Let's try and bring a little clarity to this very disturbing issue; First, there are three agencies that took major hits frrom the DOGE cuts, the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, (both of which are in the Department of the Interior) and the US Forest Service, of the Department of Agriculture. Second, the Trump administration is not planning to close any national parks. The parks will stay open, however will have reduced staffing and services. Last night, WCCO indicated, and I have seen this elsewhere as well, that the administration was already going to allow the rehire of law enforcement and some seasonal positions. The news report wasn't specific to the Park Service or Forest Service, but I am assuming it was the NPS since their interviewee was a laid-off interp Ranger. What they are planning to look at is every National Monument dating all the way back to when Theodore Roosevelt designated the first one, to determine their "viability." National monuments are made by Executive Order. National Parks, Battlefields, Historic Sites, Etc. are designated by Congress. That being said, our National Forests are under a far greater threat than our National Parks. We have a Congress, both the Senate and the House, that are very anti-public lands, and they feel that if they can gut the United States Forest Service, they'll be able to prove that the USFS (and by default the BLM) can't manage the resource and it should be turned over to the states. Of course, the states can't afford to manage it either, so it would then be sold off to the highest bidder. That is the endgame. If you hunt, fish, hike, camp, ski, ride ATVs, in other words, recreate on our federal public lands, your access to those places is threatened; threatened by staff reductions, threatened by greedy speculators and developers, threatened by a non-sympathetic Congress. The Trump administration is not the end of the world as we know it, any more than the Biden, Obama, or Bush administrations were. The pursestrings rest in the hands of our elected representatives, and that's who we need to win over to supporting our public lands. Big donors bring big bucks to their reelection campaign, but each person only has one vote. Your calls count, your emails count, your mail letters count, your presence at public hearings counts, and your vote counts. We are Public Land Owners and we vote. We vote for those representatives who support, and fund our land management agencies.
Before you go posting rumors and blatantly false information on Facebook, X, Instagram, etc., verify whether it's true or not. Yes, there is a problem, but don't make it worse by spreading false information.
