The Grift and Activism of AltNPS

The blurry line between resistance, performance, and a merch store

There’s always been something seductive about the idea of resistance from within: whistleblowers, insiders, movements bubbling up inside the very institutions they’re challenging.

That’s the narrative Alt National Park Service has been selling on its social media accounts since 2017. A coalition of defiant park rangers and environmental scientists, posting anonymously in opposition to a hostile administration. Speaking truth to power from deep inside the bureaucracy.

But is that what Alt NPS really is? Or is it an engagement engine, turning real fear into mystique, crisis into content, and community into customers?

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The Origin Story

Alt NPS emerged on Twitter and Facebook in January 2017 after the Trump administration suspended an official NPS Twitter account for retweeting crowd-size comparisons. The narrative was compelling: park rangers risking their careers to speak truth to power from inside the system.

In those early months, AltNPS focused on climate facts, environmental issues, and park-related news. It felt like a helpful voice in a chaotic time. Sure, the “insider sources” narrative was shaky, but it seemed mostly harmless.

The account faded during the Biden years. Understandable, given that much of the attraction and engagement was resistance to the first Trump administration. The content shifted towards recycled memes and outdoor-focused HomeGoods quotes, the kind of stuff that plays well to a Facebook-centric audience.

But with Trump’s 2024 re-election, AltNPS re-emerged stronger than ever. The account now boasts 3.4 million followers on Facebook, nearly 300k on Instagram, and ranks among the most followed on Bluesky. The bio still reads “The official ‘Resistance’ team of the U.S. National Park Service,” but the focus of its posting has drifted far from pubic lands and deeper into generic political news and commentary.

Then, things got a little weird

In early 2025, as the Trump administration began laying off large numbers of government employees and DOGE was running rampant, AltNPS began posting cryptic messages:

“Forty-three.”

“Eighty-three.”

“Fifty-nine. Sixty-seven.”

On some of the posts they would then reply “The general public can disregard.”

The implication was obvious. These must be secret signals to an underground resistance network, meant to bypass surveillance and inspire coordination behind the scenes.

But, this feels more like theater than resistance. If Alt NPS was a resistance movement coordinating within the federal government, why post breadcrumbs on Facebook and Bluesky? There are dozens of secure communications platforms available. Signal. Encrypted email. Tools that actual activists and journalists use daily.

Some followers started asking uncomfortable questions about the numbers and the overarching narrative of the account. Others pointed out how closely this resembled tactics used by QAnon. Some critics were attacked as MAGA sympathizers by more “bought-in” followers of AltNPS. Accounts like AltWatchers arose to highlight some of the more ridiculous claims and framing in AltNPS posts.

By mid-2025, these cryptic posts largely ceased. Likely not because any operation ended, but because an increasing number of their followers were getting uncomfortable with how closely their posting strategies resembled right-wing conspiracy tactics.

More recently, AltNPS introduced a new style of post. The account started posting content that feels like political fan-fiction. Dramatized, viscerally descriptive stories about ICE raids or federal overreach, stripped of sourcing and built for emotional reaction, which honestly, feels almost as weird as the numbers.

The comparisons to QAnon are hard to ignore. The It Could Happen Here podcast recently devoted an episode to what they called “BlueAnon,” examining how AltNPS’s cryptic messaging and conspiratorial tone have become difficult to distinguish from the tactics of far-right movements.

Alt NPS trained millions of people to see coded messages in cryptic posts, to believe in secret coordination, to trust anonymous sources over verified journalism. They primed an audience for conspiratorial thinking. An audience that is more than happy to fork over cash for a t-shirt that shows that they’re part of the “resistance”.

The Real Business Model

Because that might be what this actually is: a business built on borrowed credibility. The AltNPS store sells $5 stickers, $25 t-shirts, and $42 hoodies. All branded with resistance slogans, park-inspired graphics, or a knockoff Smokey the Bear. Their “Drive with Care” sticker is almost surely AI-generated. They originally claimed to be making merchandise at cost, but prices have risen since then, and $25 is hardly “at cost” for a cotton/poly t-shirt.

Ourparks.org (where altnps.org now redirects to), is lacking in depth. Much of the content and imagery feels (or is obviously) AI-generated. Each national park has its own page, but they read like a ChatGPT prompt: “Give me three facts and a description of every U.S. national park.” For an account claiming to be run by a network of passionate park rangers, federal employees, and environmental scientists, there’s a stunning absence of specific expertise or original insight.

The Good

To Alt NPS’s credit, some money appears to flow to reputable organizations. After skepticism and criticism of a lack of transparency built up amongst followers through the first part of 2025, they announced 2 partnerships. They posted about donating $2500 to Los Padres Forest Watch (LPFW), and $5000 and $8000 in separate donations to the Yosemite Climbing Association (YCA). They also touted a $5000 donation to the Capital Food Bank, and encouraged others to donate.

A YCA representative confirmed a partnership and a donation, although they did not confirm the amounts and whether it came from an individual or organization, despite several follow-ups. LPFW didn’t respond to my request for comment, but they are currently selling AltNPS “Resist” stickers on their online shop. As far as I can tell, these are the first partnerships/donations AltNPS has publicly claimed in its eight-year history.

