The Rio Grande, which partitions Texas from Mexico, cuts upward through the Chisos Mountains and hooks a hard left, curving into a U, before turning back and running all the way up to the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. Half a million people will visit the one thousand square miles that make up Big Bend National Park and that impactful "big bend" in the Rio Grande each year.
But visiting the park could look different this summer as national parks are dealt blows by the current presidential administration.
“Expect fewer services, less help, and fewer projects like trails or construction getting fixed,” Kristen Brengel, the senior vice president of government affairs at the National Parks Conservation Association, said to Outside. “You’ll need to lower your expectations.”
Following budget cuts, hiring freezes and layoffs, park visitors, eager to enjoy the recently emerging Texas sun rays within the valleys of Big Bend, can expect some changes. Park cleanliness could go down, and worse, emergency response times could be affected.
"These actions will hurt visitors and the parks they [traveled] to see across the United States,” said Rick Mossman, president of the Association of National Park Rangers. “If a visitor is involved in an automobile accident in Badlands National Park in South Dakota, or has their car broken into at a trailhead in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, there will be a delay in the response by a ranger to investigate, or perhaps no response at all.”
The National Park Service was established in 1916 under President Woodrow Wilson. Since then, millions of acres of American land, and the country’s most scenic natural sites and biomes, have been federally protected and preserved. The parks are American treasures visited by 325 million people each year. Maintaining the parks is an important part of protecting the country’s natural beauty.
In 2024, a $3.5 billion budget for the NPS was approved for the 2025 fiscal year. But in the first days of his current term, President Donald Trump put a freeze on all federal funding. The freeze was almost immediately struck down by a federal judge, but that didn’t take the target off the back of National Parks.
Before that ill-fated freeze, Trump halted the hiring of civilian federal employees and temporarily putting a stay on the hiring of seasonal park employees ahead of the busy season. Then on Feb. 14, the NPS laid off 1,000 employees across its 63 national parks. Those laid off included educators, rangers, ecologists, environmentalists, maintenance team members and emergency medical response staff.
Here in Texas, five of the just over 80 employees were laid off from Big Bend, including one environmental scientist responsible for monitoring air and water quality, according to The Big Bend Sentinel.
Outside Big Bend National Park in West Texas, locals protest cuts to NPS employees pic.twitter.com/Esb3QTvDTm
— Isaac Saul (@Ike_Saul) February 22, 2025
The funding and hiring freezes are said to be part of a grander scheme to reduce federal spending by the newly minted Department of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk.
“The current administration's efforts to 'make government more efficient' will result in a significant additional reduction in an already understaffed National Park Service,” said Bill Wade, the executive director of the Association of National Park Rangers, in a press release following the layoffs. “Year after year after year, park staff are serving ever-growing numbers of not only visitors, but of parks themselves. Yes, if staffing permits, there will be more parks to visit this year than last year. If staffing fails, even the most famous parks will offer less than either the people or the parks deserve.”
