In the chaotic first 100 days on the second Trump administration, public lands agencies have mostly been spared from cuts and firings affecting other federal agencies. Now the top levels of the Trump administration are focusing on the National Park Service and other Interior agencies for staffing cuts, reorganization, and “consolidation”. One of Elon Musk’s top DOGE staffers, Tyler Hassen, has been put in charge of all Interior Agencies by Interior Secretary Doug Bergum.
Our public lands have never been subject to anything like what is about to happen at Interior. An oil company executive from Houston, Tyler Hassen, with no previous experience in government or land management is now in charge or our public land agencies with staff and budget cuts and increased oil development as the stated goals or his mission. He is part of Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” or DOGE.
On April 17, Interior Secretary Doug Bergum, a billionaire from the computer industry, signed a Secretarial Order (click here to read the order) that says the administration plans to make staffing and budget cuts and perhaps eliminate the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service and “consolidate” the agencies for “efficiency.” The order also opens the way for “transferring property” which could mean selling or giving our federal lands to states or corporations. The language is vague but this gives Hassen wide latitude.
Here are the key phrases from the Secretarial Order:
1 “Interior Workforce Consolidation, Unification and Optimization. The Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management and Budget (Tyler Hassen) is hereby assigned to lead and coordinate the consolidation, unification and optimization efforts within the Department and its Bureaus and Offices.
2 Take all necessary actions, including appropriate notifications, to effectuate the appropriate consolidation, unification and optimization of administrative functions within the Department and its Bureaus and Offices.
3 Make appropriate funding decisions for the resulting consolidated administrative functions while issuing relevant policy, directives, and guidance, as well as overseeing necessary revisions to the Departmental Manual; and ensuring the appropriate transfer of funds, programs, records, and property, as well as taking required personnel actions, to carry out the consolidation.”
This is a Major Bummer
We see major problems. First, the National Park Service has a unique mission, traditions, legal mandates and legislation specific to the most important public lands and historic sites in the United States. For almost 120 years, the NPS has become the international leader in park management through experience passed down through generations of park leaders. Polls show the public largely admires and respects the NPS and supports its work managing our critical national heritage.
If Trump consolidates the Interior agencies, the NPS loses its unique management abilities and its identity. If the National Park Service is merged into the Bureau of Land Management, an agency that manages grazing, oil development, and mining, its traditions, approach and skills are lost. Likewise, if the US Fish and Wildlife Service is merged into these agencies, its expertise in managing endangered species and wildlife refuges is lost to the generic Interior agency.
If the agencies are merged does that mean the national parks become generic public lands without a preservation mandate? Do we still have national parks and other national historic sites with no National Park Service? Have these people thought this out or is it just right-wing experimentation outside of relevant statutes?
Perhaps Bergum and Hassan don’t mean to eliminate the agencies but just merge their bureaucracies. That would raise other, similar questions.
We’ve seen with Musk’s DOGE efforts at other agencies that random firings of employees with no regard for what they do or their expertise has demoralized and crippled agencies. The National Park Service has been running on a minimal staff for more than a decade with most parks far understaffed as public visitation increases and critical public facilities are allowed to deteriorate for lack of maintenance. Already NPS staff are on edge after random firings happened early in the year.
Trump has completely changed the game by disregarding laws, court orders, and precedent. His cost cutting efforts will end up greatly increasing costs to the American people over the long run as our parks and public lands fall into neglect and decay and expertise is lost. This damage could be arrested by future elections, but our goal must be to protect our parks now.
Trump and the people working for him are also talking about selling off public lands including our national parks and forests to raise money to fund the Trump tax cut. Who would buy hundreds of millions of acres of desert or forest land in remote areas? Who could afford it? Will Americans stand by while an administration goes against public opinion and takes our lands from us, and gives them to states, corporations or foreign interests? Will Americans accept closure of lands we hiked and hunted on for generations?
As Musk, Bergum, Trump and Hassen proceed they will meet with waves of lawsuits, protests, direct action, and public anger. It is difficult to see why the Trump people would take this on given its obvious unpopularity and the miniscule budgets of the public land agencies. The effort appears to be driven by ideology rather than a sincere effort toward improving public agencies and their lands, or saving money for taxpayers.
