Summer is the height of the visitor season for the National Park Service.

Last year, there were nearly 332 million visitors to U.S. national parks, monuments, and historic sites.

A record that will likely be broken again this year. Stephanie Sy has this report.

That surge in visitors continues despite staff and budget cuts imposed by the Trump administration,

with no end in sight. The Big Beautiful Bill rescinded $267 million, earmarked for park improvements,

and the administration has proposed a further 38% budget cut next year. Advocates say it's already having a dramatic impact on park operations.

We spoke to some of them.

My name is Jesse Shackran.

I am the current executive director of the Fund for People in Parks.

Previous to that, I spent over 20 years working for the Park Service between Denali National Park and Yosemite.

My name is Kevin Heatley,

and I'm the former superintendent of Crater Lake National Park in Klamath Falls, Oregon.

My name is Ken Yeager, and I've been in Yosemite since 1976, and I am currently the president and founder of

Yosemite Climbing Association.

I will say that morale is as low as I have ever seen it in 24 years.

Many friends and colleagues are near tears or in tiers on a daily basis.

It is heartbreaking to say the least.

The inability to hire additional permanent staff to replace people, the disruptions that occurred with respect to our ability to make purchases for vital essential items,

the open hostility towards public sector employees, it was an unacceptable, untenable situation. You cannot

operate efficiently in that kind of environment. And I knew that in long term, this was being set up

to fail. And I didn't want to be a part of that. An area can stay really clean for most of the

year. And then once the trash starts getting dumped there,

...