Have you ever been to a national park? They’re all over the country, and a beautiful way to see nature. Some of these parks are huge. A park like Yellowstone, which is located in parts of Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana, is approximately 2.2 million acres. A fun fact about national parks services is that they are a government department, which means that they get their funding from the government.

According to the National Park Service, it costs about $3.57 billion dollars annually to run all of the parks. For years now, the National Park Service has been operating off a shoestring budget, barely enough to continue operating. But recently, parks have seen an even larger cut to funding.

Parks have also seen a gigantic loss of staff. According to the National Parks Conservation Association, since 2011, parks have been dealing with a 16% reduction in staff across all parks, while also seeing a 17% increase in visitation. These numbers don’t add up in a way that will be able to keep these beautiful nature reserves open.

Recently, though, funding for parks has gotten a lot worse. Under the Trump administration, many government cost cuts have been made. This includes the National Park Services, which has seen a massive decrease in funding. A proposal has been made, by the government, that calls for a $587 million dollar cut to their funding.

But what do these funding cuts actually do? Well, for starters, contribute to a loss of staff, which is also the largest problem that comes from these cuts. According to the National Park Service Organic Act of 1916, the government is legally mandated to keep nature preserves, which is what national parks are, protected. This doesn’t mean that they have to keep them fully funded.

If these funding cut proposals go through, the National Park Service will lose close to 1,000 staff members. But why is this important? It’s important because if parks lose staff, then that means the staff that’s still there has to do more work, almost a thousand people will be unemployed, and national parks will not be as beautiful and stunning as they are now. Don’t get me wrong though, national parks will always be beautiful, but with less staff, that piece of trash you see on the ground might stay there for a lot longer than it should.