In Glacier, Demonstrators Greet Congressional Western Caucus with ‘Protect Our Parks’ Rally
GOP leaders attending the Western Caucus Policy Summit on the shore of Lake McDonald on Wednesday were shuttled past throngs of demonstrators who oppose the Trump administration’s initiatives to reshape the National Park Service
By Tristan Scott
When members of the Congressional Western Caucus arrived at Glacier National Park’s west entrance Wednesday morning, their welcome wagon included dozens of demonstrators who greeted the delegates with messages of support for park stewardship and dissent toward the Trump administration’s “reckless attacks” on park staff and funding.
The lawmakers were in transit to the southeast shore of Lake McDonald, where the second day of the Western Caucus Policy Summit was underway. The demonstrators were local parks advocates, residents and former employees who in recent months have seized every opportunity to publicly campaign for the National Park Service. In doing so, they’ve been especially vocal about their opposition to the often chaotic efforts by the White House to scale down the federal workforce, including a series of directives to restructure the National Park Service that has resulted in the loss of a quarter of permanent staff. Most jobs were eliminated due to terminations, pressured buyouts, deferred resignations, and early retirement offers, while others left under duress.
“Stop Firing Our Friends,” read one rally placard. “Protect Our Parks,” pleaded another. Meanwhile, rally-goers filled out “Dear Park Ranger” postcards expressing thanks and support for the fired forest wardens, as well as gratitude to those who have kept their jobs.
The cuts have hobbled the National Park Service, the advocates say, leading to reduced visitor services across the country, including at Glacier. Although the details of staffing cuts have not been released, multiple sources with knowledge of the cuts say the park is down at least a half-dozen park rangers, including its permanent chief ranger, its deputy superintendent, its lead public information officer, its chief of interpretation, and dozens of seasonal employees. All told, Glacier is operating with a summertime workforce that’s been reduced by roughly 25%, according to sources, even as visitation surges to record-breaking levels. Through July, the park has been on pace to surpass the park’s all-time visitation record of 3.3 million people set in 2017.
Despite the enduring popularity of national parks like Glacier, Congress in July passed the reconciliation bill, dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which rescinded $267 million in funding for park staffing, according to the National Parks Conservation Association. Those cuts come at a time when the National Park Service is already strained by persistent understaffing and growing maintenance backlogs.
In that context, Glacier National Park may seem like an unusual venue to host an annual event for a Republican caucus whose 90 members include elected leaders who support President Trump’s priorities to rein in government spending and waste, including by cleaving the federal workforce.
But it’s not surprising to Paul Austin, who retired last year as Glacier National Park’s chief ranger after 28 years of federal service. During his tenure at Glacier, Austin observed Glacier’s team of dedicated staff navigate challenges such as wildfires, government shutdowns, the crush of record-breaking visitation, and a once-in-a-century pandemic, and in the past six months, he’s watched them rise above the setbacks and confusion generated by the reduction-in-force directives.
“It never ceases to amaze me how resilient and dedicated this staff is to protecting the park’s resources and carrying out their mission to visitors,” Austin said Wednesday while attending the rally.
Having traded in his gray-and-green National Park Service uniform for shorts and a T-shirt, Austin looked the part of any other Glacier Park visitor as he waved at passing motorists who leaned on their horns in support of the demonstrators.
“Honestly, I’m not surprised that [the Congressional Western Caucus] chose to come here for their summit. Glacier National Park remains the crown jewel of our national parks and the United States, and despite efforts to undermine its core mission, it will remain that,” Austin said. “The question now is who will remain here to work on its behalf and take care of it. One of the biggest strengths of the National Park Service are the employees who, despite not having the assets and resources you have in the private sector, they do everything they can do, whatever they can do, to get the job done and go above and beyond, often putting in extra hours and absorbing extra tasks to provide for the visitor and care for the resource. And while that’s an amazing testament to our employees, in a case like this, when things keep getting cut and cut and cut, you won’t actually see the consequences of those cuts, you won’t see the cracks in the façade, until things collapse.”

