Weekly Watch: While Parks Crumble, Burgum Jets Across the World on the Taxpayers’ Dime
While America’s Parks and Public Lands Crumble, Burgum Jets Across the World on the Taxpayers’ Dime to Push Trump’s Losing Energy Policy
HELENA, MT – Save Our Parks is tracking the massive assault against America’s national parks and public lands system by Donald Trump, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, and their cronies, documenting the ongoing consequences of Trump’s unprecedented attack on our nation’s natural heritage.
Where in the world is Trump’s Interior Secretary? You know, the cabinet member that is tasked with managing America’s interior — national parks, public lands, natural resources, and wildlife. Usually, your guess is as good as anyone's, since as Interior Secretary, Burgum has broken with almost twenty years of precedent and still refuses to share a public schedule of any kind. The lack of transparency and accountability is becoming costly and concerning.
While national park emergency response teams operate at a fraction of their capacity and visitors face delayed rescues and safety risks, Burgum operates in complete secrecy. Past Interior Secretaries, dating back to at least 2009, maintained public schedules, but Burgum has made clear his disdain for even bare minimum levels of sunshine. He prefers that the American people stay in the dark, and only comes out for canned media spots, while he lays off thousands of Interior employees, guts a fourth of the National Park Service Staff, pushes for more draconian budget cuts, and flaunts and violates the law. Totally unbothered by the disrepair of America’s interior, Burgum’s attention is on the rest of the world, where he fawns over foreign royalty at the expense of taxpayers and Americans’ electrical bills.
Secretary Burgum’s post of himself gazing at Saudi oligarchs during his latest exterior exploits
This week, Burgum is doing exactly that. As our parks and public lands fall into disrepair under his mismanagement and “fail-by-design” strategy, Burgum, along with Energy Secretary Chris Wright, is a featured guest at the sixth P-TEC Ministerial conference in Athens, Greece.
This jet-setting junket is part of Burgum’s “duties” as a member of Trump’s National Energy Dominance Council (NEDC). His assignment: to sell out America’s domestically produced resources to other countries, enriching Trump’s friends around the world while the American people suffer an affordability crisis. Burgum will also undoubtedly take time on this trip to try to force the Trump administration’s losing energy policies on the rest of the world.
In just nine months at Interior, Burgum has obediently taken a wrecking ball to the U.S. wind industry, blocking or stalling project after project, even ones that are almost completely finished. “Under this administration, there is not a future for offshore wind because it is too expensive and not reliable enough,” he falsely claimed at the Gastech conference in Milan this year. Double-speaking Burgum, once a champion of wind as Governor of North Dakota, has also taken to pretending that he doesn’t understand how energy and battery storage works, saying “you don’t know when the wind’s gonna blow.”
The NEDC Council, of course, is the same one whose publicly stated top priority is providing white glove, concierge service to fossil fuel interests. Burgum’s taxpayer-funded vacation is rumored to include additional stops in Bahrain, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia, all likely paid for by taxpayers out of Interior’s budget. For out-of-touch, corrupt billionaires like Trump and Burgum, who maintains extensive financial ties to fossil fuel giants Continental Resources and Hess Corp., this self-interested globetrotting is nothing new. But now, it’s happening on our dime, at the same time national park employees, firefighters, and emergency responders go without pay. Meanwhile, Burgum’s Interior Department continues to issue hundreds of oil and gas drilling permits and Trump nominates the former Big Oil-compromised Republican New Mexico congressman and gubernatorial loser Steve Pearce to head the Bureau of Land Management.
Trump’s former scandal-plagued Interior Secretary, Rep. Ryan Zinke was the subject of numerous investigations for his international junkets on the taxpayer dime, which violated the agency’s travel policy, as well as other scandals. Failing Interior Secretary Burgum must answer critical questions about his continued international junkets and face congressional accountability for his actions that run counter to Americans’ birthright and violate the law.
Parks and Public Lands in the News:
Safety and Preparedness
Utah News Dispatch: As Utah’s national parks stay open, so do questions about the shutdown’s impact
“At the latest in a series of protests in Moab on Friday, a small group vented their frustration and fears as more than 9,000 National Park Service employees — the majority of its workforce — remain furloughed across the country, and others are working without pay. ‘Bare bones staff picking up trash isn’t meeting the mission, and visitors aren’t having the experience they should have,’ said Allyson Mathis, a former park ranger at Canyonlands, Capitol Reef and Grand Canyon national parks.”
KCRA: Yosemite National Park visitors bend rules during government shutdown
“‘You definitely hear a couple of reports of people parachuting off the rock formations there, or paragliding—things that are a little more exciting,’ Hodgman said. ‘I think that that's happening a lot less often than the sort of quieter, more subtle breaking of the rules. So, people parking overnight when they're not supposed to, saw quite a few people smoking.’”
