Our National Parks are an American treasure. Over 323 million recreational visits are recorded annually at over 400 sites managed by the National Parks Service. In surveys, 95% of Americans place an incredibly high value on their national parks and feel they should be protected. That feeling is not shared by our current president.
Donald Trump doesn't use our national parks except for political purposes. For him, the National Parks Service budget is just another cash bucket he can dip into for his own purposes. Now the Trump administration has proposed a further 25% reduction to park operations budgets all while diverting over $90 million of what they did have for Trump vanity projects around Washington, D.C.
Trump seems to only visit National Parks when he can use them as a backdrop as he did at Mt. Rushmore. He has never visited Yosemite National Park for instance. He even called it “Yo-semites” during a White House ceremony for the Great American Outdoors Act (August 2020). He has regularly traveled to Montana and Wyoming for campaign events, political rallies, and high-dollar fund raisers, but has never set foot in Yellowstone National Park.
In addition to budget cuts to the National Parks budget, he has continued his war on the environment and our cultural heritage by opening up millions of acres within national monuments for fossil fuel exploration and drilling and hard-rock mining. He has also worked to censor climate data. If it were up to him The Badlands would be a par 4 golf course and Old Faithful would be in a water themepark called Trumpland.
I feel lucky to have visited most of our major national parks, some several times. It is a shame that this president places his own personal enrichment and glorification above the desires of the American public who value our national treasures.
[The accompanying video slideshow was made from images I have taken in various National Parks and across the U.S.]
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