Pulitzer Prize winning novelist and environmentalist, Wallace Stegner once called America’s national parks, “the best idea we ever had.” From Yellowstone to the Grand Canyon to the Smokey Mountains, National Parks and public lands are more than just stops on the quintessential American family road trip. They are testaments to the beauty and culture America has to offer and protect critical organisms and biodiversity in a shrinking natural world. But recent executive orders and action from the Trump administration have left Americans wondering: are our parks and public lands in peril?
Cuts to Park and Forest Service Staff
Due to the reductions in force rolled out by DOGE and the Trump administration on February 14th, 1,000 federal workers were fired from the National Parks service and 6,000 workers were fired from the United States Forest Service. Furthermore, the hiring freeze put in place by executive order blocked the hiring of 5,000 seasonal employees that National Parks and Monuments rely on during peak tourism season. Within just a day of these initial firings, national parks across the US experienced a number of issues.
The Grand Canyon National Park, which receives around 5 million visitors per year, had ten workers cut from its staff, most of which were toll booth operators, resulting in wait times twice as long as usual the day after the firings. The National Park Service has now posted on its website that the South Entrance station, which about 90% of visitors pass through, is experiencing wait times of 90 minutes to enter the park. Yosemite lost its only locksmith to the firings, and a popular trail in Seattle closed due to the firing of the US Forest Service workers who maintained it.
Many of these workers pointed out that they were doing vital if not less than glamorous jobs, like firefighting, clearing trails, evacuating visitors in emergency situations, and keeping trash and backcountry toilets from overflowing. All while making a humble $22/ hour. Various park and forest service personnel warned that the reductions in force would result in overflowing trash and toilets, lack of adequate support for search and rescue of unprepared or injured hikers and park visitors, and economic impacts to the communities that surround the parks.
It is important to note that National Park Service and US Forest Service workers do more than just make the parks accessible and safe for visitors. They also manage and preserve the wildlife within, including endangered and critically endangered species like the Sierra Nevada Red Fox and the Pacific Fisher. Andria Townsend, a carnivore biologist that led a team of eight who worked to preserve these species and was fired from Yosemite National Park, said, “I don’t want to be doom and gloom, but it’s really hard to say what the future is now. The future of conservation just feels very uncertain.” There are fewer than 500 Sierra Nevada Red Fox left in the wild and only 50 Pacific Fisher, a species similar to a badger.
The National Park Service, which costs the US government around $3.6 billion per year, results in the employment of about 415,400 individuals through the parks themselves and the hospitality industry in surrounding communities. In doing so, it brings in roughly $55.6 billion to the US economy. To put those costs into context, the parks make up about 5.2% of the federal budget, barely scraping the surface of the $400 billion per year that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act costs the US government in lost revenue.
On March 24th, a federal judge issued a ruling calling for the reinstatement of the 1,000 employees cut from the National Parks Service on February 14th, however, reportedly only 50 of those positions have been restored. According to Rick Mossman, president of the Arizona-based Association of National Park Rangers, the National Parks have lost around 1,500 employees since the beginning of the year and are “bracing for another reduction in force expected in the very near future.” However, the Secretary of the Department of the Interior, which controls the National Parks Service, has issued an order that the parks must “remain open and accessible,” putting park staff in a tough spot.
Resource Extraction in Parks, Monuments, and Public Lands
On March 20th, Donald Trump signed an executive order titled, “Immediate Measure to Increase American Mineral Production“, which orders the federal government to facilitate mining on public lands to the “maximum extent possible.” The order requires heads of all agencies involved in mine permitting to identify priority projects and submit them to the chair of the newly created National Energy Dominance Council, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, within 10 days of the order’s signing. The order both orders Burgum to fast track their approval and to “prioritize mineral production and mining related purposes as the primary land uses on all Federal lands that hold mineral deposits and reserves.” Furthermore, it commands the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976, which regulates resource extraction on public lands, to be “amended and revised as necessary, to support the intent of this order.”
