Trump’s cuts to National Parks is a bad sign for the outdoor economy and rural economies

The business of the American outdoors has evolved from a pastime for the adventurous to a veritable economic juggernaut, one that in 2024 led to $1.3 trillion in economic output and supported 5.2 million jobs, according to numbers released last week by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). 

But that was two years ago. While figures for 2025 won’t be published until later this year, the outdoor recreation industry was one of many caught in the crosshairs of President Donald Trump’s sweeping cost-slashing agenda. In targeted budget and staffing cuts, the administration sharply reduced funding for a range of agencies involved in the outdoor economy, including the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the Forest Service. 

Those cuts, combined with mass staff departures and the dismantling of visitor management systems, have set the outdoor economy on a much more challenging trajectory, experts say. It’s a scenario that could lead to punishing trickle-down effects for the small businesses and residents who rely on people wanting to see the great outdoors, as the economic engines that power large parts of rural America get stripped for parts.

“Many local businesses have built up an entire economic development strategy tied to outdoor recreation and access to public lands,” Megan Lawson, an economist at the independent research group Headwaters Economics, told Fortune.

“These cuts to the public sector mean there’s a very real risk they are going to be threatening to all these private sector businesses too,” she said.

A trillion dollar success story

In 2024, outdoor recreation accounted for 2.4% of U.S. GDP, according to the BEA data, as Americans flocked to trails, waterways, and campsites in record numbers. That year, in fact, U.S. national parks posted a record number of visitors.

That growth story was more important in some states than others. In rural states, such as Montana, Wyoming, and Vermont, outdoor recreation contributed to at least 4.7% of GDP. In Hawaii, the state where outdoor recreation figured most prominently into GDP, it accounted for a whopping 6.1% of economic output and 51,000 jobs, nearly 8% of the state’s employed labor force. 

The BEA calculates the outdoor recreation economy in broad terms, including everything from the economic output generated by renting a mountain bike for a day to the impact of an outdoor concert. But access to America’s great outdoors is an economic powerhouse in its own right. In 2024, national parks alone accounted for $56.3 billion in output, 340,000 jobs, and $29 billion in receipts for local gateway regions, according to the National Park Service. Last year, outdoor recreation on public lands and waters added an average $351 million to the economy every day, according to the Outdoor Recreation Roundtable, an industry group.

That spending tends to be a lifeline for local economies, Lawson said. Proximity to federally managed lands is also likely to be an indicator of greater economic health, according to a 2017 report from Headwaters Economics. It found rural counties in the West that contained more plots of federal lands averaged faster growth in population, employment, and income than in counties with smaller shares of such lands.

“2024 is a really interesting place to start,” Cassidy Jones, a program manager at the non-profit National Parks Conservation Association, told Fortune. “It was a record-setting year for visitation to America’s national parks, which really shows how much people love these places.”

Interest in national parks and the outdoors has surged since the pandemic, and revitalized many once-sleepy towns across the country. The high visitation numbers have strained resources in some communities struggling with overtourism, but for small businesses—including hotels, tour operators, and gear providers—America’s love for the outdoors has been an economic windfall.

Hitting the brakes

But the momentum of 2024 hit a wall shortly after Trump returned to the White House. In its early days, the administration moved quickly to shrink the federal footprint, including agencies managing America’s public lands. In February 2025, on a day some employees later dubbed the “Valentine’s Day massacre,” 1,000 probationary workers were terminated from the National Park Service in one of the administration’s first major actions.

By summer, the Park Service had lost 24% of its permanent workforce through a combination of forced resignations, buyouts, and a strict hiring freeze. The administration’s original 2026 budget proposal would have represented an even bigger blow, calling for a $1.2 billion cut to the National Park Service—more than one-third of its entire budget. The proposal was rejected by Congress in January, but last year’s cuts remain a burden for a national parks system that is understaffed and overworked, and it’s likely to be obvious to visitors.

“You start with 25% less staff, you’re not going to get the same park experience,” Jones said. “You won’t get the same offerings and programs about these places that need to be available, but now simply will not because of the lack of staff.”

The consequences for local economies could be severe, even for people not directly employed by the government. Parks can provide a significant and immediate boon to local employment, according to one 2023 study, which found that within four years, park designation can spark an up to 6% rise in incomes and 4% boost to employment in neighboring counties.

“It’s existential. I don’t think we can overstate the dependence of these small businesses in gateway communities on the visitors to national parks,” Lawson said.

Despite Congress rejecting the Trump Administration’s larger budget cut proposal, 2026 promises to be another difficult year for the outdoors and the businesses that rely on it. Visitation in many ways relies on marketing and the image parks are able to project, Lawson said, but the less-than-stellar narrative around America’s outdoors over the past year is starting to show. National parks greeted 323 million recreational visitors in 2025, the Service announced this week, almost 9 million fewer than in 2024.