With the summer travel season just around the corner, American families will soon embark on long-awaited vacations to some of the world’s great travel destinations: America’s parks and public lands. Places like the Grand Canyon and Great Smoky Mountains draw millions of visitors annually from across the globe and help fuel our country’s growing outdoor recreation economy, which accounted for $1.2 trillion in economic activity in 2023. Yet a concerted effort by the Trump administration to sell off and sell out America’s public lands to the highest bidder puts these special places, local economies, and future travel plans in jeopardy.
In just four months, the Trump administration has advanced a multifront attack on national public lands that will inflict lasting damage. President Donald Trump’s team has recklessly fired park and forest rangers and pushed drastic budget cuts to take more than $1 billion away from national parks, while giving some park units away entirely to states. The administration is also moving quickly to extract cash from America’s public lands—which Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum frequently calls “national assets” on America’s “balance sheet”—by attempting to dramatically expand mining, drilling, and logging. Meanwhile, to pay for tax cuts for billionaires, Congress is moving quickly to pass the largest attack on U.S. lands and waters in modern American history.
Here are just a few of the special places that American families and travelers stand to lose.
Arizona’s Grand Canyon
The legacy of the Grand Canyon is inextricably tied to America’s national identity. For the past four years, the national park has seen well over 4 million visitors annually; and in 2023, it contributed $768 million to neighboring communities’ economies. To permanently conserve the greater Grand Canyon landscape and watershed, Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni – Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument was designated by President Joe Biden in 2023, building on a time-limited measure that had protected these lands from mining since 2012. The Washington Post reports, however, that the Trump administration is considering eliminating the national monument as part of an ongoing review in its quest to open more lands for drilling and mining.
The nearly 1 million acres of Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni are home to sacred sites for many Tribal nations. The monument is also known for its many canyons and streams, in addition to bighorn sheep, bison, and bald eagles. This region has a troubling history of uranium mining and associated water pollution; and the monument’s prohibition on new mining claims has helped protect its many waterways—including the Colorado River, which provides water for millions of people—as well as Grand Canyon National Park. Besides being unpopular among Arizonans, stripping protections from these lands could endanger the health of those downstream communities and poison one of America’s most famous natural wonders.
Minnesota’s Boundary Waters
The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota is the country’s most-visited wilderness area, drawing more than 150,000 people annually and generating $78 million for the local economy in 2016. A land of interconnected lakes and streams that hosts 1,500 miles of canoe routes, the Boundary Waters encompasses more than 1 million acres along the U.S. northern border.
Yet a foreign mining company with a track record of toxic spills is pushing a massive copper-sulfide mining project on public lands abutting this wilderness. If advanced, the resulting pollution of this iconic watershed could result in the loss of $288 million in visitor spending each year and an overall loss of 4,490 local jobs. On the campaign trail in 2024, President Trump said he would reverse conservation protections for this watershed and green-light the mine. Now, the House Republicans’ tax bill currently steamrolling through Congress is poised to do just that—despite Minnesotans’ clear opposition to the project.
California’s Chuckwalla National Monument
Chuckwalla National Monument, designated by President Biden on January 14, 2025, contains some of the most varied and rare ecosystems and wildlife in the West. The new monument protects about 627,000 acres of Tribal homelands from Coachella Valley to the Colorado River, adjacent to the southern boundaries of Joshua Tree National Park, which sees around 3 million visitors annually. Chuckwalla is a popular site for hiking, camping, mountain biking, and other recreation in the Sonoran and Mojave deserts, just three to four hours from Los Angeles and San Diego.
This national monument is also reportedly in the Trump administration’s crosshairs. Press reports—as well as a vague and subsequently edited White House fact sheet from March 14, 2025—suggest President Trump intended to eliminate the national monument. Yet those initial reports have been met with strong bipartisan opposition locally, and no actions have been taken at this time.
New York’s Stonewall National Monument
The Trump administration’s attack on America’s public lands extends beyond large, iconic landscapes, also reaching historic sites and the important stories they tell. For example, Stonewall National Monument in New York City is the first national monument dedicated to preserving the history of LGBTQI+ communities. Uprisings at the Stonewall Inn in June 1968 are often considered the catalyst of the modern LGBTQI+ civil rights movement, led in part by transgender women of color such as Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera. But as part of its broader agenda attacking queer and trans communities, the Trump administration silently removed all mentions of transgender people from Stonewall’s official website and removed the National Park Service bios of these two leaders.
