Opinion: Federal cuts could snip away your local park

By Sophia Birn­baum, UConn Jour­nal­ism
July 2025

The fresh air of my home­town park has a way of cool­ing my nerves, even in the heat of sum­mer. Walk­ing along six miles of clear­ly paved trails as my dog, Eli, trots ahead of me, the stress of school and home life begins to melt away into the serene set­ting of nature around us. 

Eli fre­quent­ly stops to smell a patch of grass or to scan the for­est for an ani­mal that has been rustling in the bush­es. Instead of tug­ging on his leash to urge him to con­tin­ue our walk, I pause for a moment to relax and reflect. As I stand still, I find it eas­i­er to nar­row my sens­es in on the soft brush of wind across my cheek, the sweet earthy smell of the air right before rain, the melod­ic chirp­ing of robins rest­ing in the branch­es above my head.  

It is often easy to for­get that this nat­ur­al world exists around me, amidst the noise and chaos of our mod­ern world. But in these moments, as I recon­nect with nature, I am grate­ful to have the chance to expe­ri­ence the effort­less beau­ty of the land around me.  

Here along the wind­ing paths of Peace Val­ley Park is where I find myself sev­er­al times a week when­ev­er I’m back in my home state of Penn­syl­va­nia on my breaks from school. I rely on this park, with its lush forests and glis­ten­ing waters of Lake Gale­na, as my main con­nec­tion to nature, a source of exer­cise and a way to clear my mind when life gets hec­tic. 

But as the Trump Admin­is­tra­tion con­tin­ues to make deep cuts to fed­er­al pro­grams that sup­port parks like this one, I have begun to won­der if my time in this beloved park is com­ing to an end. What will I do if my main con­nec­tion to nature is sev­ered?  

The Trump Admin­is­tra­tion has fired over 1,000 Nation­al Parks employ­ees in its first months and frozen bil­lions of dol­lars in fed­er­al funds that sup­port these parks. On May 2, Trump released a bud­get pro­pos­al that would slash the bud­get for nation­al parks, his­tor­i­cal sites, seashores and trails by almost 25%. That’s equiv­a­lent to over $1.2 bil­lion from the Nation­al Parks Service’s bud­get. While these cuts may seem to exclu­sive­ly affect big­ger nation­al parks, they also threat­en the exis­tence of small­er local parks like Peace Val­ley. 

The Trust for Pub­lic Land is a non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion that works with com­mu­ni­ties across the Unit­ed States to increase the access peo­ple have to pub­lic spaces and parks. The orga­ni­za­tion works pri­mar­i­ly with local parks, but the TPL fears nation­al bud­get cuts will cat­a­stroph­i­cal­ly affect their efforts to bet­ter con­nect humans with nature.  

More than 100 TPL parks projects are now in a state of “lim­bo”, stalled by cuts to fed­er­al fund­ing, said the TPL’s CEO, Car­rie Hauser, in an inter­view with PBS. These cuts come despite pub­lic sup­port for increas­ing access to pub­lic spaces across polit­i­cal par­ties, Hauser said, cit­ing exten­sive polling.  

One of TPL’s main projects is its 10-Minute Walk pro­gram. This is a nation­al ini­tia­tive to address the dis­par­i­ties in access to pub­lic parks for low- to mid­dle-income com­mu­ni­ties. The initiative’s goal is to ensure that no Amer­i­can is more than a ten-minute walk from a park. 

The TPL released a fund­ing pro­pos­al for the imple­men­ta­tion of the 10-Minute Walk Pro­gram in my home state. They call the plan essen­tial in the effort to “Pre­serve Penn­syl­va­nia.” It out­lines the finan­cial sources for lim­it­ing dis­par­i­ties across com­mu­ni­ties in their access to pub­lic spaces. While the plan acknowl­edges fund­ing from state and local sources, it is also depen­dent on fed­er­al fund­ing from a vari­ety of depart­ments rang­ing from the US For­est Ser­vice to the Nation­al Endow­ment for the Arts.  

