Protests at Glacier as national parks reel from Trump cuts: 'They've gutted staff, gutted funding'

Source: The Guardian

Fri 22 Aug 2025 09.00 EDT
Last modified on Fri 22 Aug 2025 11.29 EDT


Dozens of former rangers, park volunteers, and local residents protested at the gateway to Montana’s Glacier national park on Wednesday against the staff cuts and hiring freezes that have thrown many national parks into crisis, including Glacier. Current and former staffers and watchdog groups say the cuts have meant staff are not able to keep up the facilities and infrastructure. Some say the park has been left with inadequate infrastructure and too little staff to be able to respond to emergencies.

Although it might look to visitors like operations in Glacier are normal, “it’s like walking down a Hollywood movie set where the front looks great but there’s nothing behind it,” said Sarah Lundstrum, Glacier program manager with the National Parks Conservation Association. The protesters held signs, chanted and waved at tourists during a visit to the park from the Congressional Western Caucus.

Hosted by the Montana Republican congressman and former interior secretary Ryan Zinke, the caucus came to the park to showcase the success of the 2020 Great American Outdoors Act, which secured federal funding for protection and maintenance of public lands. Montana’s Republican senator Steve Daines championed that bill during Donald Trump’s first term, calling it “the greatest conservation win for Montana and the entire country in 50 years”. In May, Daines introduced the America the Beautiful Act to extend federal funding for projects to address crucial maintenance backlogs.

But congressional support for funding projects in national parks comes at a jarring disconnect with the Trump administration’s slashing of jobs at national parks countrywide, including at Glacier, where an already overworked staff has been left with little to no bandwidth to implement projects. No congressional Republicans, including Daines or Zinke, have spoken up against the cuts and freezes, and all voted for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that rescinded $276m from the National Park Service (NPS).

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/22/montana-glacier-national-park-trump-cuts