Weekly Watch: Parks Are Crumbling
Trump and Burgum Waste $1Million+ A Day On National Guard Cleanup As Parks Crumble; USDA’s Rollins Pushes To Sell Off 44 Million Acres Of Protected Public Lands
HELENA, MT – Save Our Parks is tracking the massive assault against America’s national parks and public lands system by Donald Trump, billionaire Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, and their cronies, documenting the ongoing consequences of Trump’s unprecedented attack on our nation’s natural heritage.
In perhaps the most brazen example yet of the administration’s dereliction of duty, the New York Times published a damning exposé showing that since Trump took office and under Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s tutelage America’s parks and the National Park Service have been decimated by their fail-by-design to privatize plan. The administration is completely failing to meet its commitments, leaving parks dangerously short on rangers, maintenance crews, and emergency responders.
Here is a rundown of Burgum’s failures harming America’s parks, visitors, and communities exposed by the New York Times:
❌Entrance fees are going uncollected due to severe staffing shortages
Zion National Park has lost an estimated $2 million in revenue as of July
❌Cultural, historical, and conservation educational programs are gone
Students and school programs are no longer able to participate in some educational programs after cuts
❌Critical campground and trail maintenance is being delayed
Earlier this year a park visitor was killed by a falling tree branch at Yosemite National Park
❌Park and federal emergency services are severely understaffed and are operating on skeleton crews putting park employees, visitors, and communities at greater risk
Emergency response teams are at 10% of normal staffing levels in some parks and the park rangers in others have been reassigned to other tasks
❌Confusion, uncertainty and concern abound among park staff, visitors, and gateway communities and businesses
Park toilets are overflowing and are being trashed due to the staffing shortages
As a distraction to the crisis unfolding in our nation’s parks, Trump has deployed over 2,000 National Guard troops to Washington D.C. at a cost of over $1 million per day, forcing them to perform “beautification” tasks like trash removal and groundskeeping that typically fall to the National Park Service. Meanwhile, billionaire diva Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has been a weak-kneed pusher of Trump’s illegal use of the military despite the ongoing park and public land management failures occurring under his watch. The militarized cleanup effort comes as the National Park Service is in a full-blown staffing crisis.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who fired more than 8,000 employees across the Interior Department, continues to play around while America’s cherished parks crumble around him, with parks like Yosemite struggling to provide basic visitor services with overwhelmed staff. The already overworked staff has been “left with little to no bandwidth” to implement projects, with thousands of essential positions vacant, including roughly 100 superintendent roles. No congressional Republicans have spoken up against these cuts and mismanagement.
Speaking of diva Doug Burgum, it doesn’t appear this wannabe tough guy is actually doing much related to his secretarial role as new questions about how the the Grand Canyon fire was managed (or mismanaged) come to the surface. In fact, Burgum has been largely missing on the job or simply not doing it outside of a few canned photo ops and media appearances. While we’re not surprised a billionaire who made his fortune off of Bill Gates’s Microsoft would be bad at protecting our parks, public lands and wildlife, Americans shouldn’t be okay with his secrecy. Even scandal-plagued former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke posted a public schedule, as did former oil and lobbyist David Bernhardt, but not so for diva Doug. It begs the question: Where’s Doug-o and what is he hiding?
And, if we are talking about outlandish, brazen acts by Trump’s unqualified cabinet members, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced the administration is one step closer in the rulemaking process in their desperate attempt to rescind the roadless rule. This is little more than another attempt by this administration to sell-off public lands to politically connected industrial extractive industries. Eliminating this rule would sell out and end protections for more than 44 million acres of roadless national forest land. The public only has until September 19th to comment on the Trump administration’s latest sell-off scheme.
Each week, Save Our Parks compiles and distributes a roundup documenting threats to America’s national parks and public lands. Our weekly watch report tracks budget cuts, staffing shortages, privatization efforts, and policy changes affecting our treasured natural and historical sites. Compiled news coverage, eyewitness accounts, and official reports from across the country provide essential information in order to hold the Trump administration, Secretary Burgum, and lawmakers accountable and defend our shared natural heritage.
Parks and Public Lands in the News:
Safety and Preparedness
New York Times: Trump Shrank Staffing of National Parks. See How Many Are Struggling.
