How to Talk About the National Park Service Cuts at Thanksgiving

Updated November 27, 2025 01:13PM

Pass the sweet potatoes! Load my plate up with dark meat! Who wants to discuss the staffing crisis at Yosemite?

Here it is, Thanksgiving, a holiday to sit ’round the dinner table with my relatives and make polite chit-chat about the weather and the Detroit Lions. That is, until someone—usually Uncle Ron—brings up politics.

Guess what? This year it’s my turn. Once everyone has sat down for turkey and fixings, I plan to spark a conversation about the U.S. National Parks and public lands, and the current federal policy that’s gutting them and placing them in danger.

As anyone who has read Outside in the last ten months knows, our National Park Service (NPS), public lands, and the men and women who work for the agencies protecting them are facing a grave situation.

It’s enough to make me scream—and maybe also toss the pan of stuffing across the dining room. Alas, this would constitute a serious violation of even my family’s Thanksgiving etiquette and would lead Grandma to ban me from her living room for a few years.

How can I talk to my relatives about NPS without losing my cool? I recently reached out to three experts for a conversational game plan: Steven Rinella, the founder of MeatEater; Kristen Brengel, the vice president of the National Parks Conservation Association; and Adam Auerbach, a former NPS seasonal ranger and grassroots advocate for public lands. Here’s their advice:

Rather than start my conversation with fire and brimstone, Auerbach told me to appeal to everyone’s emotional connection to NPS sites like Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon. Everyone’s been there, and most have fond memories of their trips.

“People will fight for that which they love,” he says. “So, to start a conversation with a family member about the NPS cuts, I’d appeal to a cherished memory they have in one of our national parks, to bring them toward that feeling of love for the wonders and experiences found in the parks.”

Oh man, this past Memorial Day, we took our six-year-old daughter to the Great Sand Dunes and played in the world’s biggest sandbox. It was a blast—but I’m still fishing sand out of my shoes and hair.

Remind Them That Most Americans Love National Parks and Public Lands Just as Much as We Do

You don’t have to Google too hard to find a poll or survey showing bipartisan support for national parks and public lands—or one illustrating opposition to efforts to cut NPS budgets or sell federal lands.

“Everyone loves our national parks,” Auerbach says. “They’re one of the few things we can still agree on as Americans.”

Even Republicans, Communists, Independents, Greens, and Peace and Freedomists?

You bet. Look no further than Rinella, a celebrity for outdoor folks on all sides of the political spectrum.

“I look at my huge group of friends, they are raising their kids to be hunters and anglers, and to be a generation of Americans who respect wild places and wild animals,” Rinella says “Because if it weren’t for that ability to go out onto public land, we would be in a situation where access to this way of life would just be for the rich.”

For the last ten months, Brengel has been one of the loudest voices sounding the alarm on the Trump administration’s attacks on the NPS. I’ve read her quotes in hundreds of news stories, and I can only imagine how many phone calls she fields each day. Brengel told me that the stories that resonate most with lawmakers and with reporters concern what is being lost at our parks.

“Since January, it’s around 4,000 park rangers and staff who have been driven out of the agency through terminations or have been pushed out, so that essentially means a quarter fewer staff managing our national parks,” she says. “What was lost this summer? Closed visitor centers, less maintenance on roads and trails, education programs cut entirely.”

“With the federal hiring freeze in place, parks aren’t going to be able to hire back the staff they lost for a long time,” Brengel adds.

Listing the administration’s attacks on the NPS and public lands could go on for hours. So you might want to go pee beforehand, or maybe focus your speech on the most significant talking point: what may happen in 2026 with the proposed billion-dollar budget cut.

“With the billion-dollar cut, you’d have to get rid of 350 park units to accomplish those savings,” Brengel says. “You’d lose three-quarters of all NPS units. Which ones are you going to cut? The Washington Monument? The Everglades? Fundamentally, people reject those ideas.”

Rinella points out that across the planet, public lands and wildlife habitats are being ground up for industry, resources, and urban expansion.

“When you think about it that way, what the United States has pulled off is extraordinary,” he says. “We’re this technologically advanced culture, but we have wild places. As more of these places are destroyed around the world and as wild places become developed, the entire world will come to see how different we are. And anyone involved in preserving these places will be celebrated.”

Speaking of those involved in preserving wild places, Rinella says look no further than Roosevelt and his legacy as the father of public lands protection.

“What he was doing was very controversial. He was a radical. And he had all of these political enemies,” Rinella says. “But in the end, he’s carved into Mount Rushmore, and millions of Americans go there every year to see him. None of his enemies are.”

Will politicians who seek to sell off public lands be lauded? Rinella doesn’t believe so. “The people responsible today for not buckling to pressure to sell public lands and industrialize wild places will be celebrated in the future, and not vice versa,” he says. “A hundred years from now, the people who sold off a bunch of public lands will be remembered as villains.”

Remind Uncle Ron that the NPS is one of the best bang-for-the-buck agencies in the entire federal government. The most recent studies suggest they generate 14 times as much revenue for the U.S. economy as they cost.

“The American government is spending $4 billion for all 433 NPS units, and you have these parks contributing $56 billion to the economy and keeping businesses alive in their gateway communities,” Brengel says.

Brengel says the NPS budget accounts for 1/15th of 1 percent of the entire annual federal budget.

“If the entire federal budget were a pie chart, you wouldn’t even see the slice that the NPS budget takes up,” she says.

“I have these conversations on Capitol Hill, and I hear a lot of flippant comments about the NPS,” Brengel says. “Just remind yourself that most of the American public does care about these places.”

All three of my guests agree: the quickest way I can alienate my family and torpedo my argument is to lose my cool and start yelling or talking down to people.

“There are a lot of good reasons to be mad about what is happening across our parks and public lands, and anger in support of that which you love can be productive,” Auerbach says. “But that anger should be channeled at the anti-public lands politicians furthering this awful agenda, not average people who, in all likelihood, are potential public lands champions themselves, with a bit of respect and education.”

“We need a big tent for parks and public lands, and we can’t allow it to become just another partisan issue,” Auerbach says. “If I get mad, I’m never going to bring that person along.”

Even though I may want to pour a whole gravy boat down my uncle’s bald head, I should just finish my meal, smile, and go get myself some pie.

Op-Ed: For Thanksgiving, I Plan to Bring Up the National Park Service Cuts