Protecting national parks starts with how you behave inside them and extends to how you support them from home. The National Park Service manages over 84 million acres, and those lands face pressure from record visitor numbers, a $33.2 billion maintenance backlog, invasive species, and a warming climate. Individual visitors, volunteers, and donors all play a role in keeping these places intact for future generations.
Follow Leave No Trace Principles
The seven Leave No Trace principles are the foundation of responsible park use. They sound simple, but the details matter more than most people realize.
Plan ahead. Know the park’s regulations before you arrive. Repackage food at home to cut down on waste you’ll need to carry out. Visit during off-peak times when possible, and keep your group small. A map, compass, or GPS eliminates any temptation to mark trails with rock cairns or flagging tape.
Stick to durable surfaces. Walk single file in the middle of maintained trails, even when they’re muddy. Shortcutting a switchback or stepping off-trail to avoid a puddle kills vegetation and accelerates erosion. Camp only on designated sites, rock, gravel, or dry grass, and always set up at least 200 feet from lakes and streams.
Pack out everything. This means all trash, leftover food, toilet paper, and hygiene products. If no toilet facilities are available, dig a cathole six to eight inches deep and at least 200 feet from water, camp, and trails. For washing dishes, carry water 200 feet from any water source and use small amounts of biodegradable soap.
Leave what you find. Photograph wildflowers, fossils, and historic artifacts rather than collecting them. Don’t build rock stacks, dig trenches, or move natural objects. Even small removals add up across millions of visitors per year.
Be careful with fire. Use a portable stove for cooking when you can. Where campfires are allowed, use existing fire rings, keep the fire small, and burn only dead wood from the ground that you can break by hand. Burn everything down to ash, fully extinguish it, and scatter the cool ashes.
Keep Safe Distances From Wildlife
Feeding, approaching, or crowding wildlife is one of the most common and damaging mistakes visitors make. Feeding animals changes their natural behavior, damages their health, and conditions them to associate humans with food, which often leads to the animal being relocated or killed.
The required minimum distances are non-negotiable. For most species, including moose, elk, bighorn sheep, mountain goats, and deer, stay at least 25 yards away (roughly the length of two school buses). For wolves, grizzly bears, black bears, and mountain lions, the minimum jumps to 100 yards. Use binoculars or a telephoto lens instead of your feet. If an animal changes its behavior because of your presence, you’re already too close.
Store all food and trash securely, whether in bear-proof containers, lockers provided at campsites, or inside a hard-sided vehicle. Keep pets leashed at all times or leave them home entirely, especially during sensitive seasons like nesting, mating, and winter when animals are most vulnerable to disturbance.
Stop the Spread of Invasive Species
Invasive species are among the most persistent threats to park ecosystems. Burmese pythons have decimated small mammal populations in the Everglades. Zebra and quagga mussels clog waterways across the West. Cheatgrass fuels catastrophic wildfires. Bufflegrass threatens desert landscapes. Once these species establish themselves, eradication is often impossible, and the damage compounds year after year.
You can help contain the problem with a few straightforward habits. Clean your boots, gear, boats, and vehicle before traveling between parks or natural areas, since seeds, larvae, and spores hitchhike on almost anything. Buy firewood locally and burn it where you buy it rather than transporting it, because wood-boring insects like the emerald ash borer spread through firewood moved long distances. Never dump aquarium water, bait, or houseplants into natural areas. At home, avoid planting invasive ornamental species and learn to identify and remove invasives on your own property. If you spot an infestation, report it to your local, state, or federal land management agency.
Visit During Off-Peak Times and Use Reservations
Overcrowding damages trails, stresses wildlife, and degrades the visitor experience for everyone. Several of the most popular parks now use timed entry or reservation systems to manage capacity. Arches National Park, for example, requires timed entry tickets from April through October, with ticketed entry running from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily. Other parks have implemented similar systems in recent years.
Visiting on weekdays, during shoulder seasons (late fall or early spring), or arriving early in the morning reduces your impact and often gives you a better experience. Smaller, less famous parks and national monuments frequently offer the same quality of scenery and solitude without the crowds. Spreading visitor traffic across the entire park system is one of the simplest ways to reduce wear on the most popular sites.
Volunteer Your Time
The National Park Service runs the Volunteers-In-Parks program, which places people in roles ranging from trail maintenance and habitat restoration to visitor education and citizen science projects. You can search current openings by location or activity at Volunteer.gov, or visit the volunteer page for a specific park. Many parks also host single-day or multi-day volunteer events that are a good way to try it out without a long commitment.
The application process is straightforward: apply through Volunteer.gov, confirm your position with a supervisor who will outline your duties and schedule, and sign a Volunteer Service Agreement before your start date. Forms are available in English, Mandarin, and Spanish.
Support Parks Financially
The deferred maintenance backlog across the Department of the Interior stood at an estimated $33.2 billion as of September 2024. That covers buildings, trails, campsites, roads, water infrastructure, and visitor facilities that have gone years or decades without adequate repair. Congressional funding addresses a portion of this, but private donations fill critical gaps.
The National Park Foundation, chartered by Congress in 1967, is the official nonprofit partner of the National Park Service. Donations fund conservation projects, preservation of cultural and historic resources, and programs that connect underserved communities with parks. You can contribute directly at nationalparks.org. Even buying an annual America the Beautiful pass for $80 channels entrance fees back into the system, and it covers your admission to all federal recreation sites for a full year.
Report Vandalism and Illegal Activity
Graffiti, poaching, artifact theft, illegal off-roading, and resource destruction happen in parks more often than most visitors realize. Reporting these incidents is one of the most direct ways to protect park resources. The NPS Investigative Services Branch operates a tip line at 888-653-0009, accepts online tips through its Submit a Tip form on nps.gov, and monitors the email address [email protected]. You can also report suspicious activity to any NPS employee on-site. For emergencies, call 911.
Advocate for Climate Resilience
Climate change is reshaping national parks faster than most other threats. Glaciers are visibly retreating. Permafrost is thawing. Coastal parks face rising sea levels that threaten both natural shorelines and historic structures. Parks across the country are warming disproportionately compared to the rest of the United States, altering wildfire patterns, shifting wildlife habitats, and stressing water supplies.
Supporting climate policy at the local, state, and federal level is a form of park protection that goes beyond what any individual visit can accomplish. Contacting elected officials about park funding, attending public comment periods for land management plans, and supporting organizations that advocate for public lands all contribute to long-term preservation. Parks were designed to be permanent, but keeping them intact requires sustained political will and public pressure to match the scale of the threats they face.