Privatization and Sell-Offs
Associated Press: Trump administration considers revoking ban on oil and gas development near Chaco historical park
“The Trump administration says it will be initiating formal meetings with Native American tribes in the southwestern U.S. as it considers revoking a 20-year ban on oil and gas development across hundreds of square miles of federal land surrounding Chaco Culture National Historical Park.”
Roll Call: Congress leads reversal of land use rules amid BLM director questions
“The congressional actions have more immediate effect than would a time- and manpower-consuming rule reversal by the BLM, an agency that is working under an acting director whose authority is under challenge. They allow the Trump administration to implement policies to increase drilling and mining on public lands.”
Sierra Club: The Smell of Sagebrush: Trump’s Systematic Attack on Our Public Lands Continues
“The Trump Administration is moving systematically—proposing to sell off public lands, slashing budgets and firing park rangers, repealing the Roadless Rule, and now going after the Public Lands Rule. Each attack weakens the safeguards that keep our shared lands from being handed over to corporations. That's exactly why we need to push back on each piece, every step of the way. Without this rule, we return to extraction-first management.”
Public Domain: Top Interior Official Made Millions In An Industry Trump Despises
“Yet when it came to filling the No. 2 post at Interior, Trump and his team tapped Katharine MacGregor, a veteran of the first Trump administration who between stints in government made millions as an executive at NextEra Energy, the energy giant that has 55 percent of its portfolio in wind and other renewables. Its subsidiary, NextEra Energy Resources, is among the world’s largest wind and solar developers, with more than 160 wind projects in the U.S. and Canada.”
Community Impacts
The Cool Down: Experts issue warning on worsening crisis at US national parks: 'Downward trend'
“Due to snowstorms that year, Yosemite National Park was closed intermittently, and roads remained closed longer than they would be in drier years. On the flip side, more people visited in the peak summer season. While snowpack and rainfall can stop visitors from coming in, it can also lead to better water recreation later in the season, such as higher-flowing rivers and waterfalls. According to Nature, ‘Despite a downward trend in snowpack, and fewer expected smaller snowfall events, extreme snowfall events are projected to decline less and could even increase in cold regions.’”
New York Times: He Alone Tracked Leaky Oil Wells in National Parks. He Was Let Go.
“Until recently, Forrest Smith was the sole employee at the National Park Service responsible for cleaning up dozens of abandoned oil and gas wells at national parks across the country. But last month, the Park Service did not renew Mr. Smith’s four-year contract. Now it is unclear whether anyone will clean up an estimated 93 abandoned wells on federal lands managed by the Park Service. The wells are at high risk of spewing planet-warming gases into the atmosphere and contaminating groundwater, posing significant threats to the environment and public health.”
Center for Western Priorities: National Park Service loses only employee tracking leaky wells
“‘There’s nobody left in the national parks who can confidently oversee this work with the expertise that I have,’ said Smith in an interview with the New York Times. ‘I don’t think you could just pick somebody up and throw them in and expect them to do a really great job.’ The wells are a threat to the environment and public health as they can release harmful gases like methane and benzene into the atmosphere and risk contaminating groundwater.”
SF Gate: Donors are doing all they can to keep iconic Bay Area park open amid shutdown
“At the same time, conservation groups and former Park Service employees have repeatedly called on the Department of the Interior to close all parks until the government reopens. They worry that visitors flocking to parks with limited staffing could lead to trashed parks and damage to natural resources. Already, a wildfire sparked near an unstaffed campground in Joshua Tree National Park, while illegal BASE jumpers and drone pilots have flocked to Yosemite National Park.”
CNN: Lifelong national parks worker pays price for shutdown
“Ezekiel Hart has dedicated his career to maintaining trails in over a dozen national parks as a seasonal worker. The government shutdown stalled his latest job with the National Parks Service, which Hart relies on for healthcare and to support his family.”
Stories on the Trail
@protectNPS: “Our parks don’t run by themselves.” With the shutdown now stretching weeks, NPS faces massive staff shortages, damaged resources, and safety risks across the park system. 450+ former NPS leaders are urging closures until protections return.
@backcountryhunters: Public lands aren’t just soil and trees. They’re places where we find perspective, connection, and meaning. As Frank DeSantis Jr. so eloquently illustrates in his essay, “Guarding the Commons” – one of the many stories featured in every issue of Backcountry Journal – public lands are where we go to lose ourselves and, paradoxically, to remember who we are.
@western.priorities: The dysfunction is the point. They’re breaking our public lands on purpose.
@keepparkspublic: It’s all going to plan.
@NPCA: Since January, more than 25% of NPS's permanent staff have been lost - and another mass layoff is on the horizon. Parks were already understaffed before this, and terminating more staff positions will decimate our National Park System.
@LATimes: Park rangers from Muir Woods are paying the bills with preschool, elementary school nature lessons as the government shutdown closes national parks.
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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