An independent effort to document the historical signs, exhibits, and interpretive materials being removed from America's National Parks and Wildlife Refuges. We update the data regularly as new information comes in.
874 total entries. The 436 flagged for review excludes 292 entries where park staff self-reported "Nothing to Report." Another 14 are physical repair (not censorship), 11 are from FWS FOIA data, and 9 are classified as other. See our data methodology for full details.
This is an interactive map that seeks to document the 874 historical signs and exhibits that have been flagged, revised, or removed from U.S. National Parks and Wildlife Refuges under Secretary's Order 3431 and Executive Order 14253. The data is messy, incomplete, and constantly changing. We do our best, but we don't always get it right.
Each entry on the map includes the park name, the specific interpretive material affected, and the status we've been able to determine (flagged for review, revise, replace/remove, or court-restored). Where available, we include photographs of the signs before and after removal, most of which come from the incredible volunteers at Save Our Signs.
Executive Order 14253 "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History" and Secretary's Order 3431 directed parks to censor any content "that inappropriately disparages Americans, or that emphasizes matters unrelated to the beauty, abundance, or grandeur" of natural features.
The censorship campaign targets history that this administration finds inconvenient: the stories of enslaved people at plantation sites, the science of climate change at glacier parks, the experiences of Japanese Americans at incarceration camps, and the Civil Rights movement at memorial sites across the country.
Without documentation, these removals happen quietly. Most Americans will never know what they lost. This project is one small piece of a much larger effort by organizations like the National Parks Conservation Association, Save Our Signs, the Sierra Club, and Democracy Forward to make what's happening visible and hold the government accountable.
It's worth noting that this is happening while the Park Service itself is being gutted. Since January 2025, the NPS has lost roughly 24% of its permanent workforce, about 4,000 people. Around 1,000 were fired in a single day in February 2025, and another 270+ were targeted for termination in October. The proposed FY2026 budget would cut NPS funding by 36%, or $1.2 billion, the largest cut in the agency's 109-year history. Meanwhile, the parks themselves are falling apart. The NPS has a $23 billion deferred maintenance backlog across more than 75,000 assets, roads, bridges, trails, buildings, and utility systems. Nearly 70 parks have reduced visitor center hours, 22 have postponed maintenance, and 11 have closed or delayed opening facilities. Some parks are struggling with basic search and rescue.
This project started with a leaked internal NPS review database that catalogs interpretive signs and exhibits across the park system. When Secretary's Order 3431 was issued, park staff were directed to review and flag content for removal or revision. That database is our foundation, but it's not the whole picture.
The database created by Save Our Signs has been instrumental in documenting photos of removed signs and exhibits. They've done great work: visiting parks across the country, tracking what's been removed, restored, and making all of it publicly available. Their analysis of the leaked data is a great walkthrough of the NPS survey and its quirks. We rely heavily on their Removal Tracker to move entries from "flagged" to "confirmed removed" or "restored." We appreciate them for allowing us to integrate their data into this map (inclusion does not imply endorsement of this map's analysis).
The Sierra Club has been equally important. They filed the Freedom of Information Act requests that uncovered records of interpretive exhibits flagged or removed at National Wildlife Refuges, extending visibility into censorship that would otherwise have gone completely unnoticed. Their persistence in pursuing government transparency on public lands is something we deeply admire.
We also cross-reference with press reporting and court filings.
We make mistakes. The data gets updated regularly as new removals are confirmed, court orders take effect, and people point out things we got wrong. We'd rather be honest about our limitations than pretend we have all the answers. For the full details on how we handle the data, see our data methodology page.
We've been fortunate to have some press coverage. This kind of visibility helps put pressure on our public officials, and we're thankful to the journalists covering this story.
Journalists, bloggers, and educators — you can embed the interactive map on your own site. Just copy and paste the code below.
The map auto-detects iframe embedding and switches to a compact view. Adjust height as needed for your layout.
This project is independent, ad-free, and entirely volunteer-run. If it's been useful to you, a small contribution helps keep it going.
☕ Buy Me a CoffeeInterested in becoming a trained public land history steward? We need volunteers who monitor parks, monuments, refuges, and heritage sites for content that has been removed, altered, or changed. Your assistance will contribute to the public record of verified removals that is accessible by journalists, researchers, and policymakers.
I Want to Help →🔒 We'll never spam you. We'll only share your email with the Sierra Club, who are organizing efforts to monitor parks.
See every flagged, removed, and restored entry across America's public lands.
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