From the majestic canyons of the Grand Canyon to the granite peaks of Yosemite National Park and the ancient trees of Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, US President Donald Trump has pledged to make America’s federal nature reserves “beautiful again.”
National parks make up a portion of the more than 600 million acres (243 million hectares) of U.S. public lands that span forests, deserts, waterways, and wildlife refuges.
“These include some of the most ecologically intact and biodiverse lands in the country,” said Jenny Rowland-Shea, who directs public lands policy at the Center for American Progress, a Washington-based think tank.
But critics say these landscapes are threatened by deep budget cuts and environmental rollbacks that open them up to resource extraction.
Trump’s critics: Budget cuts will make parks ‘less safe, less clean’
For example, in May 2025, the Trump administration proposed cutting nearly $1 billion (€860 million) from the National Park Service budget – park advocates warned that this cut could force the closure of hundreds of sites or sharply reduce services.
For Rowland-Shea, “the weakening of the National Park Service and its conservation mission under the guise of ‘government efficiency’ has left parks and public lands less safe, less clean, less accessible, and more crowded than ever before.”
Two months after announcing the cuts, Trump signed an executive order dedicated to “improving” the national parks. Lyrically invoking natural areas that have “inspired generations”, it also called out “land-use restrictions” that have “denied hunters, fishermen, hikers and outdoorsmen access to their public lands.”
But by presenting nature conservation measures as roadblocks, there are fears that Trump is greenlighting a major policy shift that opens up more federally managed lands to mining, drilling and logging.
US national parks remain extremely popular
Celebrated for preserving an iconic landscape, the National Park Network is often called “America’s best idea.” In 2024, the parks alone set a record with approximately 332 million visitors, who spent approximately $29 billion in nearby communities.
A November 2025 YouGov poll showed that a strong majority of Americans (69%) oppose the Trump administration’s proposed cuts to the National Park Service.
It was introduced in the Senate in January after a bipartisan budget bill rejected those cuts. Still, park advocates cautioned that since language ensuring that national parks remain public lands was removed from the bill, they are now vulnerable to potential sales.
“Protecting our national parks is a bipartisan issue,” said Theresa Pierno, then-president of the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), which organized the vote, in a statement. “No one asked for indiscriminate cuts in park staff or the destruction of our shared heritage. No one wants this.”
Millions of hectares of land opened for mining and logging
More than 40% of total U.S. public lands have long been subject to oil, gas, coal, and mineral extraction, including so-called federal mineral wealth that produces 15% and 9% of domestic oil and gas, respectively.
But Trump is now focused on “freeing up” more American energy on public lands by rolling back “ideologically motivated” regulations, including environmental and climate laws, as he said in an executive order in January 2025. This includes a proposal to eliminate the 2024 Public Lands Rule, which the Biden administration established to more evenly balance resource extraction on these lands with conservation.
“Trump’s actions are primarily aimed at weakening security,” Rowland-Shea told DW. “The value of public lands is determined by their potential resource extraction and market value.”
Citing the need to reduce “foreign dependence” on critical minerals, the Trump administration in March 2025 ordered a significant increase in domestic “mineral production” on federal lands. Large-scale areas have been identified for fast-track mining leases for “critical minerals” such as copper, uranium and gold.
The administration has opened millions of acres of public lands and waters to oil drilling and coal mining to “secure reliable energy,” while overturning rules prohibiting logging and road construction to allow “responsible” timber production and “fire prevention.”
Protected public lands vital to ‘endangered wildlife’
And this is not at all new. When Trump took office for his first term in 2017, Stephen Nash, an environmental researcher at the University of Richmond in Virginia, described how the administration immediately removed millions of acres from protected public lands, and made them available for logging and mining.
These included Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments, and the Grand Canyon Complex in southern Utah – although the Biden administration reversed this. Oil and gas leases on public lands also tripled in less than a year.
In Trump’s second term, Nash is concerned that, while historic national parks are protected from major extraction projects, “the very large portfolio of public lands” that includes national forests and wildlife preserves will be severely degraded.
“Those other public lands are even more important as habitat for our rapidly disappearing wildlife,” Nash told DW. He explained that thousands of plant and animal species will need these lands as they migrate from the extreme temperatures associated with planetary warming.
For example, scientists have noted how the return of once-endangered American bison to national parks such as Yellowstone is helping to restore the ecosystem. And until recently, such parks also contributed to educating patrons about the effects of climate disruption on the natural environment.
But echoing the removal of the word climate from government websites, in February this year the Trump administration forced Park Service staff to remove or censor displays that share scientific knowledge about climate change.
Instead, the administration focuses on “eliminating barriers” to “responsible forest management” or what conservationists like Nash call “immediate exploitation.”
“The only natural resources they respect are the ones they can extract and sell,” he said.
Edited by: Jennifer Collins and Tamsin Walker