Support for National Parks Transcends Party Lines
The author is a Senior at Bellevue East High School in Bellevue, Nebraska, and a Director for YEPT.
Filmmaker Brandon Hall’s passion for national parks started with a road trip.
He spent one summer in college traveling across the Western United States, where he fell in love with exploring nature. After spending a night in the Grand Canyon, he was inspired to create a documentary film about the National Park System.
“Having just one little slice of the Grand Canyon for one night was enough to transform my own life and passion to make documentary films,” Hall said. “Imagine if everyone could be in the right place at the right time and have their slice of nature.”
That was Hall’s goal for his film “Out There: A National Parks Story”: to encourage people to explore the natural world. Hall convinced his childhood best friend, now-educator, Anthony Blake, to travel across the nation with him, visiting national parks with a camera crew in tow. The pair interviewed park rangers, hikers, photographers, and musicians.
“Our goal is to connect people to national parks, to public lands, and inspire them to get out there and see what's out in the world for them,” Hall said.
The result was a seven-year epic condensed into a 75-minute documentary, filled with bright sunrises, quiet fireside conversations, and black and white photo galleries. The film was funded entirely by donations and will soon be independently distributed through a mobile app with features to connect people to national parks.
“We [the film team]’re working on utilizing ‘Out There’ as a tool to support this park system that has given so much back to us,” Hall said. “Our ultimate goal is to lend a hand in the preservation of these places.”
There are 433 preservation sites within the park system, between national parks, national historical sites, national battlefields, and more. Each location serviced by the National Park Service is unique. For example, Golden Spike National Historical Park in Utah has two Victorian-era steam locomotives that engineer Cole Chisham operates.
“It's not your typical park ranger position,” Chisham said. That's the cool thing with the NPS, there are a lot of jobs that have unique aspects to them.”
Chisham was drawn to national parks because of his interest in history. He said he connected to the park service’s mission of preserving resources for education and inspiration.
“The parks show us where we've been, both the sites of our great triumphs and where we have faltered, and teach us lessons we cannot afford to forget,” Chisham said.
National parks were also created to protect unique natural landscapes in the U.S. Many, like 18-year-old Via Hubka, believe that national parks open people’s eyes to the beauty of nature.
“When I fell in love with national parks and nature in general, it helped me see more,” Hubka said. “[I was] able to notice things more, the sounds of the wind and birds, the colors of the rock[s] and flowers, that kind of thing. When you truly connect to nature, it’s like your entire world view changes.”
Environmental science student Via Hubka stands in front of the sign for Mammoth Cave National Park in June 2025. Hubka first became interested in National Parks after a family trip to Yosemite and Redwood National Park. “I think national parks are really important to America,” Hubka said. “They help connect American citizens with nature.” Photo courtesy of Via Hubka
Whether it’s a connection to nature or a draw to history, it’s clear that national parks are important to Americans. A 2022 YouGov survey found that 75% of Americans are either somewhat or very interested in visiting national parks. Eighty-one percent named “seeing nature” as the reason why.
“The parks give us a chance to connect with nature; to see the Milky Way unimpeded by light pollution, to explore underground caverns, to climb mountains, to experience a small part of America as it was experienced generations ago,” Chisham said.
Yet government funding for these parks is changing. In May, President Donald Trump proposed $1 billion in funding cuts to the National Park Service, and 24% of permanent park employees have been laid off since January 2025.
“Truthfully, it's been a really devastating year to see the resources of these parks get slashed,” Hall said. “I think the national parks and preserving all of our public lands should not be a partisan point of discussion. I think it should be something that we all agree on funding, all agree on support for our park staff.”
Chisham said he cannot comment on appropriations or funding cuts. However, he hasn’t yet seen any layoffs at Golden Spike National Historical Park.
“As far as staffing goes, we haven’t seen any cuts or layoffs to personnel at the park,” Chisham said. “Our Superintendent… retired earlier this year and we’ve had an acting Group Superintendent since, but outside of that the staffing levels are still pretty well the same.”
However, October’s government shutdown has furloughed 9,000 Park Service Employees. During the previous shutdown from December 2018 to January 2019, national parks experienced trash buildup, damaged trees, and dirty facilities. With the parks’ decreased staff, Chisham encourages people to continue to take care of the lands around them.
“Whether it's things you do by yourself to be a good steward of the world around you (recycling, reducing personal sources of light pollution, picking up trash you see on the ground, etc.),” Chisham said, “or joining a local organization to support efforts in your community, or even volunteering at a NPS unit, they all have an impact.”
Chisham said one of the best ways people can help support national parks is by volunteering. On National Public Lands Day on Sept. 27, 2025, Golden Spike National Historical Park hosted two volunteering events that led to a combined total of 48 volunteer hours.
“Don't underestimate the impact you have,” Chisham said. “This contribution, while individually may seem small, gave the park the equivalent of having an extra park ranger for six days.”
Yellowstone National Park, pictured above, was the first National Park in the United States. Environmental science student Via Hubka, who is hoping to become a park ranger in the future, visited Yellowstone in July 2024. “I’m studying to be a park Ranger because I fear for the future of the national parks,” Hubka said. Photo courtesy of Via Hubka.
Hubka also emphasized the benefits of volunteering, saying it is one of the best ways to help the parks. Her personal path towards service includes studying environmental science at the University of Nebraska-Omaha with the goal of becoming a Park Ranger. Hubka hopes to combat things like cuts to parks funding and the repeal of the “Roadless Rule”, which prohibited road construction on nearly 59 million acres of the National Forest System.
“With things like this going on in our government, I think the only way to help combat this is to act,” Hubka said, “and I’m acting by learning, being a part of my community, and working toward being able to help.”
Hall, Blake, and the rest of the team of “Out There” are taking action too. They have collaborated with nonprofits that support the park service, including the Badlands National Park Conservancy, the Western National Parks Association, and Oregon Parks Forever. Hall says that he sees support of national parks as something that can transcend party lines.
“Something we're proud of is, when we screen ‘Out There,’ we have audience members from both sides of what is a very divided political spectrum,” Hall said. “But they've all come to appreciate this thing that they love so much, which is parks and nature and honoring their own memories in these places.”
Support for National Parks Transcends Party Lines © 2025 by Youth Environmental Press Team is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
