Watching the current administration eviscerate staffing and budgets in the National Park Service has horrified and sickened those of us who have spent years working in our parks. These short-sighted decisions pose a grave threat to the Outer Cape’s economy, environment, and quality of life.
I worked for the National Park Service for nearly 40 years, starting as a field ranger and ending as a park superintendent. The mantra “We must do more with less” was a constant reminder that financial resources were limited. We learned to squeeze a nickel’s worth of value out of every penny. But despite generally bipartisan support for the NPS budget in Congress, there was never enough funding to carry out all the responsibilities we’d been given.
In the Cape Cod National Seashore, we struggled with the dozens of formerly occupied homes that the government purchased when the park was established and then never had the funds to either use or remove. As they became attractive nuisances and fire hazards, they affected property values and prevented restoration of natural habitat.
Triage was a daily exercise, as we decided which maintenance projects had to wait for another season, whether we could save money by removing trash cans from the beaches, and which interpretive programs we would not offer because we didn’t have enough seasonal employees. The threats to the Park Service’s budget in the upcoming appropriations process make a dire situation worse.
The buyouts and forced retirements of thousands of NPS employees were supposed to save money. So was drastically reducing hiring for the summer high season. Overall, the NPS has lost nearly one in four permanent employees. The National Seashore opened the season with 20 vacancies in its 68 permanent positions. Visitors have noticed and commented on the fact that volunteers are managing and staffing evening programs that park employees used to run. Add to that the current deferred maintenance needs at the Seashore of $93 million.
Meanwhile, use of the National Seashore remains at record high levels, with close to four million visitors a year. Yet the Trump administration is proposing more draconian budget cuts of as much as $1.2 billion for fiscal 2026. Thousands more employees could be lost, and some parks might have to be closed entirely.
To stifle the public outcry about the effects of these cuts, the administration ordered that public facilities such as visitor centers and restrooms be kept open and tidy. And, at the 11th hour, someone realized that failing to fill lifeguard positions would be the height of irresponsibility. That’s the good news, but the tradeoff has been risks to critical care for natural and cultural resources and the ability of the NPS to fulfill its mission to protect these places for future generations.
If saving money is really the goal, cutting the NPS makes no sense. Every dollar spent by the Park Service generates about 10 dollars in economic benefits, supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs in surrounding communities. Last year, national parks contributed $55.6 billion to the nation’s economy. The Cape Cod National Seashore’s contribution to that was $730 million.
Equally upsetting are efforts to force the parks to scrub their interpretive materials of anything that might show our nation’s history in a less-than-heroic light. Parks all over the country, including the National Seashore, now have mandatory signs asking visitors to report any critical reference to American history. At the Stonewall National Monument in New York City, references to TQ history were removed along with the bios of two transgender women leaders.
Our 433 national parks chronicle our growth as a nation. They should be a source of insight and inspiration. Cutting staff, denying history, shutting down resource programs, disinvesting in preservation and natural resources, and potentially closing parks will leave our country and future generations much poorer.
Maria Burks served for nine years as superintendent of the Cape Cod National Seashore. She lives in Wellfleet.
