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On a crisp, sunny morning at the end of June, dappled light filtered through the canopy of an ancient grove of giant sequoias, casting a tranquil backdrop for a mule deer as it ambled across the trail. Families from around the world gazed up at the towering trees in awe, speaking in hushed tones and different languages.

Experiences like these draw more than 4 million people to Yosemite national park each year. But as an increasing number of visitors come to take in the dramatic vistas, camp under the stars or feel the mist cascading off its thundering waterfalls, Yosemite’s landscapes are being pushed to their limits.

“This is the calm before the storm,” a ranger at Yosemite’s entrance said with a sigh, bracing for a surge in crowds expected for the Fourth of July weekend.

The signs of strain have been visible this summer, after the park withdrew a pilot reservation system during peak summer months to manage heavy crowds. Videos shared online from Yosemite Valley over Memorial Day weekend showed traffic jams, filled parking lots and throngs of people waiting in long lines for bathrooms and buses. Vehicles were left illegally parked on delicate areas as a limited number of staff and rangers tried to cite offenders and clear the narrow roadways.

This weekend, hundreds of thousands more will pour into national parks across the country to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the US, looking to connect with nature and experience part of the nation’s shared heritage. “There is nothing so American as our national parks,” Franklin D Roosevelt said during a 1934 radio address, championing how the mountains, glaciers, lakes and trees had been pulled from “private exploitation”.

But as the US memorializes its history, the hundreds of places safeguarded by the National Park Service (NPS) face an uncertain future.

Protections and federal support for parks have eroded under the Trump administration, which has cut millions of dollars from the NPS budget and slashed staffing levels. Overcrowding in nature areas has threatened ecosystems and increased hazards for visitors, while extreme conditions fueled by the climate crisis create more dangers for the landscapes and those who love them.

Park advocates, experts and staff who work on the frontline have warned that the US’s “best idea” – in the words of the author and conservationist Wallace Stegner – is simultaneously more popular and more at risk than perhaps ever before.

“It is a troubling time,” said Jonathan Jarvis, a former NPS director who served under the Obama administration and who first joined the NPS in 1976, when the US was celebrating its bicentennial.

The threats extend beyond the park system’s physical resources. The president has also presided over a culture of censorship that has severely restricted park service employees from communicating with the public. Climate-focused information pages have gone offline and historical exhibits have been pulled down or changed. The stories of Indigenous nations that lived on US lands before they were colonized have been erased, the contributions of people of color and women from park history softened, and the ugliness of slavery and racism ignored.

“This has undermined the trust that the American people have had in the park system to tell the American story truthfully,” Jarvis said. “That’s going to be hard to rebuild.”

Access versus preservation

The national park system’s popularity has grown alongside these challenges. Roughly 323m visits were recorded in 2025, a number larger than the attendance for professional football, baseball, basketball, Nascar, soccer and Disney theme parks combined, according to Jarvis. NPS is one of the few agencies beloved across party lines.

Established in 1916, the NPS has always struggled to balance the dualities of its mission: to “preserve unimpaired” the natural and cultural resources, and make them available for “the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations”. But the long-debated divergence between access and preservation has been brought into sharper focus as visitation surges, and commercial interests are weighed alongside conservation.

“The national park system has broad support from the American people and they vote with their feet,” Jarvis said, adding that a series of tools – including reservation systems, transportation and clear public information – is key to managing the excitement that officials have encouraged over the years. Erosion in funding and staffing at parks, Jarvis said, has added more strain.

Due to mass firings and programs designed to incentivize permanent staffers to retire or resign, NPS has lost close to 25% of its permanent staff positions since 2025. The impact is most visible in darkened visitor centers or in ever-growing lines at entrances, but behind the scenes, parks have also lost scientists studying the impacts of the climate crisis, experts who protect precious cultural resources and knowledgeable and experienced rangers who facilitate both education and safety.

“There has been a whole series of stress tests on the employees of the national parks,” said Bill Wade, the spokesperson for the non-profit Association of National Park Rangers, describing how the lost capacity has exacerbated problems for parks that were already short-staffed and underfunded.