Peace Val­ley Park is run by the Bucks Coun­ty Park Ser­vices locat­ed in the south­east cor­ner of Penn­syl­va­nia that I call home. There are mul­ti­ple over­laps in the fund­ing for the county’s Parks and Recre­ation ser­vices and the TPL’s Pre­serve Penn­syl­va­nia Plan. Cuts made to the US Depart­ment of Hous­ing and Urban Devel­op­ment are spark­ing par­tic­u­lar con­cern over how fed­er­al fund­ing loss­es can destroy the oper­a­tions of local parks.  

HUD admin­is­ters Com­mu­ni­ty Devel­op­ment Block Pro­grams that pro­vide essen­tial finan­cial sup­port for com­mu­ni­ty projects such as pub­lic parks. The Trump Admin­is­tra­tion plans to cut 84% of the department’s staff that over­sees these pro­grams, accord­ing to doc­u­ments obtained by NPR.   

The Office of Plan­ning and Devel­op­ment is  set to be among the agency’s cut pro­grams, which will great­ly hin­der the department’s abil­i­ty to process grants, said HUD employ­ees inter­viewed by NPR. Not only will this affect my county’s abil­i­ty to con­tin­ue the upkeep of Peace Val­ley Park, but it will also fur­ther lim­it the access low­er income com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers have to pub­lic spaces.  

I rely so heav­i­ly on my local park for the bet­ter­ment of my phys­i­cal and men­tal well-being, but I am not obliv­i­ous to those who have less access than I to pub­lic spaces, and there­fore a greater reliance on their pos­i­tive impacts. 

The ben­e­fits myself and many oth­ers have expe­ri­enced from easy access to pub­lic parks are plen­ti­ful. They are also alarm­ing­ly vul­ner­a­ble to fed­er­al bud­get cuts.  

Increased access to parks has been proven to bet­ter phys­i­cal health by low­er­ing stress, reduc­ing heart rates and increas­ing phys­i­cal activ­i­ty. Time spent in parks has been linked to increased cog­ni­tive func­tion and even pre­sent­ed as a viable pre­ven­tion strat­e­gy for demen­tia-relat­ed dis­eases, like Alzheimer’s. The pres­ence of parks in com­mu­ni­ties has even been asso­ci­at­ed with a reduc­tion in vio­lent crime, accord­ing to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia Pub­lic Health Sys­tem.  

My access to Peace Val­ley Park has had a mul­ti­tude of pos­i­tive effects on my men­tal and phys­i­cal well­be­ing. With­out access to this park, I’d exer­cise sig­nif­i­cant­ly less and would lose the already lim­it­ed oppor­tu­ni­ties I have to expe­ri­ence nature. For mem­bers of under­served com­mu­ni­ties that have insuf­fi­cient access to parks and out­door spaces, these loss­es will be sig­nif­i­cant­ly ampli­fied.  

Still, there is hope for fund­ing to be restored to these projects through increased state and local sources and phil­an­thropic efforts, Hauser told PBS. It is also like­ly the loss of pub­lic spaces will anger Amer­i­can cit­i­zens across par­ty lines, giv­en that pub­lic polling has indi­cat­ed bipar­ti­san sup­port of access to local parks, added Hauser. 

While the thought of los­ing the park I cher­ish so much is a gut-wrench­ing real­i­ty I may have to face, there are oth­ers who will suf­fer from this loss even more than I will. Parks have the pow­er to con­nect peo­ple with nature in a way that is becom­ing increas­ing­ly rare in our heav­i­ly indus­tri­al­ized soci­ety. The major cuts we are cur­rent­ly see­ing on a fed­er­al lev­el to projects aimed at improv­ing access to local parks and their many ben­e­fits will only fur­ther the dev­as­tat­ing divorce from nature our soci­ety is expe­ri­enc­ing.