Two Days of Pentagon Spending Could Fully Fund the National Parks for a Year
The money is there. The betrayal is in the priorities.
Just two days. That’s all it would take.
If the Department of Defense paused its spending for forty-eight hours, the money saved could fully fund the entire National Park Service for a year. Every ranger rehired. Every shuttered visitor center reopened. Every park protected, staffed, and made whole.
We spend nearly a trillion a year on the Pentagon. The National Park Service gets $3.5 billion. That’s less than half of one percent of the defense budget.
And $3.5 billion doesn’t even cover what the parks need. To actually care for the land – to clear the $12 billion maintenance backlog, to staff these places with the people they deserve, to make them safe, accessible, and enduring – we’d need closer to $8 billion. That’s still just over three days of defense spending. Three days for a full year of protection for the most extraordinary places this country still holds in common.
Instead, we let them decay. We ration access. We cut staff, cancel programs, close restrooms, and raise fees – then wonder why the trails erode and the campgrounds are booked six months in advance. We hand over more to contractors. We turn public places into private experiences.
This isn’t mismanagement. It’s policy. A slow, deliberate abandonment. A country treating war as a given and wonder as a luxury.
The numbers are simple. The failure is in what we choose to fund.
Where We’ve Been!
This week we were a bit off the grid exploring some of California’s public lands. We visited Lassen National Park, biked the Bizz Johnson Trail in Susanville, and explored the caves of Lava Beds National Park!
A Policy of Neglect
You don’t have to sell a national park to destroy it. You just have to cut its funding, lay off its rangers, and wait. That’s what Congress did this year.
In March 2025, lawmakers passed their long-delayed government funding package. Tucked inside the final bill – a $433 million cut to the National Park Service’s operating budget – the budget line that pays for rangers, trail crews, wildlife biologists, law enforcement, maintenance, interpretation, and visitor services. That one cut amounted to a 20.5% reduction in core park operations.
And they’re not done. The next budget cycle calls for even deeper cuts. Hiring freezes. Seasonal jobs eliminated. Unfilled vacancies made permanent. Restoration funds clawed back. Deferred maintenance left to rot. This isn’t belt-tightening. It’s sabotage.
On paper, these are numbers. On the ground, they are closures. They are search and rescue teams operating understaffed. They are restrooms locked in midsummer. They are roads buckling and trail washouts left untouched. They are wildlife officers working without backup. They are school groups turned away for lack of staff.
Since 2011, the Park Service has lost over 16% of its workforce, while park visitation has climbed by 17%. This latest round of cuts moves the agency from strained to gutted. Many parks are already being told to plan for operations with 20% fewer resources than last year, even as they brace for record crowds.
Behind the scenes, the deferred maintenance backlog has crossed $12 billion. That means broken sewer lines, failing bridges, collapsing historic structures, and entire visitor facilities boarded up - not because the public lost interest, but because Congress did.
That’s how you end up with five-star lodges inside national parks charging $766 a night, while the Park Service can’t afford to fix a pit toilet. That’s how you end up with Booz Allen Hamilton collecting hundreds of millions through Recreation.gov while interpretive programs disappear and ranger housing becomes uninhabitable.
They defunded it. They destabilized it. And now they’re selling the solution.
This isn’t about money. It’s about priorities. It’s about who gets to experience these places and who gets shut out.
Behind the Numbers of Our National Betrayal
The United States is not at war. There is no national emergency. No battlefront. No draft. And yet, we are still spending like we’re marching across continents.
This year, the Pentagon will receive $895 billion – nearly $2.5 billion a day. That money moves without question. No debate over whether the cost is too high. No talk of tightening belts.
Now look at what we spend to protect the places we can actually set foot on.
America’s entire federal public lands system – national parks, forests, monuments, battlefields, wildlife refuges, wilderness, rivers, etc – operates on less than 4% of the Department of Defense total. Here’s how the numbers break down:
*USFS number includes wildland fire suppression, which inflates the topline. Core land stewardship and recreation programs receive significantly less.
To fully fund every one of these agencies – repair trails, staff ranger stations, manage forests, open campgrounds, monitor endangered species, support tribal co-stewardship - we’d need about $35 billion a year.
That’s less than 4% of the Pentagon budget.
It would take just 14 days of defense spending to cover an entire year of adequate public land stewardship.
