Save Our Parks Encourages Watchers To Use Tip Line For Park And Public Land Damage During Trump’s Shutdown
See Something, Say Something by Submitting to SaveOurParks.US as Burgum Leaves America’s Parks, Public Lands, and Wildlife Unprotected While Continuing Censorship Campaign
HELENA, MT – Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it: Donald Trump and his cronies, like Doug Burgum, are hellbent on repeating every single mistake from the last historic Trump government shutdown. Last week, Trump and Republicans shut the government down, again, and decided to keep America’s cherished national parks open, despite multiple warnings from former park officials and the president’s failed past track-record.
National park resources were already potentially damaged over the first weekend of Trump’s shutdown. A recreational boater in the Baltimore area came upon a barge that had broken loose and was banging into park seawalls at the now-shut down and unstaffed Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine. The boater had a difficult time reporting it to the National Park Service and U.S. Coast Guard due to Trump’s shutdown, noting how “it is the little things that add up, until you really notice them.”
In response, Save Our Parks is encouraging all park and public land users to submit information on misuse, damage, vandalism, safety concerns, and overflowing bathrooms and garbage cans to the group’s tip line. The anonymous and secure portal at SaveOurParks.US is a way for the public to make sure emerging and critical issues can be addressed if the Trump administration and Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum won’t.
“Trump and Burgum have set up our parks, public lands, and wildlife to be collateral damage in their shutdown. Already running on skeleton crews, now our parks won’t be run by anybody for the foreseeable future. Americans need to be the first line of defense in protecting our cherished national parks, public lands, and wildlife from the overt and intentional mismanagement by Secretary Burgum. If you see something, say something by submitting it to our tip line at SaveOurParks.US,” said Jayson O’Neill, Save Our Parks spokesperson. “This shutdown proves once and for all that, in the eyes of Burgum, our treasured parks are nothing more than partisan tools to help him protect Donald Trump. If Secretary Burgum won’t do his job during Trump’s shutdown, we all need to step up and do it for him.”
Save Our Parks asks that individuals submitting tips be specific when providing information and include details such as location (GPS coordinates if possible), including park or public land name, area, photo and/or video evidence, detailed descriptions, other general observations, and the time and date of the problem.
Additional background:
It’s no secret the Trump administration wanted this shutdown to nefariously fire more critical civil servants at a time when our parks are already run by skeleton crews. Trump’s “Department of Government Efficiency” chainsawed about 7,500 jobs at Interior, making up more than ten percent of its workforce and nearly 24% of the park services. If Trump and Burgum get their wish, more crippling staffing reductions will be coming soon. Trump’s budget calls for an additional 30% funding cuts, and Burgum’s leaked Interior Department reduction in force (RIF) plan could mean additional workforce reductions of up to 50% at some divisions and nearly 30% additional reductions at the National Park Service.
During Trump’s last government shutdown, his administration forced most parks to stay open by illegally redirecting funds, while furloughing National Park Service employees. The results? Overflowing toilets, trash spilling out of unserviced containers, vandalism, illegal off-roading and joyriding, and massive damage to our treasured resources that may never be repaired. In a letter, U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) urged Burgum to classify Interior Department employees essential during this shutdown for these very reasons: to protect our public lands and to keep Americans safe.
As Trump and Burgum repeat the same mistakes from Trump’s last GOP shutdown, they haven’t let the pain they’re inflicting on the country distract them from their campaign of mass censorship across America’s parks. Park visitors this summer were subjected to requests asking that they flag any “negative content” deemed “inappropriately disparaging to Americans past or living.”
Recent investigations reveal the administration has systematically ordered the removal of signs, exhibits, and educational materials addressing slavery, Indigenous persecution, civil rights struggles, and other challenging aspects of American history. Now, the Trump-Burgum censorship agenda for our national parks includes removing signs that include references to climate change. Ironically, as national parks suffer from more intense and more frequent natural disasters, park rangers are being forced to remove signs explaining why.