This past June, a ranger at Yosemite’s entrance reportedly summed up the whole situation in one weary sentence: “This is the calm before the storm.” He then prepared for the Fourth of July weekend rush. Although it’s a brief moment, it accurately depicts the current state of America’s national park system. More people than ever before. fewer personnel to oversee them. Additionally, an agency discreetly went beyond what would be considered comfortable.
Approximately 323 million people visited the National Park Service’s hundreds of protected sites in 2025. As former NPS director Jonathan Jarvis has noted, that figure surpasses the total attendance of Disney theme parks, professional football, baseball, basketball, NASCAR, and soccer. There has never been a greater demand for the parks. Additionally, they have hardly ever been more tense.
Over Memorial Day weekend this year, Yosemite Valley appeared more like a mall parking lot than a wilderness destination. Videos of congested roads, packed lots, and long lines extending toward restrooms and shuttle stops were making the rounds on the internet. On shaky ground, cars were illegally parked. A few rangers made their way through the mayhem, attempting to clear roads that weren’t designed for this volume and issue citations. To make matters worse, the park had recently discontinued a reservation pilot program designed to handle precisely this kind of surge.
The story of Zion National Park in Utah is similar and has been developing for many years. Despite having just under 150,000 acres and a single, six-mile main road, the park receives over 4 million visitors a year, about the same as Yellowstone, which is almost fifteen times larger. Since their introduction in 2000 to reduce traffic, shuttle buses have long since become overcrowded. Overuse has eroded trails, making them feel less like wilderness paths and more like crowded pedestrian corridors. To board a shuttle, some hikers have to wait an hour. Before they can be emptied, trash cans overflow. The fact that park managers now use the term “greenlock”—gridlock in a natural setting—indicates how far these locations have strayed from their original intent.
The fact that an equally serious staffing crisis is colliding with the crowding crisis makes the current situation especially challenging.
Due to widespread layoffs and initiatives aimed at forcing seasoned workers into early retirement or resignation, the National Park Service has lost nearly 25% of its permanent staff positions since 2025. The effects extend beyond dimly lit visitor centers and understaffed entrance gates. The scientists who tracked the effects of climate change are no longer with us. Specialists in cultural resources have vanished. The rangers who had spent decades studying particular parks—their history, their delicate hallways, and their seasonal patterns—are no longer with us. This type of institutional knowledge is not easily recovered.
Budgetary constraints have made the issue worse in ways that are, to be honest, hard to explain to guests who paid to enter the park with the expectation that it would be operational. In fiscal year 2026, spending on park projects outside of Washington, D.C. fell by more than $850 million, or about 70% from the previous year.
In the meantime, there was an estimated $24 billion backlog of unfinished maintenance in parks across the nation that included buildings, roads, and basic utilities. The math reveals a troubling irony: while their own infrastructure deteriorates, the parks are collecting fees from record crowds and watching the money go elsewhere.
Speaking with people who have worked in or near the park system for decades gives me the impression that something is being subtly lost that won’t make a big announcement. Human waste and trampled vegetation cause gradual harm to ecosystems.
Small encounters contribute to the public’s declining trust in park employees. With funding and improved crowd control measures, such as reservation systems, increased transit, and more transparent public information regarding trail capacity, some of it might be reversed. Timed entry systems have been tried with varying degrees of success in parks like Glacier and Rocky Mountain. When there is infrastructure to support them and personnel to enforce them, these things function.
The national park concept was once dubbed America’s best by Wallace Stegner. It could still be. However, the best ideas need upkeep, and at the moment, that maintenance is lagging.