The Trump administration’s attempts to erase history at Stonewall and other national park sites won’t start and end with these website changes. In a March 27 executive order, Trump announced a new policy to ensure all parks avoid “divisive narratives that distort our shared history,” directing the secretary of the interior to eliminate content that “inappropriately disparage[s] Americans past or living.” About a week and a half after this order, the National Park Service webpage for the Underground Railroad was modified to remove Harriet Tubman’s image and numerous mentions of enslavement—although, after public outcry, it has since been restored. On May 20, Secretary Burgum further ordered that all national parks and other public lands must post notices encouraging people to report “any signs or other information that are negative about either past or living Americans or that fail to emphasize the beauty, grandeur, and abundance of landscapes and other natural features.” Such blatant attempts to erase history degrade the integrity and educational value of our parks and may discourage visitation, given the key role representation plays in creating welcoming and accessible public spaces.
Nevada’s Ruby Mountains
Often referred to as the “Alps of Nevada,” the Ruby Mountains cover more than 92,000 acres of wild lands managed by the U.S. Forest Service and are home to tall peaks, alpine lakes, abundant trout, and one of the largest herds of mule deer in the state. A popular destination for hunters, anglers, birdwatchers, and other recreation-based travelers, the Ruby Mountains are also the ancestral homeland of the Te-Moak Tribe of the Western Shoshone Indians of Nevada. Notably, Nevada’s recreation-based economy brings in $8.1 billion to the state each year, greatly outweighing the oil and gas sector’s $3 million yearly economic contribution.
Recognizing the Ruby Mountains’ outstanding recreational, wildlife and cultural values, the Biden administration proposed protections for the area in 2024, responding to calls from local communities and outdoor enthusiasts. But the Trump administration quietly removed interim protections for the area on April 4, 2025, clearing the way once again for oil and gas leasing, despite Trump’s 2019 Forest Service determination that the area has low to no potential for oil and gas.
Alaska’s Tongass National Forest
Harboring some of the last remaining old-growth coastal rainforest in the world, the 17-million-acre Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska is a global treasure and crown jewel of America’s national forest system. Home to the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian, the Tongass supports cultural traditions dating back thousands of years, more than 400 species of wildlife, and renowned populations of wild salmon. Today, the Tongass is a popular destination for hiking, fishing, paddling, and wildlife viewing, with nearly 1 million visitors experiencing the forest system each year via cruise ships or ferries passing through its many islands.
Despite a history of destructive logging, which resulted in the clear-cutting of more than 1 million acres of the Tongass’ old-growth trees since the 1950s, recent conservation actions and federal investment in sustainable economic growth have helped end commercial old-growth logging in the Tongass. Unfortunately, on his first day in office, President Trump directed the removal of “roadless rule” protections for about 9.4 million acres, a first step to potentially reinitiating shortsighted commercial logging of ancient trees in “America’s rainforest.”
Conclusion
As experts warn visitors to expect long lines and subpar conditions at national parks and the Trump administration scrambles to assure Americans that parks will remain open, the biggest impacts of President Trump’s public lands attacks will last long after this summer season ends. Through a deluge of executive orders and agency actions, the Trump administration is rapidly advancing its agenda to sell off and sell out America’s public lands for the benefit of corporate insiders and at the expense of American families. Among the most threatened places are iconic public lands that should be on everyone’s bucket list and, more urgently, should be motivation to speak out before a future visit is out of reach for good.
The authors would like to thank Jenny Rowland-Shea, Angelo Villagomez, Steve Bonitatibus, Mona Alsaidi, Anh Nguyen, and the local and national conservation leaders who are building impactful and equitable conservation solutions every day.
About the authors: Sam Zeno is a senior policy analyst for conservation policy at the Center for American Progress. Drew McConville joined American Progress as a senior fellow after working for nearly 20 years to advance land conservation and climate change policies within and outside the government.
This article was published by the Center for American Progress.
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