Trump Trashing Public Lands
Against such outrages, Father of the National Parks John Muir would howl in righteous protest. Join the chorus.
One big thing Muir got so right is the deep human need for connection to the wild and cosmic. Call it awe, that wordless experience of the soul and the cosmos flowing one into the other, when everything everywhere snaps into place all at once and the universe reveals its perfect mystery.
“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread,” Muir wrote, “places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike. This natural beauty-hunger is made manifest in … our magnificent national parks — the Yellowstone, Yosemite, Sequoia, etc. — Nature’s sublime wonderlands, the admiration and joy of the world.”
Precisely because of the awe they inspire, such spaces become targets, Muir warned:
Like anything else worthwhile, from the very beginning, however well guarded, they have always been subject to attack by despoiling gain-seekers and mischief-makers of every degree from Satan to Senators.
Trump is taking his place among the ranks of the despoilers Muir called out by unleashing Elon Musk and the DOGE bad boys on America’s public lands. They claim it’s about “efficiency.” It’s not.
Reductions in force — a.k.a. mass firings — aimed at the Forest Service eliminated at least 2,000 jobs and another 800 at the Bureau of Land Management. As a result, up to 4,000 campsites and several visitor centers in California’s 18 national forests alone will likely close. At the same time, Trump demanded in an executive order that timber production increase by brushing aside the protections of the Endangered Species Act to enable more, faster clearcuts. Having fewer people on the job will make the sacking of America’s forests that much easier.
The same goes for the National Park Service. Some 1,000 positions have been eliminated to date, and another 700 or so employees took DOGE’s Fork in the Road option of giving up their jobs and leaving government altogether in return for a few months’ pay. Those losses total approximately 9% of the NPS workforce, nearly one out of 10.
Even before these latest chainsaw amputations, NPS had shrunk by some 20% since 2010. Not that visitation to the national parks has fallen as well. In fact, it’s risen 16% over the same period. Last year saw the largest number of national park visitors — almost 332 million — since 2016. Now the NPS, already doing more with less, will have to do that much more with that much less, even as the number of would-be visitors increases. That’s a prescription for something between disappointment and disaster for both visitors and wild lands.
As things stand now, public funding for the parks falls well short of what it costs to keep them open and functioning. In 2024, as one example, Yosemite National Park received $32 million in federal money, only about one-third of what it costs to support this magnificent, Rhode Island–sized wild space. The remaining $60 million came from volunteers and nonprofits like the Yosemite Conservancy, which cover scientific and conservation work at the park.
Trump’s job cuts mean that, even as the summer tourist season approaches, there will be far too few NPS people to keep the parks running smoothly. Already the Yosemite reservation system that helps prevent unmanageable back-ups at peak times has been indefinitely suspended. Expect the endless lines at the entry gates to stretch further and further. Should you get into the park, be prepared for restrooms that haven’t been cleaned in days, overflowing garbage cans attracting bears to their smelly feast, and unpoliced fistfights over coveted camping sites. And if you’re heading into the backcountry, take a bad fall, and need rescue, well, good luck with that.
Apart from the sense of awe wild lands instill and tourists seek, what Trump, Musk, and the DOGE bad boys either miss or don’t care about is the economic benefit the national parks deliver. According to NPS, 2023’s 325 million visitors to 63 national parks spent $26.4 billion in “gateway regions” adjacent to the parks and supported 415,000 jobs that created $55.6 billion in economic output. If the parks become zones of anarchy and tourists avoid the chaos, those payoffs shrink.
While Trump, Musk, and DOGE have it out for NPS, the public thinks highly of park rangers in their forest-green uniforms and Smokey the Bear hats. According to Pew Research, more than three out of four Americans like NPS best of all government agencies, even more than the ever-popular U. S. Postal Service,
Beyond dollars, cents, and payroll cuts, Trump’s trashing of wild spaces means that America is at risk of losing a precious and irreplaceable heritage. This struggle has been going on since the time when the Garden of Eden was Adam and Eve’s retreat and refuge, as Muir reminds us:
Long ago a few enterprising merchants utilized the Jerusalem temple as a place of business instead of a place of prayer, changing money, buying and selling cattle and sheep and doves; and earlier still, the first forest reservation, including only one tree, was despoiled. Ever since the establishment of the Yosemite National Park, strife has been going on around its borders and I suppose this will go on as part of the universal battle between right and wrong, however much its boundaries may be shorn or its wild beauty destroyed.
Since Muir was a founder of the Sierra Club, it’s appropriate that that organization, OCA–Asian Pacific American Advocates, and Japanese American Citizens League have joined forces under the Campaign Legal Center to file a lawsuit [https://campaignlegal.org/press-releases/campaign-legal-center-sues-elon-musk-and-doge-exercising-unchecked-power-and-harming] to stop DOGE’s clash-and-burn actions against public lands as inherently unconstitutional.
The fight has been joined, more battles are coming. Make ready to weigh in and lay on.
Up next: What’s sacred got to do with it?
Cast out of Eden heads to Pleasant Hill
On Thursday, April 3, at 12:30 p.m. PT, I'll be talking to Rotary of Pleasant Hill about my book and John Muir in the McHale Room, 320 Civic Dr., Pleasant Hill, Calif. In person only and open to all. Lunch is served at this gathering, so if you wish to attend, please RSVP to Jocelyn Reite.