Federal funding freeze, resignation email hits area parks
Last week, folks in parks and conservation work across the country woke up to the news that President Trump had paused federal grant funding. The Trump administration quickly rescinded the freeze, but National Park Service employees across the Big Bend received the same email that federal employees across the country received encouraging voluntary resignation from their positions.
At press time, the park’s Chief of Interpretation Tom VandenBerg had no updates to report concerning staffing at Big Bend National Park, but online forums for federal employees continue to bubble over with controversy.
“When taken together, the cumulative impact of these actions and orders on our national parks and park staff could be devastating and long-lasting,” wrote Theresa Pierno, president of the National Parks Conservation Association, in a press release. “Our parks already have thousands fewer staff than they did a decade ago, and these actions risk further straining an already overwhelmed Park Service and impacting millions of visitors and local communities.”
Big Bend National Park releases year-end visitor statistics for 2024
The National Park Service recently released year-end numbers for 2024 and reported 561,459 visitors, about a 10% increase from 511,831 the year prior. The number is still short of an all-time 581,221 record in 2021.
Once ranked among the least visited national parks, Big Bend now makes bucket lists around the world. While the half-million statistics are relatively impressive for the park’s own history, the parks that top the list boast millions of visitors each year. Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the busiest in the system, clocked over 13 million visitors last year.