On Monday morning, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer announced that President Donald Trump will donate his salary for the first quarter of the year to the National Parks Service. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke said at the press briefing that the donation, a total of $78,333, will go toward historic battlefield maintenance.
Meanwhile, the skinny budget Trump released last month includes a 12 percent cut to the Department of the Interior, which oversees the nation’s national parks. That would amount to a loss of some $1.2 billion in funding.
Trump’s proposed budget cuts are occurring at a time when park attendance is soaring: The number of people visiting parks rose by more than 6 percent between 2015 and 2016, reaching a record 325 million visits, Motherboard reports.
