion to the U.S. economy in 2023 alone.

      These cuts are potentially so catastrophic that even some Republican senators from western states are squirming, The Hill reports. One is Steve Daines, senator from Montana. Daines, who is up for re-election in 2026, told The Hill that he wants “to make sure [the parks are] adequately funded.”

      The question is, what’s adequate? There has been no indication that either Daines or other western Republicans intend to cast a nay vote when Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” comes up for passage, possibly any day.

      Nor will cuts stop within the parks. The administration also proposes to sell as much as three million acres of federally managed public land outside the parks over the next five years. These, too, are treasured by fishermen, hunters, campers and hikers.

      But it is the National Park sites that are the true gems of this country’s natural beauty. In a June 3 article, the National Parks Conservation Association noted the devastation they are facing.

· The administration’s proposed $1 billion National Park Service cut, if enacted, “would be the largest cut in the agency’s 109-year history,” the association notes.

· The administration has moved to scale back efforts to preserve the environment within the parks. One example is the reversal of a move to phase out the sale of single-use plastics in the parks.

· The Trump Administration, since taking office, has fixated on rewriting American history to sharply reduce if not wipe out the role non-white and non-male Americans played in our history, going so far as to remove words like “black” and “female” from web pages across the government.

      Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in mid-May issued a secretarial order and timeline for National Park Service and other Interior staff to review, identify and remove, “images, descriptions, depictions, messages, narratives or other information (content) that inappropriately disparages Americans past or living (including persons living in colonial times).”

      Just what that means presumably will be determined by this administration.

      I haven’t been back to the National Parks in the Rockies since my wife, daughters and I celebrated our 25th anniversary at Grand Lake Lodge, where we met and worked 57 and 55 years ago. We stopped there on a cross-country train trip from the Bay Area to Boston and back. Once again, we found ourselves driving over Trail Ridge Road, traversing the pass over the Continental Divide.

      I couldn’t help but think back on the half-dozen times my new girlfriend that first summer drove me over this treacherous 48-mile road between Grand Lake and Estes Park so I could visit a foot specialist. After my appointments, we’d often have pizza, take in a drive-in movie and make the long drive back to catch a few hours sleep before work at 6 a.m.

      It was the start of a romance that’s still unfolding.