Florida’s Big Cypress National Preserve sprawls north from Everglades National Park over 729,000 acres of swamp, an ancient forest that protects the endangered Florida panther and the pristine waters of the Everglades — the source of drinking water for millions of south Floridians.
“It takes about 350 parks to wipe out in order to get $900 million in budget savings,” said Kristen Brengel, senior vice president of government affairs for the National Parks Conservation Association. “So it’s everything from battlefields to seashores, to recreation areas to monuments.”
It’s not clear who wants the national park system to be trimmed, other than the White House and some conservative groups who say the plan promotes federalism.
But even some Republicans who are eager to see other federal lands developed or taken over aren’t necessarily excited about breaking up the national park system.
Congress has long responded to members’ requests to protect a historic site in their district by putting the NPS in charge of it, which has bloated the national park system, said Representative Mike Simpson, an Idaho Republican.
But Simpson warned: “Let’s not screw up the national parks because that’s something the American people will never forgive us for.”
The White House doesn’t yet have a list of places to offload, although a more detailed budget for the Interior Department is expected in coming days. Asked at a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing on May 21 whether Big Cypress and other large NPS sites could be transferred, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told Bloomberg Law only that the 63 “crown jewel” national parks will be left alone.
Burgum named a few possible transfer candidates: Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site in New York City, Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site in North Dakota and possibly “a battlefield site someplace.”
Park advocates bristle at visitation numbers being used as a criterion.
“Regardless whether they’re well visited or not, whether people can view it themselves or watch it on TV, they don’t want to see them dismantled,” Brengel said. “These schemes to save a couple of nickels by getting rid of parks — it’s unpopular.”
Republican Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma has offered Chickasaw National Recreation Area in Oklahoma as a candidate to be transferred to the Chickasaw Nation, which sold it to the federal government in 1902. Congress turned it into Platt National Park, until it stripped the park of “crown jewel” status and changed its name in 1976.
Today, the park service spends about $4.5 million to accommodate more than 1.5 million annual visitors at Chickasaw NRA.
Cole’s office said the Chickasaw Nation hasn’t asked for the recreation area to be returned, but the nation’s governor, Bill Anoatubby, said in a statement that it’s interested.
So far, though, there’s little other interest in transfers.
Many states have long been eager for Congress to designate their facilities as National Park System sites because that increases tourist traffic, boosts the economies of nearby communities and spares states the financial burden of managing those sites, said K.K. Duvivier, a natural resources law professor at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law.
That’s among the top reasons why Maryland, New Mexico, North Carolina and Colorado state governments say they oppose transfers.
New Mexico has 18 NPS sites at risk, including Valles Caldera National Preserve, one of the region’s newest additions to the national park system. Any national park units transferred to the state would likely end up closing because it already struggles to maintain its parks with limited funding, outdated facilities and high personnel vacancy rates, said Toby Velasquez, state parks director.
“If the federal government does approve these cuts, Maryland will consider all options to obtain and manage these sites to ensure they remain open and accessible to the public,” Metcalf said.
“In those states primarily, there is considerable political traction for policies like this,” Yeatman said. “I know Utah has passed a bill seeking the return of federal lands.”
Utah did try last year to force the Interior Department to transfer 18 million acres of other federal land to it, but it hasn’t asked for park service properties, said Redge Johnson, executive director of the Utah Governor’s Public Lands Policy Coordinating Office.
“Would we step in?” he said. “Yeah, we’d want to make sure they stay solvent and operational. We’re not actively seeking anything there.”
In some cases, the National Park Service was put in charge of some areas because residents didn’t trust the states to manage them.
Floridians “wanted to protect it and they didn’t trust the state,” McAliley said. “People wanted the Park Service because they trusted them to manage natural qualities.”
That’s still true today, said Eve Samples, executive director of the Friends of the Everglades.
“Every single year those of us engaged in environmental advocacy in Florida are fighting off bad bills in Tallahassee, and there’s not a high degree of trust in the state legislature doing what’s right for our public lands,” Samples said.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican, didn’t respond to requests for comment about whether state officials have discussed a possible transfer and if the state could afford it. Big Cypress’s fiscal 2024 budget was about $7.8 million.
Congress made Big Cypress a preserve, not a national park, because it wanted to allow hunting, oil and gas drilling, off-highway vehicle and swamp-buggy use, and other activities that aren’t usually allowed in national parks.
Transferring the preserve to the state would open a host of legal questions, including how the federal government’s duty of trust to area tribes would be handled, whether proposed wilderness areas in Big Cypress would be respected, and whether the land would be given or sold to the state, McAliley said.
“If they’re just going to be giving it, they’d be giving away a tremendously valuable asset,” he said. “Then the state has to manage it. If the president is trying to cut the expenses of the park service, doesn’t that assume the state is going to have to pay the money?”
“Whoever approved this,”’ he said, “this is like a meat-cleaver approach.”