“Staffing at the National Park Service had been steadily shrinking in the past decade because of tightened budgets. But it has lost 24 percent of its permanent employees since President Trump took office, according to data compiled by the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Association. Among those who left: more than 1,800 park workers who accepted the administration’s resignation initiatives, devised to quickly reduce the size of government.”
E&E News: Yosemite feels the burn of an understaffed summer
“The Trump administration has not disclosed its tally for national park staffing levels after its effort to slash the government workforce hit arguably the nation’s most popular federal agency earlier this year. But the park is down at least 40 staffers compared with last summer, according to figures shared with POLITICO’s E&E News by a person familiar with Yosemite’s current staffing. This summer, there are roughly 400 permanent staff and about 330 seasonal employees working in the park, that person said. Six Yosemite employees who spoke with E&E News said those missing rangers are felt by staffers, as parks have long dealt with a significant number of vacant positions and tourist numbers that climb every year.”
Washington Post: National Guard troops deployed in D.C. add sanitation, landscaping duties
“More than 2,200 troops, some from as far away as Mississippi and Louisiana, have been deployed in D.C. since Trump’s declaration of a ‘crime emergency’ here. Ostensibly, they were mobilized to support federal law enforcement and local police, but in recent days those orders have expanded to encompass ‘beautification’ tasks such as trash removal and groundskeeping around the National Mall and other federal property. Service members may work on removing graffiti, too. Typically, custodial work like this falls to the National Park Service, which was already facing staffing shortfalls when the Trump administration this spring directed additional cuts as it gutted the federal workforce. The service used to have 200 people assigned to maintain thousands of acres of trees and gardens in D.C., and now there are 20, a Park Service official told The Post.”
The Guardian: Protests at Glacier as national parks reel from Trump cuts: ‘They’ve gutted staff, gutted funding’
“But congressional support for funding projects in national parks comes at a jarring disconnect with the Trump administration’s slashing of jobs at national parks countrywide, including at Glacier, where an already overworked staff has been left with little to no bandwidth to implement projects. No congressional Republicans, including Daines or Zinke, have spoken up against the cuts and freezes, and all voted for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that rescinded $276m from the National Park Service (NPS).”
Arizona Central: Canyon officials ignored 'critical' warnings on Dragon Bravo, fire plan shows
“But records, including the Grand Canyon's fire management plan, are at odds with the official narrative. They show officials downplayed threats to public safety — and decided to let the fire burn for seven days — even as fuel and weather conditions repeatedly reached the brink of critical thresholds for fire risk.”
SFGate: New report suggests National Park Service mismanaged Dragon Bravo Fire
“This meant that in just six days, three of the park service’s four wildfire red flags had been raised — but in a status update shared to the park’s Facebook page, officials said the fire ‘continues to be managed under a confine and contain strategy,’ with ‘no threat to public safety or developed areas.’ Evacuations began two days later.”
Privatization and Sell-Offs
Bloomberg Law: USDA Targets Roadless Areas in Forest Service Rollback Plan
“The Roadless Rule’s pending rollback will affect an area of forests roughly the size of Missouri. Separate rules that govern roadless areas in Colorado and Idaho will remain in place for now, the Forest Service said. The Roadless Rule was finalized in 2001 as a way to protect drinking water and endangered species. Among the places the rule has preserved are parts of the world’s largest coastal temperate rainforest in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, vast mountain ranges in central Idaho, the peaks and plateaus above Utah’s contested Bears Ears National Monument, and the Appalachian forest in Virginia.”
Daily Beast: Trump Wants to Turn National Parks Into Golf Clubs
“President Donald Trump mused Thursday about turning D.C.’s national parks into golf clubs while meeting with police and military personnel at his war-on-crime spectacle in the capital. ‘One of the things we are going to be redoing is your parks,’ the president said as he spoke from the U.S. Park Police’s Anacostia Operations Facility in Washington, D.C. ‘I’m very good at grass because I have a lot of golf courses all over the place. I know more about grass than any human being I think anywhere in the world.’”
Texas Monthly: Texas Was Set to Create Its Largest Wildlife Refuge. Then the Feds Did Something They’d Seemingly Never Done Before.
