Employees who maintained America's most wild places say they are concerned for public safety and for wildlife.

Summary

The Trump administration’s recent mass layoffs of national park and forest staff have sparked outrage as services deteriorate and safety concerns grow.

Around 1,000 National Park Service employees (5%) and 3,400 Forest Service workers (10%) were terminated on February 14, causing long entrance lines, trail closures, and reduced visitor services.

Former employees like wilderness ranger Kate White worry about visitor safety and ecological damage at popular destinations.

Conservation work for endangered species has halted, and wildfire response capabilities are threatened. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum defended the cuts as deficit reduction, while critics call for policy reversal.

  • Verdant BananaEnglish
    22•2 days ago

    parks are getting setup to be stripped mined of resources and the areas polluted by the efforts

    was happening under the Democrats watch too just with more finesse but since both parties are paid from the same checkbook we as citizens are just forced to watch the strip mining of our country with no way out

    • @[email protected]
      10•23 hours ago

      Both parties are the same, yet only one of them just fired a bunch of important staff. Exactly the same.

      • @finitebanjo
        8•23 hours ago

        Biden protected 9 Million Acres of land and water, and Trump intentionally laid off national park defenders at the start of his first term to the point that the parks saw unprecedented destruction and that conservationists and the NPCA said it would take hundreds of years to undo the damage, and Trump cleared swaths of protected land for his stupid border wall with high explosives, but they’re exactly the same.

    • @finitebanjo
      4•23 hours ago

      Overall, the Biden administration has conserved 674 million acres of U.S. lands and waters. These protections include 15 new, expanded, and restored national monuments, adding up to nearly 9 million acres.

    • @[email protected]
      10•1 day ago

      I am not sure they will get away with that but the national forests I am most worried about. They just appointed a timber lobbyist to head the USFS and I’m assuming we can kiss our nation’s forests goodbye unless there is a serious public effort to preserve them.

      • @Seleni
        3•1 day ago

        Trump’s gone on record as saying he wants to sell off the national parks.

        • @[email protected]English
          3•1 day ago

          I think the entire government should be privatized. Chuck E. Cheese could run the parks. Everything operated by tokens. Drop in a token, go on the swing set. Drop in another token, take a walk. Drop in a token, look at a duck.