We’re not too broke to do this. We’re just not choosing to.
We fund the machinery of war in peacetime. We fund it automatically, thoughtlessly, endlessly. And we fund the land – the places we claim to love – the way you’d fund an afterthought.
Meanwhile, trails stay closed. Campgrounds stay locked. Staffing is gutted. Volunteers are left holding together what was once a government promise. And while the parks starve, private companies slither in with their pitch – let us do it. Let us run the reservations. Let us charge for the experience. Let us own what used to be held in common.
This is not budgeting. It’s abandonment. It’s a country choosing threat over beauty, and profit over public good.
What Full Funding Would Actually Do
Fourteen days of defense spending. That is the price. Here is what it would deliver.
National Park Service (from $3.5 billion to $8 billion)
Staffing restored. Thousands of rangers, maintenance crews, biologists, and educators could return to full-time roles. Parks would no longer rely on skeleton crews or seasonal workers living out of their cars.
Visitor services reopened. Boarded-up visitor centers could welcome school groups and travelers again. Ranger programs would return to parks where they have disappeared entirely.
Maintenance tackled head-on. Broken plumbing, failed roads, collapsed footbridges, and unsafe structures would be fixed rather than taped off.
Access expanded. Smaller parks and overlooked sites could finally receive basic infrastructure and staff.
Long-term benefit: A fully functional parks system that serves everyone, generates revenue for local communities, creates jobs, protects history, and operates with dignity. A system people can trust and pass down.
U.S. Forest Service (from $9 billion to $12 billion)
Recreation recovered. Campgrounds could open on time. Trails could be cleared. Lookouts and ranger stations could be staffed year-round.
Fire preparedness strengthened. More controlled burns, fuel reduction, and fire crews hired before the emergency. This would save money, ecosystems, and lives.
Science and restoration funded. The agency could stop writing plans it cannot afford to implement. Landscape-level conservation would become real again.
Long-term benefit: Healthier forests, fewer catastrophic fires, stronger rural economies, and a better experience for millions of Americans.
Bureau of Land Management (from $1.6 billion to $3 billion)
Real management capacity. Staff could be hired to monitor leases, restore land, and enforce basic protections.
Balanced access. Trails, recreation areas, and backcountry sites could be managed for both use and preservation.
Cultural protections enforced. Sacred Indigenous sites would no longer be ignored because of agency understaffing.
Long-term benefit: A land management agency that protects public resources rather than defaulting to extraction and neglect.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (from $3.8 billion to $5 billion)
Refuges staffed again. Rangers, scientists, and visitor services could return to hundreds of sites operating below minimum levels.
Species recovery accelerated. Biologists could move beyond damage control.
Wetlands and habitat conserved. Waterfowl and migratory species would have safe, connected land to return to each season.
Long-term benefit: A strong national refuge system that protects biodiversity and educates the public without collapsing under budget shortfalls.
Bureau of Indian Affairs (land management) (from $2 billion to $3 billion)
Co-stewardship honored. Tribes could manage ancestral land with actual resources behind the agreements.
Conservation jobs created. Fire crews, wildlife teams, and land stewards hired within tribal nations and led by them.
Long-term benefit: Restoration of tribal authority and investment in ecological stewardship through Indigenous leadership.
Bureau of Reclamation (from $1.9 billion to $4 billion)
Water infrastructure modernized. Aging dams, aqueducts, and canals brought into the 21st century before they fail.
Ecological restoration integrated. Water planning could finally account for habitat, fish, and long-term resilience.
Western water balanced. Instead of crisis response, we could invest in systems that prevent collapse.
Long-term benefit: A stable water future for the West built on planning, not panic.
The Bottom Line
Fully funding public lands would reverse decades of decline.
It would mean stable careers, not seasonal contracts. Clean bathrooms, not locked doors. Trails that are cleared before hikers arrive. Campgrounds that do not vanish from the map. Cultural sites protected with care, not excuses.
The parks alone return ten dollars for every dollar invested. The forests filter water. The refuges shield biodiversity. These are not luxuries. They are systems that keep the country alive.
We are not short on money. We are short on political will.
We Know What This Is
This isn’t austerity. It’s a transfer of power.
Every dollar withheld from public lands is a dollar that weakens the idea of the public altogether.
The trails close. The staff vanish. And then the companies step in offering “solutions” they helped make necessary.
