A gym rat bites his lip and thrusts his hips against the machine; a shirtless, tattooed hunk ties a belt around his wrists; a woman with a nose ring crawls seductively over the camera as her girlfriend pulls her hair; a man in a Batman costume does a striptease.
NOW THAT WE HAVE YOUR ATTENTION.
Cut to: Sonoran sunsets ablaze over the Tucson Mountains, sprawling tracts of desert lupine, tall, knotty saguaros that shoot up from the ground like monuments and a finger pointed right at the viewer. “We need you!” the finger says.
As the current administration threatens national parks, TikTok accounts are raising awareness with bizarre, provocative videos. One of the latest parks to join the roster is Tucson’s own Saguaro National Park — or, at least, an unofficial Saguaro page run by “three javelinas in a trenchcoat,” per the account’s bio.
“I’m just a person in Tucson who loves nature and the NPS and wants to help spread awareness,” said the creator of the parody account who, preferring anonymity, opted to be referred to as Three Javelinas. “They (parks) are one of the only places we instantly understand not to disturb. We should feel that way with all of nature, but parks in particular act as a natural respite from the woes of society.”
Three Javelinas’ account @saguaro.nps amassed over 14,000 followers in its first week of posting. Its most viral video — the one with the man thrusting at the gym, captioned “POV; you REALLY love Saguaros” and “everyone loves a good pr**k” — has over 100,000 views.
In the last months, these pages have appeared across the country like thumbtacks on a map of U.S. parks. Unofficial profiles for Mount Rainier and Mount Hood garnered attention last year for their endlessly entertaining, elbow-throwing feuds. @visit.yosemite, which also experiments with playful, racy national park content, boasts nearly 200,000 followers and can be found posing questions like “is it possible for a national park to be too big?” or inviting all “cougars and older moms” to visit the park at the same time.
But underneath the satire, these parody accounts are up against an administration that is obstinate about defunding the parks that they post on behalf of. President Trump’s 2026 budget proposal aims to cut $1.2 billion from the National Parks Service. In a press release, president and CEO of the National Parks Conservation Association Theresa Pierno called the budget the “most extreme, unrealistic and destructive” ever proposed in the agency’s existence.
“I’d bet my left foot (that’s my hiking foot) that the majority of these politicians have never set foot in a park or local nature site,” Three Javelinas said. “Other than maybe for a political photo-op.”
One of the first sweeping consequences of Trump’s initiatives was mass layoffs.
Three months ago, the Department of the Interior laid off around 1,000 probationary workers in the National Parks Service. On this day, which many refer to as the “Valentine’s Day Massacre,” Saguaro National Park lost two of its employees. The DOI let go of over four dozen workers in Arizona alone, with hard hits at Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, Grand Canyon National Park and Petrified Forest National Park. More job cuts are expected to come. Secretary of the Interior Doug Bergum has also enacted a hiring freeze within the parks service.
NPS grants are in jeopardy as well, with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) preparing to cancel what the department claims could save $26 million. Programs are targeted for reasons including “D.E.I” and “Climate change/sustainability,” per published reports.
Three Javelinas points, in contrast, to the Pentagon’s $11.8 billion contract with Lockheed Martin to produce F-35 fighter jets. “I have words, but they are all four-lettered. It is infuriating, disheartening and confusing.”
“How did ‘America’s best idea’ become ‘waste?’”
Three Javelinas contemplates this question in a TikTok about the strangely shaped crested saguaro. The caption reads: “We’ll never find out the real science behind these green giants if funding keeps getting cut…Do you think these cacti are cool enough to protect?” Meanwhile, the video itself eroticizes the crested saguaro and is set to equally provocative song lyrics.
This is the algorithm. The videos are lures, and the goal is attention. While waving around humor and suggestive material in one hand, the account strikes the viewer with the other.
“The public has a habit of glossing over signs/text-based postings,” Three Javelinas said. “From my perspective, the use of provocative videos is just a hook. It gets the user engaged immediately and plants a seed in their mind.”
Much of the profile’s content aims to disseminate helpful, practical information to parkgoers, details that might be posted up in a visitor center. A video showing off the park’s vast trail systems underlies the words “we promise to make your legs shake.” Another of a man performing squat jumps (from behind, of course) is used to warn of rattlesnakes: “You wanna see some tail? Let me show you how it’s done.”
Other videos provide historical, cultural and ecological facts. One, accompanied by a pornographic audio, explains the Indigenous and Spanish history of the saguaro’s name. The viral hip-thrusting TikTok outlines environmental factors that account for differences in the cacti’s appearances.
But the main goal of the page is to champion environmental protection, especially with regard to the Endangered Species Act (ESA), the 1973 landmark legislation that protects endangered and threatened flora and fauna. “A big goal — not the sole purpose, but a large part of it — was to raise awareness for the proposed changes to the ESA,” Three Javelinas said.
“Apparently you are not attractive if you’re not on the national parks page,” a man dressed as the caped crusader says in one video, “so this is my audition.” But just as he goes to open up his cape, the clip jump cuts to a photo montage of the lesser long-nosed bat, a once-endangered species that is native to the desert scrub of Southern Arizona.
The caption claims, “You know what’s not attractive (?) trying to mess with nature.”
The Endangered Species Act is currently up against a slew of attacks from the Trump administration and legislators, not the least catastrophic of which is the ESA Amendments Act of 2025. The legislation would eliminate protections for critical habitat, make threatened species a problem of the states, sanction ruinous projects and repeal protections for species in favor of, as the National Resources Defense Council puts it, “special rules that often favor industry.” Three Javelinas’ post, while chaotic and diverting, is a call to action, a mobilization to submit public comments concerning the act.
“The hope was to get more people to make public comments, though general awareness is always a nice bonus,” Three Javelinas said. “If we lose a species, we don’t get it back.
“I do it simply for the love of the wild, but if people need a selfish reason, fine. The majority of our problems, at least medically speaking, can be solved by something in nature. But if we keep losing nature, we’re cutting the legs out from our future.”
As @saguaro.nps continues to grow, Three Javelinas chooses for their content to remain unmonetized; their intention has never been to make money from the account. Though some viewers erroneously believe that interacting with the posts will directly help to fund Saguaro and other parks, the profile’s pinned video lists effective methods for supporters to contribute to their favorite protected areas, such as contacting Congress, volunteering at and visiting parks and donating to partner organizations.
“We ask that if people are serious that they donate their time and money directly to local parks or organizations like the National Park Foundation,” Three Javelinas said. “Liking videos and sharing them is fun, but it means nothing if people don’t act. Like the saguaros, we have to stand tall.”
This article appears in May 29 – Jun 5, 2025.