National Park updates guidelines to stop visitors defacing Trump picture on pass : NPR

The Department of the Interior’s new “America the Beautiful” annual pass for U.S. national parks.

Ministry of the Interior

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Ministry of the Interior

The National Park Service has updated its policy to discourage visitors from defacing a photo of President Trump on this year’s pass.

The use of an image of Trump on the 2026 pass — rather than the usual image of nature — sparked a backlash, sticker protests and a lawsuit from a conservation group.

The $80 America the Beautiful Annual Pass gives visitors access to more than 2,000 federal recreation sites. Since 2004, the pass typically features expansive landscapes or iconic wildlife, selected through a public photo competition. Past winners have featured places like Arches National Park in Utah and images of bison roaming the plains.

Instead of an image of nature, this year’s design shows side-by-side portraits of Presidents George Washington and Trump. The new design drew criticism from park visitors and sparked a wave of resistance to “DIY.”

Photos circulating online show that many national park card holders covered the image of Trump’s face with stickers depicting wild animals, landscapes and yellow smiley faces, while some completely obscured the entire card. This negative reaction also inspired a growing sticker campaign.

Jenny McCarty, a longtime park volunteer and graphic designer, began selling custom stickers intended to be placed directly on Trump’s face — with 100 percent of the profits going to conservation nonprofits. “We made our first donation of $16,000 in December,” McCarty said. “The power of community is incredible.”

McCarty says the sticker movement is less about politics and more about preserving the neutrality of public lands. “The new guidance from Interior only shows that they continue to ignore how strongly people believe in keeping politics out of national parks,” she said.

The National Park Service’s pass policy was updated this week to indicate that passes may no longer be valid if they have been “defaced or altered.” The change, which was revealed in an internal email to National Park Service staff. obtained by SFGATEcomes just as the sticker movement is gaining traction on social media.

In a statement to NPR, the Interior Department said there was no new policy. Interagency passes have always been void if modified, as noted on the card itself. The agency says the recent update was intended to clarify this rule and help staff deal with visitor confusion.

The Park Service has long said passes can be canceled if the signature stripe is changed, but the updated guidelines now explicitly include stickers or markings on the front of the card.

It will be left to the discretion of park service officials to determine whether a pass has been “degraded” or not. The update means park officials now have the ability to reject a pass if a sticker leaves residue, even if the image underneath is intact.

In December, the conservation group Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit in Washington, DC, opposing the new pass model.

The group claims the image violates a federal requirement that the America the Beautiful annual pass display a winning photo from a photo contest in national parks. The 2026 winning image was a photo of Glacier National Park.

“This is part of a larger pattern of Trump branding government documents with his name and image,” Kierán Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, told NPR. “But this kind of caricature authoritarianism won’t work in the United States.”

The lawsuit asks a federal court to remove the current design from the pass and replace it with the original contest winner – the image of Glacier National Park. It also aims to prevent the government from putting a president’s face on future passes.

The America the Beautiful National Parks annual pass for 2025, showing one of the natural images that adorned the pass. His photo, of a roseate spoonbill taken in Everglades National Park, was taken by Michael Zheng.

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Ministry of the Interior

Not everyone sees a problem with the new design. Park County, Wyoming GOP Chairman Vince Vanata said The Cowboy State Daily said Trump’s critics should “cut loose” and accept the park passes, saying they are a fitting tribute to America’s 250th birthday on July 4.

“Our country’s 250th anniversary only comes once. This pass shows the first president of the United States and the current president of the United States,” Vanata said.

But for many longtime visitors, the reaction goes beyond the design.

Erin Quinn Gery, who buys an annual pass every year, compared the image to “a passport photo stuck on a natural beauty.”

She also likened the move to self-aggrandizement: “It’s like walking into a parade or showing off,” she said. “Let someone else tell you that you are great – or that you deserve to be celebrated and remembered.”

When asked if she planned to remove her protest sticker, Gery replied, “I will remove the sticker from my pass after Trump removes his name from the Kennedy Center.”