Yosemite is not thriving.

Home to more than 400 species of animals, 1,500 species of plants, and roughly 4 million annual visitors, the park has stood, since President Abraham Lincoln first preserved it, as a radical idea: that some landscapes are too magnificent to belong to private individuals, and instead should be given to the nation.

Today, this legacy is at risk. Over the past six months, permanent staff at the National Park Service (NPS)—which is the agency that governs the park—have been cut by 24 percent. It’s the result of layoffs, buyouts, and a hiring freeze from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). This year, of the 8,000 seasonal positions allotted by President Donald Trump’s budget, barely 4,500 were filled by July. At the same time, the government has moved aggressively to open more public land to mining, logging, and energy extraction.

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Speak to workers, and the prognosis is alarming. In Yosemite, there is growing unease that a diminished ranger corps will struggle to manage not just the impact on wildlife, but on people. The park averages around 200 search and rescue operations per year, and many warn these lifesaving missions will soon be dangerously understaffed, and therefore slower and less effective. While emergency medical workers are technically exempt from the Trump administration’s funding cuts, staff from other divisions are generally brought in to support large emergencies—so falling head counts elsewhere will have spillover effects.

Meanwhile, Doug Burgum, the Trump-appointed Secretary of the Interior who oversees the National Park Service, seems determined to bury his head in the sand. Earlier this year, Yosemite chose not to open its campground for early reservations; with too few staff, park management decided to wait and see how many people it could welcome. Secretary Burgum had other ideas. He issued a directive requiring parks to remain fully open, placing enormous strain on a skeletal workforce.

While many rangers voice concerns about basic safety, Burgum seems focused on their cultural heritage. In May, he issued a directive requiring all 433 NPS-managed sites to post signs encouraging visitors to report any park information that tells a “negative story about the site or its history.” The impact has already been felt. At Muir Woods, in northern California, signs explaining the conservation history of the park’s redwoods—and the role played by Native Americans—were recently taken down.

Interesting. So conservation is negative? So I guess it follows that destruction is positive? And positive means good? So ideally developers should be building expensive condos all over the national parks?