“The state’s oldest wildlife refuge has become the latest flash point in a battle between conservation efforts and the Trump administration’s push for expanded domestic energy development. Last month, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced it was scrapping a major expansion plan for the refuge some fifteen years in the making, which would have grown it by up to 700,000 acres through voluntary conservation-easement agreements with local property owners.”
Powell Tribune: Hageman still favors selling federal land
“Despite the failure of recent deeply unpopular proposals to sell parcels of public land to the highest bidder, Rep. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyo., appears to still be in favor of Utah Sen. Mike Lee’s, R-Utah, continued efforts to sell off chunks of the country’s portfolio of properties. At Hageman’s Converse County town hall event Monday, a question from the audience inspired the second term representative to discuss her commitment to sell public land for sale in an attempt to increase property available to municipalities to relieve housing and infrastructure concerns, as well as attempting to cover the cost of tax relief to the nation’s top earners.”
Moscow-Pullman Daily News: Public land advocates brace for more battles
“Public land advocates are looking ahead to the next fight. They won a defensive battle in June but expect they will have to fend off more attacks on public ownership of the land and ecosystems that support wildlife, hunting, fishing and a wide range of other outdoor pursuits.”
Community Impacts
The Hill: Parks and museums emerge as new culture war battlegrounds
“Similar efforts are taking place at the National Park Service, a government agency, following a March executive order directing the Interior Department to ensure that public monuments, memorials, statues and markers ‘do not contain descriptions, depictions, or other content that inappropriately disparage Americans.’ A June memo from the administration directed National Park Service units — which include 433 parks, monuments, battlefields, parkways, historic sites and more — to review all public-facing content for messaging that disparages Americans or that ‘emphasizes matters unrelated to the beauty, abundance, or grandeur’ of natural features.”
Associated Press: Ranger fired for hanging transgender flag in Yosemite and park visitors may face prosecution
“Jayson O’Neill with the advocacy group Save Our Parks said Joslin’s firing appears aimed at deterring park employees from expressing their views as the Trump administration pursues broad cuts to the federal workforce. Since Trump took office, the National Park Service has lost approximately 2,500 employees from a workforce that had about 10,000 people, said Bill Wade, executive director of the Association of National Park Rangers. The Republican president is proposing a $900 million cut to the agency’s budget next year.”
The Hill: Interior deputizes border agents to National Park sites amid DC takeover
“The Interior Department is deputizing federal border agents and sending them to National Park Service sites amid the federal law enforcement takeover of Washington, D.C., Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said Wednesday. Burgum wrote in a post on the social platform X that the department ‘has authorized a service-wide deputization’ of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers to ‘intensify crime deterrence efforts’ at park service sites.”
Stories on the Trail
@RBReich: Americans love their national parks. There’s a reason why they were once described as “America’s best idea.” So why are Trump and Republicans taking an axe to the National Park Service’s budget? Follow the money.
@GWagner: 90%(!) cuts at the National Park Service to maintain DC parks. Now it's National Guard [soldiers] doing the work, who aren't exactly cheaper. Another DOGE "cut" that is anything but
@MorePerfectUS: BREAKING: Workers at Yosemite and Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Parks just won their union elections. They are the first national parks to unionize in several years.
The Crisis Continues:
The crisis continues to escalate across America’s 640-million-acre public lands system and is poised to get worse after Trump’s spending package, passed by Congressional Republicans, slashed some $267 million of previously committed funding for national parks. The National Park Service has lost nearly a quarter of its permanent workforce since Trump took office, with some parks now operating without superintendents and at half-staff during peak visitation. Between Trump, DOGE, and Republicans’ draconian budget cuts, hiring freezes, and workforce reductions, the staffing shortages are forcing scientists, park rangers, and other safety personnel to clean toilets and pick up garbage instead of conducting critical work like ongoing maintenance and supporting visitor safety.
Save Our Parks documents and exposes conditions across America’s federal park and public lands system through monitoring reports, visitor testimonials, and accountability research. The campaign maintains comprehensive documentation through its website at SaveOurParks.us.
To speak with Save Our Parks spokesperson Jayson O’Neill, email jayson@focalpointstrategygroup.com.
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