When private money backs the public park

THE NATIONAL PARK Foundation, the official charitable arm of America's National Park Service, reported $275m in revenue against $137m in expenses in fiscal 2024, leaving it with $531m in net assets, according to its tax filings. It is, in other words, well stocked with precisely the sort of private capital that becomes indispensable when public money retreats. The National Park Service, for its part, faces its most serious funding crisis in decades. The Trump administration's fiscal-year-2026 budget proposes cutting NPS spending to $2.1bn, effectively slashing approximately $1 billion from the National Park Service. The proposal would eliminate thousands of jobs from a workforce already hollowed by attrition and government shutdowns. In 2025, despite these pressures, national parks recorded more than 323m visits, with 26 individual parks setting attendance records.

The foundation has long existed to fill the gaps Congress leaves open. Now those gaps are widening fast enough to turn its side project into a main one.

The reason for this is not hard to see. America's national parks sit in an unusual constitutional position. They are owned by the public but managed by a federal bureaucracy that receives a fraction of the appropriations their popularity might warrant. The system was built on a tacit bargain: Congress would provide baseline funding, and private philanthropy would cover the rest - trails, visitor centres, interpretive programmes, emergency repairs. The foundation was supposed to be the icing. The political shift now threatens to make it the cake.

To be sure, private philanthropy has always supplemented the parks. The tradition dates back to the early 20th century, when wealthy donors funded the first visitor facilities and the foundation itself was created in 1967 at the request of Congress. There is something wholesome about a nation that gives money to protect its own landscapes. The foundation's record on the ground is unimpeachable: it has rebuilt trail networks, restored historic buildings, and funded conservation research that the federal budget could not.

But there is a difference between supplementing a public service and substituting for it. The danger is not immediate collapse. It is slower: a gradual transfer of the parks' fiscal centre of gravity from Congress, where funding is at least accountable to the public, to private donors, where spending reflects the preferences of the wealthy. When charitable foundations become the primary source of capital, they inevitably gain influence over priorities. Donors who fund a heritage trail at Yellowstone may not share the same enthusiasm for a visitor-services programme in a historically Black park. The foundation's discretion replaces democratic allocation.

The incentive for the current administration is clear. Cutting NPS funding pleases fiscal conservatives, angers park-dependent communities far from the swing seats that matter, and externalises the political cost to a foundation that can quietly step in. It is protectionism in reverse: instead of shielding an industry with tariffs, the government retreats from a public service and lets philanthropy cushion the landing. Consumers pay first, in both cases. The difference is that park visitors pay with degraded service rather than higher prices.

Effective deployment of private money will require exactly the operational knowledge that decades of public service provide. Mike Reynolds, a retired NPS senior executive, once oversaw 89 national parks, served as superintendent of Death Valley National Park, and received the George B. Hartzog Jr. award in 2025. That is the sort of insider perspective the moment demands.

Yet the deeper question is not whether the necessary expertise exists. It is what kind of institution the parks become if the foundation's role grows indefinitely. A national park system sustained largely by charitable giving is not the same thing as the national park system the public elected its representatives to maintain. One is a trust. The other is a club with excellent facilities.

Congress should reject the deepest cuts. A wiser policy would maintain NPS baseline funding above the current proposal and allow the foundation to continue its proper role: covering marginal improvements, not core operations. The first task is to draw a line between what government must provide and what philanthropy may supplement, before that line blurs beyond recognition.

The parks belong to everyone, not just those who can afford to donate. That bargain is worth defending.