The executive order, which invokes wartime powers, emphases the US’s reliance on foreign minerals and pushes for independence from other nations. It states that “Transportation, infrastructure, defense capabilities, and the next generation of technology rely upon a secure, predictable, and affordable supply of minerals.” Legally, companies are permitted to extract resources on public land, however, sensitive areas, like those near waterways, have been withdrawn from mining over the years to prevent habitat degradation and pollution of waterways. This order by President Trump, however, which seeks to reduce federal regulations on public land, would allow all federal land, outside of National Parks, to be open to mining.
The Boundary Waters
These changes leave places like Rainy River Watershed on the border of Minnesota and Canada in the Superior National Forest at risk. The Rainy River Watershed, which was protected in 2023 from mining, is over a copper and nickel deposit which the Twin Metals mining company, a subsidiary of the Chilean mining conglomerate, Antofagasta, has been seeking to mine for years. It also flows into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, an area of pristine boreal forest that connects to 1,000 lakes, 2,000 campsites, and hundreds of miles of hiking trails. These lakes and streams are vital habitat for lake trout, walleye, smallmouth bass, and northern pike, and the forest is home to whitetail, ruffed grouse, and black bear. Other areas the order may endanger include Montana’s Bitterroot River and West Fork, which a Canadian company is seeking to create an open pit mine on, the National Forest outside of Yellowstone National Park, which is known for gold deposits, and Idaho’s Salmon River.
Beyond direct damage to habitat caused by strip mining, which strips away vegetation making the area uninhabitable for wildlife, mining can also cause sedimentation of lakes and streams, soil erosion, and result in waterways being contaminated with heavy metals and highly acidic substances that are toxic to humans and wildlife. Furthermore, conservationist and CEO of Trout Unlimited, Chris Wood, points out that the 1872 General Mining Law, which still governs mineral extraction today, lacks environmental safeguards and does not require companies to adequately clean or restore public lands that they lease. The order itself calls to, “clarify the treatment of waste rock, tailings, and mine waste disposal under the Mining Act of 1872,” which many are concerned may mean a loosening of environmental regulations on mining. Unfortunately, in an order that criticizes federal regulation, it is unlikely that companies will be made to restore the habitats and waterways they may be destroying, which may result in the permanent loss of these vital wildlife habitats.
Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante
Embed from Getty ImagesThese public lands aren’t the only places at risk of experiencing mineral extraction. In its push for energy independence, the Trump administration is also considering redrawing the boundaries of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments in Utah. The two sites, along with a marine monument off the coast of New England, were the source of a back and forth between Biden and Trump, with Trump reducing the size of the monuments during his first term, then Biden restoring the protections during his presidency. While the review of National Parks and monuments laid out by Interior Secretary, Doug Burgum, does not explicitly mention these monuments, they are the most likely to be impacted if the administration decides to seek resource extraction on land currently classified as a National Park or Monument.
Bears Ears, is an archaeological site dating back to 12,000 B.C., and is culturally significant to the Hopi, Navajo, Ute, Ute Mountain Ute, and Zuni tribes, which co-manage the monument with the Bureau of Land Management and National Parks Service. Many more southeastern US tribes trace their origins back to the people who inhabited Bears Ears and see it as a sacred site. It is also located on top of uranium deposits, which the Trump administration seeks to allow companies to mine.
Embed from Getty ImagesGrand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, known for its cultural significance and discoveries in paleontology, is also on a large coal deposit. For this reason, it was slashed by 47% during the first Trump administration before being restored to its protected status by former President Biden. Like Bears Ears, it is an ancestral site for Native American tribes and is home to native plant and wildlife communities. Both of these monuments together encompass more than 3.2 million acres.
Leasing Public Lands and the Trump Budget
The actions outlined above along with other orders like, “Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential” are largely efforts to commodify public lands at the expense of wildlife. But, why, you might ask, allow resource extraction on public lands if it could instead be done on privately owned lands? The answer is that due to the loss of $400 billion per year in revenue from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Trump must seek to finance the US government from other sources. Namely, leasing or even selling off public lands.
These efforts, along with efforts from the Trump administration to roll back habitat protections under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), undermine the principle that public lands belong to every American. As conservationist Chris Wood points out, “We still live in a nation of laws. These are our public lands. We own them by virtue of being born in America. Unless they amend NEPA, which would be quite a battle, the government can’t just tell us that we don’t have a say in public lands management. It would be a huge mistake to cut the peoples’ voices out of the process.”
The Citrus Peel 
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