A conservation group is sounding the alarm over potential steep budget cuts that could cripple operations at America’s most popular natural destinations.
The National Parks Conservation Association says Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill are mulling drastic cuts to the National Parks Service’s operating budget. The proposed spending cuts impact every part of the Department of the Interior, but the group says NPS is in for particular punishment, with a spending measure proposing a 12.5 percent NPS budget cut recently passing in the House of Representatives.
A 12.5 percent cut to NPS’s budget would mean the Park Service could be forced to operate next year with $433 million less than what it had to work with this year.
NPCA estimates that should the proposed spending cuts clear all layers of US government oversight, NPS may be forced to let up to 1,000 staff members go. The spending cut is being proposed while NPS is already struggling with record-high national park attendance rates and a lengthy backlog of needed maintenance and repair work.
“Between 2012 and 2022, visitation grew by 10 percent while staffing declined by 13 percent,” NPCA points out in a release. “Today, the Park Service has 2,600 fewer staff than in 2011. The deep and unrealistic cuts proposed in the House’s Interior appropriations bill only add insult to injury and undermine years of bipartisan progress in Congress to address park funding needs.”
The proposed steep cut to NPS’s budget is part of the House of Representatives’ 2024 spending package. The measure cleared the House last week and was moved forward for the Senate to consider. National Park Service advocates are urging the Senate to reject the proposal and send it back to the House for reconsideration.
NPCA president Theresa Pierno warns that the House’s vision for 2024 NPS spending would not only deal a harsh blow to the agency and negatively impact national park management, but it would also deal a blow to neighboring communities that rely on national park tourism for their economic survival.
“Slashing national parks’ funding won’t solve our country’s growing federal debt problem,” Pierno said. “In fact, the opposite is true. National parks drive our economy, generating billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs in local communities across the country every year.”
Aside from the House’s proposed spending cuts, the Park Service is also staring down a November 17 deadline for lawmakers to either extend or replace a spending stop-gap measure to avoid another federal government shutdown.
Lawmakers narrowly avoided a government shutdown in early October by passing a 45-day temporary spending measure. The National Park Service has already warned that another federal government shutdown over spending disputes by lawmakers would force nearly every national park and national monument in the United States to close until the impasse is resolved. Some states, such as Utah, have vowed to step in to keep some of the nation’s most popular national parks open using state dollars should lawmakers in Washington fail to avoid a government shutdown.
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