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As the government shutdown drags on, the American public is understandably concerned about near-term effects on parks and public lands, including rangers taken off the job, visitor centers closed, small businesses hit hard, and poorly stewarded lands at risk.
These are not temporary concerns. Many of the shutdown’s impacts are a taste of the future that President Donald Trump is trying to cement for America’s public lands. Before and during the shutdown, the Trump administration has rapidly pushed an agenda to sell out America’s public lands for drilling and mining while gutting the funding, staff, and policies necessary to steward those lands for generations to come.
The table below highlights some of the striking similarities between the shutdown’s known impacts to America’s public lands and the vision that the Trump administration is openly pushing for public lands into the future.
The author would like to thank Sophie Conroy, Nicole Gentile, Sam Zeno, Jenny Rowland-Shea, Bill Rapp, Mona Alsaidi, and Meghan Miller for their assistance with this piece.