Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Politics

How Trump Could Ruin Your Next National Park Adventure

Forest ranger firings have already led to some trail closures, but the stakes get much higher than that.

Donald Trump.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

It takes less than an hour to drive from Seattle to Franklin Falls, a beginner-friendly hike that is so popular among locals that it often runs out of parking space by mid-morning in the summer. A winter snowshoeing trip is no less rewarding — the rockface glistens with icicles, and sometimes Franklin Falls itself will freeze, delighting Instagrammers and Frozen acolytes alike.

Those views, though, now sit behind a barricaded trailhead. “Due to the large scale termination of Forest Service employees, Franklin Falls and the Denny Creek Trailhead are CLOSED,” the sign read as of Saturday morning. “This site will reopen when we return to appropriate staffing levels.”

It’s unclear when — or if — that will happen. Last Friday, the Trump administration began laying off thousands of public land managers, including 3,400 new hires to the U.S. Forest Service and 2,300 to the Department of the Interior, about a thousand of whom worked for the National Park Service. Adding insult to injury, the email firing the probationary employees told them they’d “failed to demonstrate fitness or qualifications for continued employment because your subject matter knowledge, skills and abilities do not meet the department’s current needs,” despite many having unblemished or even exemplary employment records.

The cuts have placed a staggering strain on the remaining employees at the agencies. “Cutting thousands of National Park Service and Forest Service jobs is like reducing ski patrol during peak season — it may not shut everything down, but it makes access, safety, and the outdoor experience more challenging for everyone,” Ryan Laemel, the chief operating officer of Protect Our Winters, an outdoor recreation environmental nonprofit, wrote to me in a statement.

And there are more existential crises, too, like the cessation of fire risk reduction work, which could result in worse wildfires, and an abrupt halt to decades of ongoing scientific research in the parks, which will leave a gaping hole in our understanding of our own country’s climate and ecosystems. “Public lands aren’t just places to recreate — they are part of the climate solution and hold deep cultural significance, especially for Indigenous communities who have stewarded these landscapes for generations,” Laemel pointed out. Forests and grasslands managed by now-terminated employees “store carbon, protect water sources, and help prevent catastrophic wildfires.”

In Montana, for example, only three full-time workers now maintain all the infrastructure in the Yellowstone and Bozeman Ranger Districts, which cover 1 million acres, the Bozeman Daily Chronicle reports. “I honestly can’t imagine how the parks will operate without my position,” Alex Wild, a ranger who lost his job at Yosemite, wrote in an Instagram post that more than 150,000 people have liked. “I mean, they just can’t. I am the only EMT at my park and the first responder for any emergency. This is flat-out reckless.”

Stories like Wild’s have struck a chord on social media, where there has been an upswelling of outrage over the public land manager layoffs. Though President’s Day weekend saw general protests across the U.S. against Elon Musk’s idea of efficiency, NOAA firings and USAID workers losing their jobs haven’t, on their own, generated quite the same level of backlash.

Part of that is likely an issue of immediacy: 85% of Americans have vacationed at a National Park, but it’s not necessarily apparent from looking at your iPhone that you’re relying on free NOAA data. But Americans also have an almost cuddly reverence for forest rangers; as one social media user aptly put it, they’re basically the “librarians of the forest.” Eliminate their jobs and face the wrath of everyone who had a childhood dream of wearing a quad-dented straw hat when they grew up.

Neal Clark, the wildlands director at the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, a nonpartisan non-profit leading efforts to protect public lands, told me he thinks the Trump administration is playing a long game with its sabotage of the Forest Service and Department of the Interior. “The bigger point is that when you cut staff from the Bureau of Land Management, the Forest Service, the National Park Service — agencies that have been chronically underfunded for decades — the additional lack of capacity and resources is ultimately going to catch up,” he warned. “It’s going to catch up with this administration, and it’s going to catch up to public land users.”