Since last October, when fiscal year 2026 began, there’s been a roughly 70% drop in spending on park projects outside Washington DC, an $854m decrease from the previous year, according to an investigation by the Atlantic. Roughly $235m of that total was pulled from parks in the Pacific west region, which includes Yosemite.

At the same time, spending on the national capital region has soared by more than 92% in the last year, as more than $100m in fees collected at parks across the country were spent on the president’s favored projects. . Reportedly, the US’s 250th birthday celebrations were pointed to as one reason for the reinvestment.

Requests for comment from the Department of Interior and the National Park System went unanswered.

Meanwhile, roughly $24bn in repairs were still needed across the park system for “roads, buildings, utility systems, and other structures and facilities” at the end of the last fiscal year, according to publicly available estimates provided by the NPS.

Still, pressure to expand public access has only increased. The most popular parks are pushed to the brink.

“We don’t have the capacity, parking or staff wise, to deal with the amount of visitors we get,” a Yosemite staffer said in a recent survey conducted by the union representing park employees to collect feedback on the decision to rescind the reservation system. The vast majority of responders condemned the move and said it would affect their working conditions.

There are fears that with fewer rangers and more visitors, the risks of more tragedies will rise. The recent death of 22-year-old Josue Baires Alfaro, who was swept over Yosemite’s Nevada Fall in June, is still under investigation. The parks were directed by the interior department to stop notifying the public about injuries and fatalities.

Experts, including conservation leader and author Beth Pratt, whose recent book showcased the 150 species that call Yosemite home, have also raised concerns about the devastating effect overcrowding has had on ecosystems.

“These are the last best places for wildlife,” Pratt said, pointing to shrinking habitats and the deepening biodiversity crisis. Her research has shown a direct correlation between rises in visitation and bear deaths. Even on a less-busy day, small animals were struck by cars on one of the roads that wind through the park. Several chipmunks and two skunks were left on the pavement where they died. A dead bobcat was unceremoniously dragged onto the shoulder.

“If we keep going down this road of not being willing to put some limits so that these special places stay preserved, we’re just not going to have them anymore,” Pratt said. “I fear that by the 500th anniversary, Yosemite will just be Half Dome and a parking lot – devoid of life.”

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has used the parks in an attempt to reframe the country’s complicated history. Dozens of exhibits have been removed from national park sites, in a move a federal judge ruled was an attempt “to rewrite the Nation’s history with a white-out pen”.

In a 63-page decision issued on 12 June, the US district judge Angel Kelley of Massachusetts ordered that the materials be restored before the Fourth of July. The administration appealed and it’s unclear what will be on display during the celebrations.

“It’s a seemingly unending pattern of adding insult to injury,” said John Garder, the senior director of budget and appropriations for the non-profit National Parks Conservation Association. “As our country approaches its 250th anniversary, an occasion that prominently places our national parks in our nationwide conversation, the Department of the Interior is treating our treasures like anything but ‘America’s best idea’.”

‘We need these places’

There are still many areas in Yosemite where it’s easy to forget the simmering crisis.

On the weekend before the Fourth of July, Tony Wilson was finishing a hike on the Tuolumne Grove trail. He had traveled from Australia with friends and family, undeterred even after the Trump administration raised the rates for non-residents this year. It cost $250 to get in and his group couldn’t score a campsite within the park. Still, Wilson said, “It’s the most beautiful, peaceful, bizarrely kind of sculpted landscape I’ve ever seen.”

Even in the face of an uncertain future, these landmarks remain the nation’s cathedrals, Jarvis said, and a reminder of the country’s aspirational framework. The formation of the National Parks System ensured that special places would not only be owned by royalty or by the wealthy. “People of all ethnicities, and socioeconomic statuses, and religions, can stand side by side at the rim of the Grand Canyon and they can recognize that they are the owners,” Jarvis said.

That’s why he believes the parks will get through a challenging chapter. “We need these places to remind us of who we are and the commitments we made in the constitution – and that we’re not there yet,” he added. “But it’s the work towards those goals. That’s the key.”