I was unable to find evidence of “Our Parks” existing as a registered organization anywhere. Not as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Not as an LLC. The only listed address is a virtual mailbox service in North Carolina. The only method of contact is a form on the website, which says “this form isn’t the right place to request to join the coalition.” I attempted to reach out, with no reply. Mother Jones recently covered a few confirmed “Alt” federal accounts, like Resistance Rangers but they were also unable to confirm anything information about Alt NPS, saying “The account didn’t respond to a message seeking comment and the people I spoke with for this story don’t know who’s behind it and consider it an impostor.”

Yes, secrecy might be expected from a resistance group. But nonprofits publish annual reports and file public forms showing exactly how money is spent, allowing people to have a level of confidence that the dollars they’re contributing are put toward worthy goals. Alt NPS offers nothing more than vague partnership claims, loosely unverifiable donation amounts, a virtual mailbox, and a merch store. The size of these donations would trigger transparency and tax receipts from a reputable organization.

So yes, it seems some money may have gone to good causes (at least recently, after community pressure). But how much? What percentage of merch sales? Who decides where it goes? Why these organizations? Why not a national group like the National Parks Conservation Association? If merch is being sold “at cost”, where are these donations coming from? We have no idea. In the best case scenario is that these donations are all legitimate, do the ends justify the means? I’m not sure.

The News Is Real. The Framing Is a Problem.

I can hear the criticism already. “Why write something negative? They’re not the problem, the stuff they’re posting about is.”

And, it’s partially right. The information Alt NPS shares is usually real news, real policies, real threats to public lands. That’s not the problem.

The problem is how they get that info and what they do with it. Alt NPS doesn’t break news or share insider info, although they’d like to make it seem that way. They just repackage it. For every post framed as a “leak” to AltNPS, there’s a comparable news story…posted hours or days before they share it. It’s a glorified aggregator account.

The cycle works like this: An outlet like NPR, the New York Times, Reuters, etc, will publish a story about administration activities, based on named sources, verified documentation, research, and more. Then, hours or days later, Alt NPS posts the same information, repackaged and reframed as “reports we’re receiving.” They summarize it on Facebook and/or across several Bluesky posts. The tone is urgent and emotional.

Followers share it widely, praising Alt NPS for “getting the word out” while simultaneously complaining that “the media isn’t covering this.” For nearly everything they post, it’s easy to find near word-for-word prose in a published article, but teh AltNPS version is often stripped of context, details, and credit.

Lately, they’ve started including occasional citations at the end of long threads on Bluesky, but rarely on Facebook, where their posts reach tens of thousands of likes and comments. Sometimes it’s a document dump rather than an article (like PDFs of court filings or screenshots of agency reports). But the content of the posts still mirrors the work of the journalists who actually did the reporting on said documents.

This image had already appeared in a published article and was credited to Getty photographer Anna Moneymaker by the time AltNPS posted that this was “shared with them”. The “anonymous” artist collective behind the installation was named in that piece.

I’m not sure an American human wrote this unless you just used AI to summarize a BBC article. “The palace” and “honours” are giveaways.

Alt NPS is taking the very outlets people claim “won’t cover this” or “we can’t trust anymore” and repackaging their work to create the illusion that they have a monopoly on “what’s going on”.

Look, I’m not going to say that the “mainstream media” has the greatest track record these days, and they’re by no means the only aggregator account out there. But, this approach plays into the worst conspiracy theories about the media: that mainstream outlets hide the truth and that all professional journalism is establishment propaganda. These are similar to narratives fueling right-wing media distrust. AltNPS is just selling those narratives wrapped in progressive aesthetics.

I’m left…confused

When I started looking into this, I thought I’d find something more definitive. Maybe a person to talk to. Or at least a clear explanation of what AltNPS is trying to be, good or bad.

But there’s no smoking gun. No leadership. No transparency. Just a rotating feed of vague resistance content, cryptic storytelling, and I’m left with more of a confused, melancholic takeaway than anything else.

AltNPS sells an understandably seductive message. We want to believe that there is a highly coordinated resistance that’s working against all the bad things. We want to feel like there are people fighting the good fight. And it’s easy to fall into the trap of feeling like we’re part of it because we reshared a post or bought a t-shirt.

We’re left with an odd situation. One in which an anonymous account is able to work the algorithms and share news in a way far exceeds many journalists, news outlets, and organizations, albeit in a distorted/exaggerated/engagement-optimized fashion.

Are they actively editing and de-contextualizing the work of others to make a few bucks off merchandise? It sure seems like it. But maybe it doesn’t matter.

Regardless, I don’t love the way it undermines the work of other journalists and dresses serious issues in the trappings of what we imagine a “resistance” to be like.

Support journalists by subscribing, or by sharing their work directly with attribution (I recommend Wes Siler or RE:Public for public lands focused work). Donate to advocacy organizations with transparent finances–there are hundreds doing verified, accountable work. Heck, follow AltNPS, if it makes sense for you. But maybe don’t buy a t-shirt from a virtual mailbox in North Carolina and hope for the best.

A social media account isn’t going to save us.