Since a surge in visits during the COVID-19 pandemic, the many sites comprising the U.S. National Park System remain a top vacation attraction for millions of domestic and international tourists. Great Smoky Mountains National Park tops the list, averaging over 11 million visitors each year.
But overall, visits to national parks in 2025 (the most year for which data has been collected) are down 2.7%, according to the U.S. National Park Service. Among the factors are higher fees entrance fees, including a $100 per person fee for international visitors that the Trump administration introduced this year, and natural disasters such as wildfires that have closed some sites like Grand Canyon National Park and Glacier National Park.
To understand the state of the National Park System today, and how Americans feel about these conserved, recreational spaces, HKS spoke to Linda Bilmes, the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and the author of Valuing the US National Parks and Programs: America's Best Investment.
Will Shafroth MPA1991, former CEO of the National Park Foundation, joined Bilmes in the conversation. Both share a deep passion and concern for the park system.
Bilmes’ views are formed by her years on the bipartisan National Parks Conservation Association “Second Century” Commission and nearly 10 years on the National Park System Advisory Board. “I focus on the funding and financing issues around the national parks,” she says.
Shafroth’s perspective comes from the philanthropic support he sees through organizations such as the National Park Foundation and others. “There are 450 friends groups and other park partners that wake up every day and think about how they can make our parks better, how the land can be better protected, the wildlife better stewarded, and how the history and culture better interpreted,” he says.
The following conversation was lightly edited for length and clarity.
Q: From each of your viewpoints, how is the National Park System doing?
Shafroth: My sense is that the state of the national parks continues to be great. During COVID, people had a realization about the importance of being outdoors, and the single most important system of lands in the outdoors is our national parks. There are 433 places that are managed and stewarded for the enjoyment of people from all over the world.
It’s an affirmation of how important these institutions are in our society that we see not only in the number of people who visit but also in the amount of money that is contributed by organizations that support national parks. That broad system of organizations is helping to fill in some gaps where government funding has fallen short.
Bilmes: I worked on a number of studies with John Loomis, from Colorado State University, and other resource economists to study how people value our national parks. These were not polls but technical “willingness to pay” surveys. We found that the public would pay $92 billion ($122 billion in today’s dollars) not to lose the parks and their programs. That’s 30 times greater than the annual federal funding for the National Park Service, which is about $3 billion per year. More than 95% of the public says that they value the National Parks Service and its programs—even if they don’t visit themselves. They place a value of simply protecting these special places, and on being able to have the option to visit them for themselves and their families and future generations. Over 81% of the population said they would pay higher taxes to support the parks, again, regardless of their political affiliation. We found no statistical difference between Republicans, Democrats, and Independents in terms of how much they support the Park Service or the value they attribute to it.
Q: How are the parks funded?
Bilmes: Wearing my budget professor cap, my sense is that the entire structure of how national parks are funded needs to be reformed. The mission of the parks is to protect these areas for the public forever, but the majority of the parks funding is based on annual discretionary appropriations from Congress. So there is a basic mismatch between paying for something on a one-year operational cycle to protect it in perpetuity.
“My sense is that the entire structure of how national parks are funded needs to be reformed.”
Thanks in part to Will’s efforts with the National Park Foundation, there is some additional capacity to create more long-term funding from the private sector and a lasting endowment, but there is no real capital budget, so the parks depend on annual appropriations for operations and maintenance. This has led to a multi-billion-dollar backlog of deferred maintenance. I have testified before Congress that the National Park Service should have at least a 2-year budget instead of a 1-year budget to avoid all the time and effort of going back to Congress every year. Creating the right budgetary structure for a system, given its mission and how little controversy there is around it—and the bipartisan support—just seems to be the right thing to do.
Shafroth: In some parks, the fees have been increased, as they are from time to time, and those generate additional funds. Generally, 80% of the fees collected stay in the park with 20% going back to Washington for distribution more widely across the system. There are limitations on how those funds can be used.
I don’t disagree with Linda that we need to improve the way that national parks are funded by the federal government. And I will add that the ecosystem of organizations that support parks has adapted to the less-than-optimal way the budgetary resources are allocated. When I went back to HKS for my reunion in May, I really appreciated the way Dean Weinstein noted that the government, private sectors, and nonprofit sectors are viewed differently now. Each feel like an equal leg of that three-legged stool.
