Democrats highlight climate peril to national parks
As floods and wildfires have battered national parks in recent years, a new study from green and Democrat-aligned groups aims to tie climate change to ecological decline.
The report from the Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition Institute and the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, to be released Tuesday, argues that parks will continue to see degradation until the rise in global temperature begins to cool — whether that’s decreasing snowpack in Yellowstone, wildfires in Yosemite or sea level rise in Acadia. The report was first shared first with POLITICO’s E&E News.
The report comes as House Republicans and President Donald Trump have sought cuts to the National Park Service in fiscal 2026 spending bills. NPS has also lagged in staffing goals for the summer.
In recent weeks, two parks, the Grand Canyon National Park and the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, have been battling active wildfires burning thousands of acres.
The fire in the Grand Canyon destroyed a historic lodge along with dozens of other buildings. In 2022, a catastrophic flood damaged portions of Yellowstone National Park.
“As it stands, most of the units in the National Park System — from the iconic Grand Canyon National Park to Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument and hundreds of other sites across the country — are seeing ecological decline, year over year,” reads the report, titled “America’s Best Idea in Peril."
“It is happening slowly in some places and alarmingly fast in others, but as temperatures keep going up and precipitation continues to become more intense and unpredictable, America’s 'best idea' is being eroded away.”
The SEEC Institute is a foundation that was formed to complement the work of the all-Democrat Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition in Congress, a 100-member strong caucus.
The Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks is an advocacy group for the parks made up of current and former National Park Service employees.
The report also makes the case for several solutions to save national parks from degradation, beginning with carbon reduction.
“The ecological integrity of almost every unit of the National Park System has been in some way eroded by human-caused climate change,” the report reads. “Though further degradation is expected in the coming decades, the exact degree depends on how much we do in the near future to address the principal cause of climate change: carbon pollution.”
The report argues that the Park Service should be adequately funded and staffed to carry out scientific research and adaptation to challenges posed by climate change.
It also calls for leaving national recreation areas, national seashores, national battlefields, national historical parks or national monuments as part of the National Park system.