Happy summer to everyone. Please take time to visit the Valles Caldera before the season changes. Not only are there large groups of elk grazing the Valle Grande, but the wildflowers are exceptional this year given the early season rains we’ve had and the monsoons which are watering everything and filling the creeks with water. We need to enjoy our national park preserve given the uncertainty we are living with in terms of its future.
The National Park Service is holding a 25th anniversary celebration of the public acquisition of the Valles Caldera on July 25 through 27. There will be events from 7 in the morning to 11 at night. Please support our rangers and enjoy the park early and late on these days. For more information go to: https://www.nps.gov/vall/planyourvisit/valles-caldera-s-25th-anniversary.htm
Volunteer to Help the Cows, Trails and the Public
The Valles Caldera has numerous volunteer opportunities for you. You can help maintain trails, talk to visitors, look for dendroglyphs, or feed trespass cattle that are in pens waiting for their rancher owners to come collect them. Go to: https://www.nps.gov/vall/getinvolved/volunteer.htm
Congress Joins Attack on the National Park Service
Recently conservationists had a major victory when we defeated Utah Senator Mike Lee’s efforts to authorize sale of millions of acres of public lands in the West. An uprising by western republicans finally killed his effort to insert sell-off language in the Trump budget policy bill (the BBB).
But Trump’s team continue their efforts to ruin the National Park Service and their efforts are not getting enough attention. The BBB bill codifies some destructive measures against the Park Service. Specifically, Congress repealed $267 million that had already been appropriated to pay NPS staff. This will force an exodus of park rangers and support staff right when visitation is peaking in the parks. Facing an angry outcry last spring, the administration promised to hire seasonal employees for the parks but only partly made good. The NPS needed 7700 seasonals but got only 4500.
Meanwhile Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and his top assistant DOGE employee Tyler Hassam plan mass firings of NPS staff at some point soon. The federal courts had put a stay on mass firing of federal employees led by OMB Director Russ Voight, but the Supreme Court recently struck down the ability of lower federal courts to issue broad injunctions against the Trump regime. One such injunction halted the reduction in force (RIF) that Burgum plans for the NPS and other Interior agencies.
The National Park Service was operating with too few staff during the Biden administration and previous administrations. Biden had boosted funding for the NPS through the Inflation Reduction Act, but Trump has gone after that Act with a vengeance, seeking to claw back funding already appropriated and sitting in the NPS bank accounts. This is what congressional republicans approved last week. (They also made big cuts in the budgets for the US Forest Service, US Fish and Wildlife Service, BLM, and numerous renewable energy and climate science programs.)
We are rapidly getting to the point where the national parks, including the Valles Caldera, Chaco, Bandelier and other New Mexico units will no longer be able to function. The big parks like Yosemite and Yellowstone will face a crisis when they are no longer able to protect park facilities, wildlife, and other “resources” from ever-growing crowds of visitors. The NPS is governed by the NPS Organic Act that mandates that the agency protect the parks for present and future generations.
No administration in history has attacked our federal public land agencies with such determination and lethal intent. Even during the Bush and first Trump administrations the agencies were allowed to function and serve the American People. What’s changed is the presence of Russ Voight, the Office of Management and Budget Director who was the lead author on Project 2025, a far-right blueprint for dismantling the federal government which Trump embraced. Voight seems to have no connection with our national parks and no amount of pressure from the public makes the slightest impression on the man. (Perhaps he visited Yellowstone and dreamed of it being managed by Disney or Aramark.)
Is it possible the National Park Service could cease to exist after 109 years? The fate of the park lands themselves is up in the air, with Secretary Burgum saying he feels they should be given to state and county governments (with no funds for operations) which would be free to sell the land. This includes all the NPS sites in New Mexico except White Sands and Carlsbad Caverns.
This contempt is like burning down the Smithsonian. The National Parks are a public repository of our most important and valuable places held in trust for the future.
Please continue to talk to others about this problem and urge people to write their Congresspersons, especially republicans. Spread the word relentlessly.