Those cracks probably weren’t visible to attendees of this week’s Western Caucus Policy Summit, an annual event for members of the Congressional Western Caucus, of which both of Montana’s congressmen, Republican Reps. Ryan Zinke and Troy Downing, are members. The multi-day summit is slated to run Aug. 18-21.
On Wednesday, the programming included a field tour to Glacier National Park’s historic Lake McDonald Lodge, where Superintendent Dave Roemer delivered an overview of the success of projects funded by the Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA), a Republican-led initiative signed into law by President Trump at the end of his first term. That bill authorized billions in funding for two major conservation needs — the National Park Service’s deferred maintenance backlog and the Land and Water Conservation Fund.
U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., was one of the bill’s architects and joined Trump in the White House almost exactly five years ago to mint the legislation.
Roemer, who earlier this year assumed the dual role as acting superintendent for Grant-Kohrs National Historic Site, noted that caucus members arrived at the Lake McDonald Lodge after driving on a section of the Going-to-the-Sun Road that GAOA helped rehabilitate.
“The Great American Outdoors Act has been really essential for our strategy of maintaining infrastructure for visitor services. For the park service as a whole, it’s been an investment since 2021 of $6.6 billion, touching more than 2,000 assets across the National Park Service. In the Intermountain Region from Texas to Montana, they have made $1.2 billion worth of investments, and the Great American Outdoors Act just had its five-year anniversary on Aug. 4, which is the date it was signed int law.”
Offering a “behind the scenes look” at how the GAOA has helped Glacier, Roemer highlighted four projects, including the rehabilitation of the final 9.3 miles of the Going-to-the-Sun Road between Apgar and Lake McDonald Lodge and the replacement of the bridge over McDonald Creek.
“The smooth pavement you have been on from Apgar to here is the outcome of that project,” Roemer said, noting the scope of a project begun in 2006 to reconstruct the full 50 miles of the iconic road, including paving, widening, and realigning the alpine highway.
“It’s the primary roadway that park visitors come to Glacier to see, and it’s the only east-west link across the Continental Divide,” Roemer said. “So getting it done was a big hooray and one that goes back a long time.”
He also highlighted projects to replace the park’s outdated wastewater systems in Apgar, which was completed in 2022, and Swiftcurrent, which is currently underway and is slated for completion in spring 2026. The water distribution system in Swiftcurrent, which was more than 50 years old and well beyond its expected lifespan, must service more than 100,000 visitors annually by providing water to the Many Glacier campground and picnic area, the Swiftcurrent Motor Inn, the cabins and camp store, and housing for park employees and concessioners.
“It was really vital to fix that,” Roemer said. “It’s an area in the park where if the water system had ever failed in summer, with the danger from fire, we would have had to evacuate the valley and close that operation.”

Park advocates acknowledge the success of the Great American Outdoor Act, which established a National Park and Public Lands Legacy Restoration Fund and guaranteed $900 million per year in perpetuity for the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), a flagship conservation program paid for by royalty payments from offshore oil and gas drilling in federal waters. The LWCF was established in 1964 with an authorization level of $900 million, but in most years Congress has appropriated less than half of this amount. The LWCF helps fund the four main federal land programs (National Parks, National Forests, Fish and Wildlife, and Bureau of Land Management) and provides grants to state and local governments to acquire land for recreation and conservation.
But the White House’s 2026 budget proposal includes a plan to divert hundreds of millions of dollars away from conservation and recreation projects that could impact national parks, forests, and other public lands, according to Kearstyn Cook of the Montana Conservation Voters.
Having served as a park ranger at Glacier before joining the conservation movement, Cook said she’s “seen firsthand how much work it takes to keep a place like this running, and how stretched thin the staff were even back then.”
“So now, after a year of historic budget and staffing cuts, I can only imagine what these people are going through and how much work our national park staff are being expected to take on,” Cook told rally-goers, speaking into a bullhorn. “America’s national parks are being hollowed out. Scientists are cleaning toilets instead of monitoring wildlife. Fire crews don’t have backup. Trail crews are just gone. If we don’t act, we risk losing the very things that make places like Glacier so special, and now new threats are looming. Of course, the budget reconciliation was a huge blow. Now we’re really concerned about the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which has invested $8 million in Glacier and over $650 million across Montana. Why cut this funding? To make up for all the budget cuts that they‘ve been making throughout this year. It’s ridiculous.”
For Suzanne Hildner, who divides her time between Whitefish and Polebridge, on the western edge of Glacier Park, where she’s the chair of the North Fork Preservation Association, Wednesday’s rally wasn’t only an opportunity to send a clear message to Montana’s federal delegation, but also an opportunity to send a message to park visitors for whom the NPS cuts might not yet be tangible.

“In terms of this kind of activity moving the needle, I would say listen to the response that you hear from the traffic coming by, which has been overwhelmingly positive,” she said. “People are so saturated and overwhelmed with news and information, they may not realize what’s happening to our parks. And I think this raises it back up into people’s consciousness. This is valuable because people are driving by on their vacations, and now they’re thinking about what they can do to support our parks.”
Len Broberg, who taught environmental studies for 28 years at the University of Montana, said providing adequate funding for the National Park Service is one of the best bargains in North America, given the bang the public receives for its buck.
“They’re out there managing rock slides and avalanches and keeping park visitors safe while protecting critical resources,” Broberg said. “I don’t think people appreciate the breadth of things that the park service delivers to the public at a very effective cost.”
When Austin, the retired chief ranger, thinks about the cuts to the National Park Service and the federal workforce, he doesn’t just see them manifesting as canceled educational programs, delayed maintenance and conservation work, unfilled law enforcement positions, threats to cultural and natural resource protection, and the forfeiture of decades of institutional knowledge and specialized experience — but also in the loss of a generation of mission-oriented civil servants.
“Our employees have stepped up this summer, but they’re going to be burnt out,” he said. “And we’re clearly not recruiting the next generation. Because we’ve made it very clear that we don’t value the civil service in our current society. It doesn’t matter what agency we’re talking about, we always need to be recruiting that next generation. That was a huge piece of my career — recruiting, mentoring and nurturing that passion for our parks. And right now, we’re losing that.”