Doug Burgum Caught Plotting to Hand Off Piece of Yosemite to Private Developer
HELENA, MT – Breaking new reporting reveals the Trump administration’s National Park Service under Doug Burgum has spent more than a year quietly working to carve a strip of Yosemite National Park out for a private developer. It’s the latest development in Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s fail-by-design push to sell off public lands and privatize America’s national parks. National Park Service staff in California and Washington, DC have been directed by Interior Department leadership to negotiate a land exchange handing a Nevada-based company access to a roughly quarter-mile strip of the park.
The Park Service rejected similar proposals for that same property for more than two decades, spanning the Bush, Obama, and Biden administrations, before Burgum’s Interior Department revived the scheme behind closed doors. If the deal goes through, it would break 150 years of precedent of striving to expand and protect America’s ‘best idea’ national parks. The potential Yosemite giveaway follows news of a proposed land swap deal for data center development opening up Prince William Forest Park in Virginia.
“If mismanaging parks and stealing entrance fees for Trump’s D.C. vanity projects wasn’t enough, now Americans find out Doug Burgum and his cronies spent a year secretly negotiating to hand a piece of Yosemite National Park over to a well-connected developer, all while lying to us about protecting them,” said Jayson O’Neill, Save Our Parks spokesperson. “This is Burgum’s fail-by-design agenda in action: gut the Park Service, then quietly cede treasured park land to private developers, thinking nobody’s watching. National parks belong to the American people, not monied developers who are part of Trump’s donor class. Congress and the public deserve full transparency before Burgum rolls back more protections, wastes more public funds, or hands over a single acre of our shared heritage.”
The deal is a direct extension of Trump’s anti-park, anti-public lands Project 2025 agenda, which Burgum has faithfully been implementing since his confirmation. He has spent the last year and a half stripping the Park Service of staff and funding while laying the groundwork to hand America’s public lands and parks over to billionaire developers and extractive industries. It also comes after Burgum told senators during his confirmation hearing that his department would protect every single inch of the national parks, and after Trump himself pledged this August to protect every acre of public lands.
Additional Resources:
Doug Burgum Raids National Park Fees for Donald Trump’s Political Events and Vanity Projects
President Trump Has a Pet-Project Docket at the National Parks
National park maintenance work sidelined as Trump's Freedom 250 takes precedence
National Park Check-In: Doug Burgum is Leaving America’s Parks Understaffed and Underfunded
To speak with Save Our Parks spokesperson Jayson O’Neill, email jayson@focalpointstrategygroup.com.
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