On July 3, the White House issued a pair of executive orders with the expressed purpose of protecting America’s public lands. One order establishes a Make America Beautiful Again (MABA) commission, and the other aims to improve the country’s national parks.
While both orders would represent an abrupt change of tone for an administration that’s largely expanded mining and drilling leases across US public lands, the language used to outline future changes is vague, at best.
“We hope this departure from Trump’s anti-public lands agenda becomes the norm and isn’t just a PR ploy to distract voters from the backlash some Republicans received after spending months trying to sell off these same public lands to the highest bidder,” says Anna Peterson, executive director of The Mountain Pact, a nonprofit project that works with elected officials in Western US mountain towns.
Here’s what we know so far about how the orders could impact national park funding, staffing, and access.
Funding
The two orders come on the heels of $267 million in cuts to the National Park Service (NPS) via the current budget reconciliation bill and a reduction of 24% to the NPS’ permanent staff. In order to increase revenue and improve park affordability for US residents, the Improving Our National Parks executive order makes mention that entry fees for foreign tourists will be raised. As of this writing, no details have been published on the specifics of the fee hikes.
The Make America Beautiful Again executive order also claims that regulatory overreach has “undermined outdoor traditions and conservation funding” and that mismanagement has led to more than $23 billion in deferred maintenance at the NPS. But what the order doesn’t explain is that the Trump administration itself is the reason that the circa-2020 Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA) failed to fully use the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) budget, leading to increased maintenance backlogs at US national parks. Additional legislation proposed by Republicans would further defund the LWCF, which was supposed to be permanently funded by the GAOA by using proceeds from offshore oil and gas royalty payments.
Staffing
Out of the 8,000 NPS seasonal staff that the administration pledged to hire this summer, only about 4,500 have been put in place. Many who work for conservation groups are sounding alarms in reaction, while others are cautiously hopeful that the recent executive orders may reflect shifting priorities.
“Over 330 million visitors flock to parks because of their unrivaled beauty and history,” says Kristen Brengel, senior vice president of government affairs for the National Park Conservation Association (NPCA). “Dedicated Park Service staff ensure [that] resources are protected. We call on the administration to exempt the Park Service from the hiring freeze and restore positions, or this executive order will go nowhere.”
A mere six days after the executive orders were published, the Supreme Court lifted a lower court injunction that blocked the president from directing federal agencies to administer large-scale reductions in their workforces. The TL;DR, according to the NPCA, is that this ruling paves the way for the Trump administration to move forward with even more staffing reductions to the National Park Service. The “Improving Our National Parks” executive order also calls for an end to a 2017 Presidential Memorandum promoting diversity and inclusion across America’s public lands.
