This conversation aired in the May 15, 2025 episode of Crosscurrents.
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As summer time approaches, the busiest season for getting outside, National Parks are facing the biggest staff and budget cuts in history. The federal administration has radically reduced the workforce, leaving National Parks without a full staff to clean bathrooms, lead campfire programs, and keep bears from breaking into people’s picnic baskets. Now President Trump is proposing massive budget cuts, selling off of public lands, and even turning Alcatraz from a National Park back to a working prison.
Reporter Marissa Ortega-Welch, host of the podcast How Wild, sat down with Crosscurrents’ Sunni Khalid to share what she’s hearing from National Park rangers, biologists, and custodians about how this administration is affecting the nation’s public lands. In the short term, park staff warn of dirty bathrooms but in the long term, they worry about the lasting damage these cuts will have to the landscape.
