Parks Stewardship Forum

Since January 20, 2025, federal parks, historic sites, and other conservation areas have been severely harmed by the direct actions of the current administration. In countless ways, seeds for this destruction began many years ago, and were ultimately made crystal clear in Project 2025 (this administration’s 2024 campaign blueprint for unraveling the federal government that has played out over the past nearly two years). This essay identifies some of the clear harms to the National Park Service (NPS) and identifies several strategies that can be explored to rebuild, strengthen, and provide greater organizational resiliency, so that any future similar assault on NPS can be prevented. These strategies and other ideas, such as those identified in this edition of Parks Stewardship Forum, need to be analyzed and a smart, integrated approach needs to be pursued aggressively because the threats are not going away anytime soon.