Doug Burgum Plans To Kill National Park Visitors This Summer

National Parks are being set up to fail-by-design, in order to justify their sale

Contractors in Glacier National Park have started clearing snow from Going-to-the-Sun Road. It’s a symbolic sign that national parks and other public lands are beginning to gear up for summer visitors. And not only is that happening weeks earlier than usual due to a freakishly warm, dry winter out West, but as people start to return we’re going to begin witnessing the impacts of Republican attempts to starve these places out of existence.

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This story idea comes from Matthew Carriker, who dug into national park visitation numbers and remarked that, while down three percent from the all-time high in 2024, the number of people who visited national parks last year was higher than 2016, the previous record year.

And while that number will absolutely fall this summer due to high fuel prices, it still sets up an interesting problem: the workforce tasked with keeping national park visitors safe is down 24 percent compared to 2024. At the same time, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum’s order that all trails, features and attractions in national parks must remain open unless he personally approves their closure remains in effect.

But we learned all that last April. What’s changed? Winter. Even though it was a warm and dry one out West, the opposite was true back East, and a season full of wind and freeze-thaw cycles is still going to have had significant impacts on both natural and manmade features across the national park system.

2024 already brought a $46 million cut to the budget NPS has for major repair projects. The last time it was tallied, the maintenance backlog in our parks stood in excess of $24 billion. Parks went without maintenance during the record 43-day shutdown last October and November, so many will not have performed necessary winter preparations. Fewer staff were on hand during the winter to keep up with maintenance.

Just on trails, that means ledges will have eroded, rockfalls and landslides will have occurred, and there will, of course, be thousands of trees down everywhere.

Let’s compare just those trail hazards to the ways in which visitors die accidentally in national parks, which come predominantly from falls and drownings, two things that are not necessarily unrelated.

Fatality causation factors in national parks. Graphic: NPS

Last year, remaining national park staff put in heroic efforts to hold everything together. This year, with conditions compounded by both winter and reduced maintenance? An already superhuman effort is going to be harder.

This is relevant because the administration’s seven-step plan to achieve its stated goal of privatizing national parks expressly requires a very public “failure” of the visitor protection system in order to justify its argument that the private sector can more effectively manage our nation’s natural wonders. And what better evidence of that “failure” than a series of high-profile, easily preventable deaths? Or better: one big, tragic accident that takes the lives of multiple visitors at once. That’d represent the entire manufactured argument, all summed up in headlines and outrage spread nationwide.

It’s the tried-and-true fail-by-design playbook that’s been used by Republicans to justify the privatization of public services for decades, just here accelerated into a two-year timeline.

Why so fast? The mid-terms are approaching, and once that new Congress is sworn in, with Democrats likely taking control of at least the House of Representatives (assuming we have free and fair elections), that co-equal branch of government will again begin to perform its oversight duties, and there will be the kind of investigations and impeachments necessary to hold this lawless administration accountable. If park operations are to be transferred to private operators, or if units are going to be sold off entirely, then that will need to occur by the end of this year.

Burgum need not necessarily hope for falls and drownings. Rangers have two jobs in national parks: protect visitors, sure, but they’re also there to protect our natural resources from those visitors. And with the lack of snowpack, the deadfall, and the reduced efforts to mitigate fuel loads, all of this is also building towards a surety of devastating wildfire.

Last year already saw the loss of the historic Grand Canyon Lodge to a huge fire. If this summer brings the destruction of more historic landmarks or natural features, or if all the fire activity just bankrupts the agencies tasked with fire suppression, then the administration could put that forward as an argument for privatization as well.

Polling ahead of the mid-terms is starting to look like this November might bring an historic wipeout for the Republican legislators enabling this type of anti-American activity, despite math that sees fewer Republican legislators competing for contested office. But while that represents hope for the future, on public lands at least, things are going to get worse before they get better.

Top photo: NPS

A journalist with more than two decades of experience working around the world, Wes Siler is here to cut through the outrage and disinformation to bring you the factual, insightful, actionable reporting you need to understand what’s going on. Upgrading to a paid subscription supports this reporting, and buys personal access to Wes, who will help you save money on gear, and prepare for real life.