“There was no fat left to trim,” said Kristen Brengel, the Senior Vice-President of Government Affairs at the National Parks Conservation Association. According to Brengel, America’s national parks have been short-staffed from 2010, operating with around 20% fewer staff.
Following orders not publicly announced on Friday, February 14th, around 1,000 National Parks Service (NPS) employees were terminated without notice. The orders came into effect in an attempt to downsize the government.
Just one day prior to the layoffs, Elon Musk appeared on video at the World Government Summit in order to discuss the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which he heads.
Musk’s department aims to cut the excess that is, in their view, needlessly spent by the government.
Near the start of his speech, Musk claimed, “We do need to delete entire agencies as opposed to leaving a part of them behind. If you leave part of them behind, It’s like leaving a weed: if you don’t get to remove the roots of the weed, then it’s easy for the weed to grow back.”
But is it logical to remove money and manpower from the NPS in an attempt to benefit our country?
In 2024, the NPS requested a budget of $3.8 billion. While this may seem like an exorbitant amount of money, the amount of government spending last year was $6.75 trillion. The proportion of money the NPS requested was only one-twentieth of one percent of the federal budget.
A large majority of the nearly 1,000 NPS employees who were let go consisted of those who were recently hired.
These new employees held critical responsibilities, such as cleaning and properly maintaining trails, educating visitors on the natural environment, and performing other key functions such as sanitation work in order to keep America’s national parks running smoothly.
In response, groups tried to organize protests at each of the 433 national park sites that exist in America on Saturday, March 1st. The prominent organizers were a group called the Resistance Rangers.
These rangers consisted of around 700 off-duty rangers, including some who were fired from the NPS during the unexpected layoffs. The group aims to stand up against what they believe to be threats against the environment and public lands.
By the afternoon, protests were in full swing at least 145 sites. One of the most prominent protests occurred at Yosemite National Park.
One of Yosemite’s natural wonders is the “Firefall,” which flows off of El Capitan. Firefall, a natural occurrence that creates the illusion of lava flowing off the side of El Capitan, occurs for a few weeks in February. In order for this phenomenon to happen, the angle of the sun must be precise, the appropriate amount of water must be falling, and skies need to be clear at the right time.
However, the Firefall is not all the viewers got to see hanging off of El Capitan this year.
Yosemite employees were viewed unfurling an upside-down American flag on the granite face of El Capitan. Under Section 8 of the U.S. flag code, the upside down American flag is recognized “as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.”
Gavin Carpenter, a maintenance mechanic at Yosemite, supplied and assisted in flying the flag. Carpenter stated, “We’re bringing attention to what’s happening to the parks, which are every American’s properties. It’s super important we take care of them, and we’re losing people here, and it’s not sustainable if we want to keep the parks open.”
For an image of the spectacle, click here.
Protests continued in Utah at Zion National Park.
Although February is one of the slowest months for Zion, the line of cars stretched much farther than normal. Barbara Bruno, the mayor of Springdale, a gateway town to Zion, reported that one reason for the unusual trafic was the firing of a dozen Zion rangers, including some who staffed the entry gate.
Local yoga studio owner Jaechon Anderson stated, “[W]e’re here today fighting for [the parks], fighting for their future…. Mother Nature doesn’t have her own voice, so she needs us right now.”
Motions to sell off the nation’s public lands have already begun to be put in place. Under the Department of the Interior, Secretarial Order 3418 “Unleashing American Energy” Section 4, Subsection C states:
(§ 4) Assistant Secretaries are hereby directed to include in their action plans the steps to be taken that would accomplish, at a minimum, the following:
(§ 4c) actions to offer more parcels of the public land for oil and gas leasing, including through quarterly lease sales, or additional lease sales, as appropriate and consistent with existing law.
This would effectively turn America’s sources of beauty into financial assets.
It is impossible to claim that one truly cares about our country’s natural treasures if these actions do not spark a sense of betrayal.
“America the Beautiful” is being corrupted more and more by avarice with every passing day.
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Editors’ note: All opinions expressed on The Uproar are a reflection solely of the beliefs of the bylined author and not the journalism program at NASH. We continue to welcome school-appropriate comments and guest articles.
