Public Lands Advocates Fear for Colorado’s National Parks

This story by Lindsey Toomer appeared on Colorado Newsline on May 28, 2025.

After the 2013 Colorado floods devastated communities surrounding Rocky Mountain National Park, locals worked tirelessly to get their businesses back up and running in time for the peak fall season.

The federal government shut down for about two weeks shortly after the flood, but U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat who was governor at the time, said Colorado agreed to pay the salaries for every employee in Rocky Mountain National Park, so the park could still open to visitors.

“That’s the way the state government, the federal government used to work together around public lands, and I think it’s worth revisiting that it was a team effort, that everyone was on the same page,” Hickenlooper said. “The businesses desperately needed that retail period to be open to maximize the largest influx of visitors’ to Estes Park, and we got it.”

That spirit of cooperation is a far cry from the threatened cuts to National Park Service staff and funding under President Donald Trump’s administration, Hickenlooper and other public lands advocates said in Estes Park Wednesday. Hickenlooper and U.S. House Assistant Minority Leader Joe Neguse, a Lafayette Democrat, called on Congress and Trump to reverse the cuts and maintain protections for the country’s public lands.

Former Rocky Mountain National Park Superintendent Darla Sidles said national parks have historically “always enjoyed bipartisan support,” and that she’s “never seen anything like we’re seeing today” in terms of threats to public lands and national parks.

“National parks aren’t blue. National parks are not red. National parks are for everyone. They transcend political boundaries,” Sidles said. “The idea of preserving a nation’s historical, natural, and cultural heritage and making these places accessible to all has always united people across all the political spectrums.”

While public lands have survived budget cuts in the past, Sidles said current staff cuts overwhelm those still working at the parks, who then have to pick up responsibilities from two to three other positions to make up for the staff who left and cannot be replaced due to the hiring freeze. Safety concerns arise, too, when the staff who remain pick up responsibilities they’ve never had before.

Tracy Coppola, Colorado senior program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association, said Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum has ordered park managers to keep trails, campgrounds and visitors open and operating “even when they believe it’s unmanageable.” She said that makes clear that “protecting parks is no longer the priority, but protecting appearances is.”  She and Sidles said existing park staff will do everything they can to give park visitors the best experience despite their continued struggles.

“Depending where you are this year, it might look OK. It might seem OK. It’s hard to tell, but I want to emphasize that that is a facade,” Coppola said. “Under the surface, the administration is forcing a skeleton crew to cobble together basic visitor services, and it’s clear that the administration is prioritizing appearances over park resource protection and visitor safety.”

The uncertainty of whether NPS staff will continue to have a job is causing “an incredible amount of stress and anxiety” among staff, Sidles said, as many live in the national parks they work at and could therefore lose their housing, too. Trump’s budget proposal calls for a $1.2 billion decrease in the NPS budget, which she said equates to about 40% of the agency’s funding.

“Behind the scenes, morale is low. 
On the surface, you will always see people doing their best and trying their hardest,” Sidles said. “These are people the parks can’t do without: wildlife management, vegetation management, ecosystem management, fire management, veterinary specialists that help when parks have issues with wildlife.”

Neguse said cuts to staff whose work protects public lands are “reckless, shortsighted, and do not put safety first.” He recalled the Cameron Peak Fire, the largest fire in Colorado’s history, which burned an estimated 208,913 acres in Larimer County in 2020 and led to the closure of “multiple access points out of this community,” he said of Estes Park.

“Countless folks employed by the National Park Service, by the Arapaho Roosevelt National Forest, stood up and protected this community when it needed them the most,” Neguse said. “And to think that now, those same individuals are being terminated by the Trump administration. I just can’t think of anything more shortsighted.”

Neguse and Hickenlooper are both sponsors of the Save Our Forests Act and the Save Our Parks Act, which would reinstate civil servants to their positions within the Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service.

Lori Hodges, director of emergency management for Larimer County, started with the county after the 2012 High Park Fire and the 2013 flood to help with recovery efforts and create an emergency management program.

Hodges said she’s seeing “a concerning shift in focus” from wildfire prevention and mitigation to response alone. That includes the cancellation of the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities grant program through FEMA, for example.

“That provided vital funding to strengthen our infrastructure like bridges and culverts against those impacts of post-fire flooding,” Hodges said. “Without that support, we’re much more vulnerable.”

Loss of funding opportunities, staff shortages, and program cancellations set off a ripple effect “that reaches far beyond today,” Hodges said. She said visitors may not think of the people who patrol public lands for unintended campfires and other safety concerns, but when they aren’t there to do that job, the burden falls on local governments.

“They affect not only how we respond to emergencies now, but how we’ll be able to protect our communities for future generations,” Hodges said. “To truly safeguard our public lands and the people who live near or enjoy them, we need to treat these systems as if they’re interconnected, and strengthening one part means strengthening the whole and reducing that risk to everyone.”

Hickenlooper said over 6,000 people who work to take care of national parks and national forests across different agencies have either been fired or left their jobs.

“We’re going to see more risk this summer and this spring from wildfires, from extreme weather,” Hickenlooper said. “We’re going to see more risks than we’ve seen before in all … aspects of the droughts we’ve had and the water we have to use, at a time when we’re dramatically diminishing the number of firefighters we’re going to have available to fight fires in the West.”

Neguse noted that a provision from the Republican budget bill that would have sold public lands in Utah and Nevada was cut before the bill made it to the House floor because of the opposition it garnered. He said public pressure combined with building bipartisan support can lead to more changes like this as additional concerns arise.

“Public feedback matters,” Neguse said. “There’s this temptation for us to believe that our public institutions are impervious to public opinion, and that they will simply ignore the views of the American public. I don’t believe that to be the case. I actually think that if enough citizens make their voices heard and that the outcry builds to a sufficient crescendo, that you can potentially influence the course of events in Washington, D.C.”

Hickenlooper said people who care about public lands need to use “social media like we’ve never used it before” to communicate the reality of how policy proposals will affect them.

“We make sure that our networks of people tell their networks of people what this really means, what this could do when you cripple an outdoor recreation economy that is actually paying for the maintenance of preservation and the access to these incredible public lands,” he said.