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The Trump administration's damaging impacts to public lands may not be obvious as Americans kick off summer travel plans this Memorial Day weekend, but former National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service officials warn it's a facade and only a matter of time before visitors start seeing the cracks as rangers scramble to keep up following widespread layoffs, retirements, and buyouts at land management agencies.
Since taking office, President Donald Trump and his administration have fired thousands of Park Service and Forest Service employees, implemented a hiring freeze, and delayed the planned hiring of seasonal workers critical to staffing visitor centers, maintaining trails, and cleaning toilets. At the same time, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has ordered park managers to keep open campgrounds, visitor centers, and toilets.
2024 was the busiest year for park visitation in history with 332 million visitors, yet staffing levels were already 20 percent below what they were in 2010. Cara McGary, a former park ranger who owns a guiding service near Yellowstone, said, "We have a legacy of people in the federal government giving more than 100%. They are already a rubber band that's pretty stretched thin. And we're about to push them further."
Scott Fitzwilliams, the former supervisor of the White River National Forest in Colorado who left his job in February during one of the first round of cuts, said, "Man, the richest country in the world ought to be able to fund at a basic level the public lands everyone has access to." Fitzwilliams emphasized that even if impacts to public lands aren't felt this weekend, they're surely coming. "It's going to be mid-to late-summer before people begin to see it, but it's going to be pretty profound," he predicted. "We may get one (toilet) pump for the year. It's going to get ugly."
Tracy Stone-Manning on the biggest threats to public lands right now
In the latest episode of The Landscape podcast, Kate and Aaron talk to Tracy Stone-Manning, former director of the Bureau of Land Management and current president of The Wilderness Society. Tracy shares what it was like to inherit an agency that was decimated by the first Trump administration and what she’s worried about this time around—but also, what’s giving her hope for America’s public lands. Kate and Aaron also cover the news that a provision to sell off hundreds of thousands of acres of public lands in Utah and Nevada has been stripped from the budget reconciliation package.
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To tell New Mexicans that they will now be arrested for hiking and hunting on the land they have forged their identities on is deeply insulting and un-American.”
