Donald Trump, Elon Musk and the DOGE team have not played favorites when slashing the federal budget except for the military, where they’ve increased spending. The administration has even attacked the budget of the National Park System, with its 63 expansive iconic parks and hundreds of other smaller and historic parks that have in more recent years celebrated the achievements of women, people of color and the LGBTQ community in our nation’s history.
Trump’s 2026 budget plan, approved by the House in a narrow vote, cuts $900 million from the National Park Service. If enacted, this would be the largest cut in the agency’s 109-year history, jeopardizing protection, maintenance and operation of the country’s more than 430 national parks. Other administration policy proposals include the sale of public lands, boosting fossil fuel extraction, mining, and clear-cutting of national forests.
Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Randi Spivak, public lands policy director with the Center for Biological Diversity, discusses these threats and suggests ways listeners can help protect America’s public lands.
RANDI SPIVAK: It’s important to note that in our National Park Service, there was already a 20 percent reduction in staff. They were already underfunded, overstretched, with a backlog of maintenance for a long time before Trump and the ax-wielding DOGE stepped in. And so Elon Musk took a further ax, cutting another 13 percent of National Park staff, whether it’s through directly firing people — about 1,000 Park employees who were fired or who took the fork in the road “take early retirement or you will get fired.” All their horrific tactics of intimidation. So the park service is really hurting right now. And as I mentioned, that’s on top of already being very short-staffed. There’s still rumors, like there’s going to be more layoffs, not just to the park service, but to federal agencies wide. Elon Musk is gone, but DOGE apparently is still burrowing in and Trump’s budget — we’ll see ultimately what happens has even further cuts.
The big picture here is it seems pretty clear President Trump wants to decimate funding for federal agencies and then he could turn around and say, “See, they can’t even manage to follow their mission and that just opens up the door to privatizing our public lands.” I think that’s a fair bet.
And if you’re traveling to parks this summer — and millions and millions of people will — you may have rangers that aren’t available for that hike or maybe the guided hikes are cut short. We’ve heard reports of rangers being also asked to clean the toilets and not do the hikes. I think the federal government is trying to give the appearance that all is okay, that they still care about our national parks and keeping them safe and sound, but that’s not really what’s going on.
MELINDA TUHUS: Do you know about anything going on in the Senate that affects public lands and national parks — either good or bad compared to the House bill?
RANDI SPIVAK: Well, it’s a good question. The one provision we are keeping very close track on that your listeners might be interested in. It’s not national parks per se, but it is a provision by Sen. Mike Lee of Utah to sell up to 3.3 million acres of public lands. So that’s our national forests and Bureau of Land Management lands all across the west for privatization and development.
MELINDA TUHUS: Do you know what percentage that is of all the public lands that are in federal lands?
RANDI SPIVAK: Sure. Lee is framing that as it’s only between .5 and 0.75 percent (less than 1 percent) of public lands. And mathematically that’s true. There are a lot of public lands and Americans love them all. But the problem with the bill is this is the largest proposed sell-off of public lands in U.S. history. And my fear is that once this language gets in the bill, they will not stop there. It may be 3.3 million acres today, which is a whole lot, but my big fear is that it won’t end there and this provision will open up the door for selling public lands. I think Lee’s ultimate goal is to privatize nearly all of our public lands holdings, period. And nobody should be fooled that the agenda is anything but that.
MELINDA TUHUS: Now, when you said for development, I guess that could include certainly gas and oil development, mining of all kinds and also maybe building homes.
RANDI SPIVAK: The provisions say residential housing and other community needs and infrastructure. However, what does “community needs” mean? That’s about as open-ended as anything. And the important provision is this, that quote, “restrictive covenant that the state or developer needs to show.” It’s for residential housing — not necessarily affordable housing — residential housing or community need.
After 10 years, if the land isn’t developed, all bets are off. That developer can do whatever they want with the land. So 10 years in the scheme of developing something is not that much time. There’s nothing in this bill that would prevent a land speculator or a state, whoever owns the lands basically to just sit on the land for 10 years and then they can do whatever they want. This is a real estate developer’s dream. It’s so important for anybody who loves our public lands, our national forest. You’ve hiked, you’ve camped, you’ve bird watched, however you love and enjoy our public lands. Get on the phone today. Call your senators, demand that they say “no.” Urge that they do not support this provision.
For more information, visit the Center for Biological Diversity at biologicaldiversity.org.
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