Utah Parks Under Assault: Trump’s Shutdown and Sell-Offs Threaten Treasured National Parks and Public Lands, $2.6 Billion for Gateway Communities
Shutdown and Sen. Mike Lee’s Anti-Public Land Efforts Paving The Way for Trump and Burgum’s Park Fail-By-Design and Sell-Off Plan
HELENA, MT – With no end in sight to Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans’ government shutdown, the danger for Utah’s treasured national parks, and its gateway communities that depend on tourism dollars to survive, is abundantly clear and already occurring. The Trump administration is ignoring those communities in Utah and across the country, and has already begun to sell off America’s public lands to the highest bidder as part of a nationwide, systematic fail-by-design scheme by Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.
Just a few weeks ago, Burgum previewed his scheme to transfer federal public lands to states at an event with Utah Governor Spencer Cox. Burgum’s sell off push reflects Senator Mike Lee’s continued anti-public land crusade by pushing legislation to gut wilderness protections and turn public lands into highly-surveilled military zones. Burgum and Sen. Lee’s aligned, misguided plans are a precursor to selling off public lands to Trump’s monied donors for industrial development on Utah’s public lands.
“Park operations were hanging on by a thread under Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s mismanagement even before the Trump administration’s shutdown, and now they’re being pushed to their breaking point — on purpose. Every day that Trump and Doug Burgum don’t reverse course, it puts every park, visitor, park employee, and gateway community in grave danger, especially popular destinations like Zion and Bryce Canyon national parks. Public land advocates on the ground – who just a few months ago helped defeat Utah Sen. Mike Lee’s provision to sell off public lands for development – know that Trump and Burgum’s deregulation and development will endanger Utah’s beautiful landscapes, wildlife, and water, as well as communities and businesses,” said Jayson O’Neill, Save Our Parks spokesperson. “Utahns and Americans won’t stand for Trump and Secretary Burgum purposely gut punching America’s cherished national parks and the dedicated employees that care for them. Between the shutdown and draconian DOGE cuts, with even more crippling staffing reductions and funding cuts on the horizon, our nation’s parks face an intentional and manufactured fail-by-design disaster.”
Utah is home to popular national parks like Zion and Bryce Canyon, and visitors to the state contributed $2.6 billion to gateway communities in 2022. Now, not only are those communities missing out on potential revenue from visitors, entrance fees that support Utah park and historic sites operation and maintenance are going uncollected because of the shutdown.
It’s not just the attacks on Utah’s national parks that are having an impact. Analysis of court documents detailing Burgum’s plans show at least 20% of the regional support park staff will be eliminated, which is on top of the nearly 25% of park staffing cuts already carried out through Trump’s DOGE. Utah is home to over 3,000 Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, and Forest Service employees, and the state stands to lose almost 100 state BLM offices under Burgum’s scheme.
While more damage, vandalism, and mismanagement of our national parks has occurred during Trump’s shutdown, Save Our Parks published a “Parks Under Assault Map” using government data from the National Park Service to expose the cross-country devastation under Secretary Burgum from this summer. The map details the harms from previous Trump DOGE and staffing cuts to park maintenance, planning, education, visitor services, and safety response, which means that places like Zion National Park in Utah were no longer able to operate at full capacity even before the government shutdown began. Now, parks across the country are operating with completely compromised, if any, emergency response systems, putting park employees, visitors, wildlife, and gateway communities in immediate danger.
Source: National Park Service, Internal Report, July 2025.
Utah National Park Impacts Prior to Trump’s Shutdown:
Zion National Park - Due to staffing shortages, the park has less of a capacity to respond to emergencies, including medical emergencies, visitor-wildlife interactions, threats to public safety, and wildfires.
Hydration stations have reduced services that constrain visitor access when significant maintenance is required due to less frequent maintenance cycles, caused by multiple tasking of employees trying to carry out additional responsibilities of former employees.
Water systems monitoring and testing are reduced, raising public health concerns dur to multiple tasking of other employees trying to carry out their primary duties and maintain water quality.
While conflicted billionaire Interior Secretary Burgum tells Americans to just ignore his failures, Save Our Parks is asking the public to report issues at our parks and on our public lands at our tip line.
Additional background:
It’s no secret the Trump administration wanted this shutdown to nefariously fire more critical civil servants at a time when our parks are already run by skeleton crews. Trump’s “Department of Government Efficiency” chainsawed about 7,500 jobs at Interior, making up more than ten percent of its workforce and nearly 24% of the park services.
If Trump and Burgum get their wish, more crippling staffing reductions will be coming soon. Trump’s budget calls for an additional 30% funding cuts, and Burgum’s Interior Department reduction in force (RIF) plan could mean additional workforce reductions of up to 50% at some divisions and nearly 30% additional reductions at the National Park Service.
During Trump’s last government shutdown, his administration forced most parks to stay open by illegally redirecting funds, while furloughing National Park Service employees. The results? Overflowing toilets, trash spilling out of unserviced containers, vandalism, illegal off-roading and joyriding, and massive damage to our treasured resources that may never be repaired. In a letter, U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) urged Burgum to classify Interior Department employees essential during this shutdown for these very reasons: to protect our public lands and to keep Americans safe.
As Trump and Burgum repeat the same mistakes from Trump’s last GOP shutdown, they haven’t let the pain they’re inflicting on the country distract them from their campaign of mass censorship across America’s parks. Park visitors this summer were subjected to requests asking that they flag any “negative content” deemed “inappropriately disparaging to Americans past or living.” Recent investigations reveal the administration has systematically ordered the removal of signs, exhibits, and educational materials addressing slavery, Indigenous persecution, civil rights struggles, climate change, and other aspects of American history they don’t like.
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