Trailhead closures like that at Franklin Falls are only the very beginning. Maybe this summer you’ll find it difficult to get the river permit you’ve come to expect for your annual family float trip. Perhaps you’ll find you can’t reserve a campsite in a National Park, or maybe the bathroom at your favorite trailhead will be closed or not serviced. Park infrastructure in general will get worse, making visits frustrating and messy; the $23 billion maintenance backlog at the National Parks will balloon into a multi-generational challenge.

Clark suspects this chaos is by design. “It’s intended to decrease the functionality. It’s intended to demoralize dedicated staff,” he said. “Ultimately, the goal is to bolster what has been a long-standing effort by industry and elected officials who back industry to sell off, transfer, or otherwise privatize public lands.”

Despite the incredible unpopularity of land privatization — majorities in every Western state, including conservative strongholds such as Wyoming and Montana, oppose the concept — there has been substantial talk of eliminating public lands by those in and around the Trump administration. By gutting the Forest Service and Department of the Interior, signs of strain will start to show. That, in turn, will “further bolster the argument that these lands would be better managed by the states, or in private hands,” Clark said.

It’s a playbook that is familiar across the government. If there is a silver lining, though, it’s that Americans really do seem energized to defend their access to the outdoors. “Protest. Speak up!” one Zion National Park ranger implored her followers this weekend. “Our nation is only as strong as we all stand together.”

Green

You’re out of free articles.

Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Spotlight

The Moss Landing Fire Is Radicalizing Battery Foes

From Kansas to Brooklyn, the fire is turning battery skeptics into outright opponents.

Texas battery project.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The symbol of the American battery backlash can be found in the tiny town of Halstead, Kansas.

Angry residents protesting a large storage project proposed by Boston developer Concurrent LLC have begun brandishing flashy yard signs picturing the Moss Landing battery plant blaze, all while freaking out local officials with their intensity. The modern storage project bears little if any resemblance to the Moss Landing facility, which uses older technology,, but that hasn’t calmed down anxious locals or stopped news stations from replaying footage of the blaze in their coverage of the conflict.

Keep reading...Show less
Hotspots

Trump May Approve Transmission Line for Wind Project

And more on the week’s conflicts around renewable energy.

Map of renewable energy conflicts
Heatmap Illustration

1. Carbon County, Wyoming – I have learned that the Bureau of Land Management is close to approving the environmental review for a transmission line that would connect to BluEarth Renewables’ Lucky Star wind project.

  • This is a huge deal. For the last two months it has seemed like nothing wind-related could be approved by the Trump administration. But that may be about to change.
  • The Bureau of Land Management sent local officials an email March 6 with a draft environmental assessment for the transmission line, which is required for the federal government to approve its right-of-way under the National Environmental Policy Act.
  • According to the draft, the entirety of the wind project itself is sited on private property and “no longer will require access to BLM-administered land.”
  • The email suggests this draft environmental assessment may soon be available for public comment, which is standard practice and required under the law to proceed. BLM’s web page for the transmission line now states an approval granting right-of-way for the transmission line may come as soon as this May.
  • We’ve asked BLM for comment on how this complies with Trump’s executive order ending “new or renewed approvals” and “rights of way” for onshore wind projects. We’ll let you know if we hear back.
  • It’s worth noting, however, that BLM last week did something similar with a transmission line that would go to a solar project proposed entirely on private lands. Could private lands become the workaround du jour under Trump?

2. Nantucket County, Massachusetts – Anti-offshore wind advocates are pushing the Trump administration to rescind air permits issued to Avangrid for New England Wind 1 and 2, the same approval that was ripped away from Atlantic Shores offshore wind farm last Friday.

Keep reading...Show less
Q&A

What’s the Deal with Battery Storage Regulation?

A conversation with Nikhil Kumar of GridLab

Nikhil Kumar, program director at GridLab
Heatmap Illustration

Today’s sit-down is with Nikhil Kumar, a program director at GridLab and an expert in battery storage safety and regulation. Kumar’s folks reached out to me after learning I was writing about Moss Landing and wanted to give his honest and open perspective on how the disaster is impacting the future of storage development in the U.S. Let’s dive in!

The following is an abridged and edited version of our conversation.

Keep reading...Show less