Privatization doesn’t announce itself. It waits for the rot, then calls itself rescue.
And it’s happening everywhere:
Campgrounds run by concessionaires. Lodges priced for the wealthy. Wildlife “experiences” behind paywalls. Booz Allen Hamilton running your campsite reservation and skimming off the top. Interpretive work outsourced. Access managed by algorithms, not people. The public lands experience, if you can still call it that, reduced to a packaged product – optimized, monetized, and emptied out.
Meanwhile, the rangers are gone. The story of the place is gone. The idea that you have a right to be there, that this country owes you a connection to it - that’s what’s quietly being taken.
And when it’s gone, you won’t get it back.
Not with a booking code. Not with a platinum rewards card. Not at any price you can afford.
What This Tells Us
This is not about toilets. It is about priorities.
We spend nearly a trillion dollars a year on the Department of Defense. That figure moves through Congress like gravity. No emergency required. No war declared. Just a constant, unquestioned flow of public money into a system built to prepare for threats that may never come.
Meanwhile, the parks are told to wait. The forests are told to make do. The rangers are told there is no funding for their return, no housing for their season, no future in their service. The land is asked to carry on without the people who care for it.
We are not arguing against defense. We are pointing to the absurdity of the contrast. We spend $2.5 billion every day to preserve the idea of security, while gutting the systems that give people something to feel secure in.
We do not ask whether we can afford the Pentagon. We do not debate whether to fund the next fighter jet. But every year, we treat basic care for public lands as a luxury. We slash budgets for rangers, trail crews, visitor centers, and wildlife protection. Then we act surprised when the gates are locked and the system buckles.
This is not prudence. This is abandonment.
And it tells the truth more clearly than any speech.
It tells us what this country values.
It tells us what it believes must be defended, and what it quietly lets collapse.
It tells us we are willing to fund the machinery of war on principle, but not the preservation of wonder.
Not the idea of the commons.
Not the land itself.
If we truly believed this land belonged to everyone, we would treat it that way.
If we truly believed these places mattered, we would fund them with the same urgency we give to weapons and walls.
But we don’t. And that is the betrayal.
What Comes Next is a Choice
Fourteen days of spending we already do could rebuild the entire public land system in this country. Parks restored. Rangers rehired. Trails reopened. The promise renewed.
Tell your representatives to fund the land. Fully and permanently. No more delays. No more cuts. No more privatization disguised as progress.
And if this struck a nerve, share it. Send it to the people who still care. Post it. Forward it. Talk about it.
Leave a comment below. Add your voice. Say what you’ve seen in your own parks, forests, and communities.
This only changes if enough of us decide it has to.
Let’s start there.
Until next time,
Will
This is a disgrace. I think on a recent episode of The Daily Show, it was reported that National Parks actually bring in large amounts of revenue to the federal government. If parks are adding Billions to government coffers, what might the reason be for cutting their funding, drastically reducing their staffing and activating hefty fees on tourists, who wish to visit?
The answer is obvious.
Let the parks get rundown to reduce morale of the remaining staff and discourage visitors from attending. Make the public lose interest as the access to these beautiful sites becomes more restricted. The ultimate goal is to sell off these cherished and protected national treasures. The short- sighted Republican regime, in its insatiable greed, wants to monetize Millions of acres, for mineral and timber extraction. This is a crime against current and future generations. Once the natural enchantment is destroyed for profit, the damage is permanent.
From crypto coins to bibles, overseas development deals to an upcoming line of cellphones, Trump family businesses have raked in hundreds of millions of dollars since the Grifter-In-Chief’s reelection. While this administration is decimating public lands, public television, public anything and everything, according to the Associated Press, he’s welcoming an unprecedented flood of shadowy money into the Trump family coffers from billionaires, unsavory foreign governments and crypto currency tycoons. And the same political party which crucified the Biden family for Hunter’s questionable business dealings has turned a blind eye to another political family’s blatant corruption. The Republican Party is now a wholly owned subsidiary of the Trump Organization. It’s new mantra is: “Let’s Use The Public Sector To Enrich The Few At The Expense Of The Many.” The only solution to this government of, for and by the one percenters is to hold our morally bankrupt politicians accountable. We need to repudiate Republicanism - or should I say Trumpism - at the ballot box. In the meantime, we need to raise our voices in protest and let these scoundrels know that their day of judgement is coming in 2026.