Department of the Interior reviews nearly 180,000 National Park Service pages
The Department of the Interior has been reviewing national park service online materials and new submissions since February, placing nearly 180,000 web pages under a new approval system. The process now runs through a small group of Interior staff, after nearly 1,000 National Park Service employees had previously been able to change or add content at their own discretion.
Jonathan Jarvis on NPS control
Jonathan Jarvis, the former National Park Service director under the Obama administration, said the agency had long operated differently. "The Park Service has been for most — if not almost all — of its history very decentralized, with a lot of authority, including comms at the park level. This is a very divergent approach," he said.
The web pages under review include parks information, historical research, educational videos, and visual materials. Over 400 individual websites representing federally managed parks, memorials, historic sites, and recreation areas were left mostly intact before the February crackdown on online communications.
Trump mandate and web changes
The review is tied to Trump’s mandate from last year, which aimed to sanitize National Park Service messaging and remove references to indigenous genocide, slavery, and other topics the White House can argue disparage Americans past or present or promote diversity, equity, or inclusion. In January, the public first learned how severe the changes may become for National Park Service communications under Trump-backed Department of the Interior oversight.
The following month brought new tools to vet new National Park Service exhibits, educational materials, and employees' speech with the public for compliance. One staffer described the process as a total lockdown on NPS messaging, while the agency’s online presence, once managed site by site, was moved into a far more centralized review.
Interior oversight in February
That shift matters because the online archive is large, varied, and already in use by parks and readers looking for official material. The review now reaches content that ranges from public park information to historical and educational material, with Department of the Interior staff deciding what can move forward.
For park visitors, researchers, and staff who rely on those pages, the immediate change is simple: content that once could be added or revised locally now goes through a smaller federal review chain before it appears online.