Land trusts, environmental education groups, and trail groups are helping to provide the continuity of support to the park service. It’s not perfect, but there has been an adaptation by these nonprofit organizations working in partnership with the National Park Service to help.
And volunteerism is an important part of keeping people involved. Chip Jenkins, the superintendent of Grand Teton National Park, was a guest lecturer of a course I teach at the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at UC Santa Barbara. He said while there are 275 employees at Grand Teton, there are almost 3,000 people who work in the park every day as guides, interpreters and the like. That’s a huge number of people supporting the park in various ways.
Q: What should the role of government be via the National Park System, and can philanthropy really make a difference?
Bilmes: Philanthropy is essential and wonderful, but it can’t replace public funding. The current administration is failing to protect and pay for the national parks, but it is not the first government to do so. The 2026 National Parks budget was 16% lower than it was ten years ago and it has declined nearly every year in inflation-adjusted dollars at the same time that the number of visitors has increased overall and the parks have added more properties.
Our research shows that the public would overwhelmingly rather spend a fraction of the billions dedicated to the defense budget on the national parks. In terms of how much these places mean to the public, the value of caring for them and maintaining them is not very expensive. In my book, we call national parks “America’s best investment,” and I still think that is an appropriate phrase.
“It’s an affirmation of how important these institutions are in our society that we see not only in the number of people who visit, but also in the amount of money that is contributed by organizations that support national parks.”
Through DOGE’s actions at the start of the administration, the National Park Service lost between 20 and 25% of its staff. The National Park Service is a lean organization to begin with, so losing that percentage of the workforce is hard. It is also hard to find volunteers who have the knowledge and science to support the parks—someone who has studied the Civil War and knows the Antietam National Battlefield, for example. Visitors want someone who knows about Antietam to lead those tours and educate their kids.
Shafroth: I agree with Linda that it’s the people who are the heart and soul of the National Park Service. One issue that has plagued employees is affordable housing, especially in some of the most popular parks. People working in Yellowstone, for example, used to be able to live in nearby Gardiner, Montana, until real estate prices soared. Now many drive an hour to get to work.
The National Park Foundation and many local friends groups have gotten into the business of helping the Park Service expand housing in and around the parks through acquisition, restoration, and enhancement, or in some cases, building new structures. In 2024, the foundation landed a $47.5 million grant from a private donor to build 72 units around Yellowstone, which was an amazing gift.
It is what I see as a nexus of what Linda meant about the importance of keeping knowledgeable, experienced people in their jobs, while giving them an affordable place to live.
Bilmes: The most significant finding of our study was the overwhelming love that 95% of the public feels for historical sites and even for remote places like the Alaskan wilderness which they may never visit. The government needs to protect the National Park lands. Again, on a bipartisan basis, people are unhappy with opening park land and national forests to drilling, mining, and other commercial interests. The issue at Big Bend, where the government has appropriated $46 billion to construct the border wall through the park, has become a flashpoint for people in both parties. Just this week, a proposal this administration drafted giving a portion of Yosemite National Park to a private developer has conservationists and federal officials alarmed.
Shafroth: “As in many things, I feel there are cycles with national parks—and we are in one of them. That said, the parks are forever. They are going to endure, but they have to adapt and change. For instance, climate change has forced us to adapt the way the public interacts with many parks. And there continue to be new discoveries and new places to be added the Park Service, like the Blackwell School, the site in Texas focusing on the history of education for Mexican American children, which became a national park in 2025.
Q: Do you have a favorite national park?
Bilmes: When I was on the National Park System Advisory Board, I fell in love with the Kenai Fjords National Park in Alaska. The wildlife you can see, and the extraordinary scenery, put it at the top of my list. I saw 13 bears in my first two days there.
Shafroth: Well, that’s like asking me which of my children do I like best. Point Reyes National Seashore has always been on my list; the Grand Canyon joined the list after a two-week rafting trip.
The most impactful park I’ve visited is Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site, just outside of Little Rock, Arkansas. When I saw that place and walked the steps with Minnijean Brown, one of the Little Rock Nine, I was struck with how important national parks are for the preserving and telling of our history—hard history and fun history.
National parks are transformative. There is nothing else like them.
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Photography by Jim West/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images.
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