In recent years, the call to “Drill, Baby, Drill” has echoed through the corridors of power, a slogan popularized by President Donald Trump, who champions expanded oil drilling on public lands in the time of our “National Energy Emergency.” This call comes at the expense and ruin of public lands and seems dead set on tarnishing the sanctity of our National Parks. As drilling continues to encroach upon the wilderness, another crisis quietly unfolds: the war against conservation.
Ever since this country was first born, the public at large has seen the wilderness as something to be conquered – a monster fit to be tamed, to be molded and conformed for the benefit of civilization. Roderick Nash, in the book Wilderness and the American Mind, outlines how early Americans perceived nature not as a sanctuary but as a challenge to overcome. The wilderness was feared, seen as hostile and dangerous, and it was viewed as something to be subjugated for the greater good of progress. This mindset gave way for the notion of manifest destiny, the idea that Americans had the right to shape the land how they see fit. Despite decades of change for the better, including the creation of the National Parks system, American Politicians seem obsessed with the notion of replacing wilderness to benefit themselves and as they claim the “greater good for the public.”
This has never been more true than with the new Trump administration and the Valentine’s Day Massacre. “Valentine’s Day Massacre” is a harsh title for the announcement made by Trump’s Administration that there would be a federal freeze for the National Parks Service, as well as cuts by the Department of the Interior, the Department of Agriculture which contains the U.S. Forest Service, and thousands of vital wilderness workers. These cuts were followed by a devastating number of layoffs from the National Park Service, an already massively understaffed program. A large concern at the forefront of these layoffs is how it is currently affecting National Parks as an experience and as protected land. In the 10 days post-layoffs, there was an onslaught of closed trails, tours, closed visitor centers, canceled reservations, and even more reservation systems closing indefinitely. The National Parks Service as we know it is crumbling around itself, and soon enough the actual National Parks will be too. Without funding and individuals to manage these parks, there will be an abrupt decline of the wilderness and wildlife National Parks seek to conserve. One must think of the upkeep of the mass amounts of acreage that the parks cover and then picture it without staff to maintain and protect the countless miles. The public will have to watch on as undeveloped, preserved land is destroyed by wildfires, pollution, loss of wildlife and resources plummeting, while others who made plans to visit will without a doubt cancel within this year.
In a signal of “dire distress” an American flag was hung upside down at the spectacular fire falls event in Yosemite by employees at the park in protest of these choice decisions on Feb. 22nd. What is perhaps the most painful is the human cost of these decisions. The National Park Service has long been a family – a community of passionate workers, rangers, and naturalists dedicated to conserving these irreplaceable treasures. These employees are not just caretakers – they are stewards of our collective cultural and ecological heritage. For them, the work has never been just a job; it’s a calling. The current administration is firing deeply passionate, and driven workers who are not doing their job for the money, but for the world and its wilderness. With the loss of these workers, no one – whether current or future generations – will be able to enjoy the National Parks as was the goal during their establishment.
As John Muir, the Father of the National Parks, once said “These temple destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the Mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar.”