Billionaires Elon Musk and President Donald Trump are purging park rangers, scientists, and other public land experts while putting oil and gas industry executives and their close allies in charge of America’s public lands. As a result, visitors and communities are already feeling the impacts on their parks, and land protections are being gutted to clear a path for pollution and corporate exploitation.
The Trump administration is firing the guardians of America’s parks, public lands, and wildlife
From trail closures to canceled reservations, visitors to national parks and other public lands are beginning to see the very early effects of mass firings orchestrated by Elon Musk and his team. An estimated 2,300 employees of the U.S. Department of the Interior—including 1,000 National Park Service staff members—as well as 3,400 employees of the U.S. Forest Service were indiscriminately fired around February 14, 2025. Remaining civil servants fear they will be next, as more firings are expected. Meanwhile, another 2,700 Interior Department staff reportedly resigned as a result of Musk’s resignation pressure campaign, which encouraged workers to take “higher productivity jobs in the private sector.”
Early impacts may be most visible at America’s national parks, which received more than 325 million visitors in 2023. Staff firings have already led to trail and visitor center closures, interpretive tour cancellations, and cuts to park operating hours. Families planning trips to Yosemite National Park this summer have been left in limbo because campsite reservations were halted.
Impacts are only expected to worsen as the summer travel season approaches. As Americans learned during the government shutdown in Trump’s first term, diminished park staffing can cause longer wait times, overflowing toilets and trash cans, trail degradation, and an uptick in looting and vandalism. Emergency response wait times may also increase for lost and injured hikers.
Moreover, while park rangers are among America’s most visible and beloved government employees, they are just a small percentage of the American civil servants who steward public lands, waters, and wildlife. While the Trump administration has not shared any information with the public about the distribution of its firings or who may be fired next, other known and anticipated impacts of mass firings of conservation and public lands staff include:
- America’s other park rangers: Public lands managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the Fish and Wildlife Service—hit by firings of 800 and 420 staff, respectively—welcome millions of visitors each year, while national forests attracted 159 million visitors from 2018 to 2022. Like national parks, these short-staffed public lands are already closing areas to visitors.
- Catastrophic wildfires: Last year, the United States saw an above-average number of wildfires, and wildfire risk continues to increase, yet Forest Service staffing cuts and President Trump’s funding freeze have stalled critical wildfire prevention projects and put more communities at risk. And while the administration claims that full-time firefighters were exempted from initial cuts, press reports have revealed that other staff serving as wildland firefighters and support staff were not spared.
- Historic and cultural resources: Two-thirds of national park sites directly honor American history and culture, including sacred Native American sites. The BLM has identified more than 426,000 different culture sites on only 12 percent of its lands and recently took historic steps to co-steward more lands and waters directly with Tribes. Staffing and funding cuts imperil the legacy of these places, deprive students and visitors of educational opportunities, put Tribal commitments at risk, and leave irreplaceable pieces of history vulnerable to vandalism or looting.
- Healthy lands, waters, and wildlife: Employees of land management agencies such as the National Park Service are responsible for projects that restore degraded wildlife habitats, combat invasive species, conserve migration corridors, and restore fish populations, while also overseeing the protection and recovery of more than 1,600 threatened or endangered species across the United States. Mass firings and frozen project funding derail these efforts and diminish the government’s ability to enforce laws that protect water, air quality, and at-risk wildlife from large oil, gas, and mining operations.
- Private land conservation support: The firing of a reported 1,200 natural resources conservation employees from the U.S. Department of Agriculture eliminated on-the-ground support for farmers and landowners improving wildlife habitat and water quality, adding to the impacts of the Trump administration choking off funding for related conservation programs.
Oil and gas insiders are now in charge
Meanwhile, President Trump is filling high-ranking government positions with oil and gas lobbyists and insiders with close industry ties.
According to various accounts, during the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump told a group of oil and gas executives at Mar-a-Lago that they should raise $1 billion so that he could reverse various environmental and energy policies. Now in the White House, Trump has appointed oil and gas insiders and loyalists to manage the nation’s energy and land management agencies, including picking cabinet officials favored by oil and gas billionaire Harold Hamm.
Former Gov. Doug Burgum (R-ND), who helped Hamm organize the infamous Mar-a-Lago event, was heavily promoted by the billionaire and has close connections with various oil and gas executives. As Trump’s secretary of the interior, he is now responsible for overseeing most of America’s public lands, including national parks; regulating oil and gas activities; enforcing protection for endangered species; and much more. Chris Wright, Trump’s secretary of energy, was Hamm’s top choice for that position and served as CEO for multiple oil and gas fracking companies.
President Trump has also nominated oil and gas insiders for other key roles. Kathleen Sgamma, his nominee to lead the BLM, which stewards 245 million acres of public lands, is one of the oil and gas industry’s most vocal advocates. As president of the industry group Western Energy Alliance, Sgamma frequently represents oil and gas interests on Capitol Hill and has repeatedly sued the federal government, and the BLM in particular, to advance the industry’s interests.
Moreover, Trump’s nominees to lead the Environmental Protection Agency’s air and water offices previously lobbied for the oil and gas industry. Trump even nominated an oil and gas industry executive to lead the renewable energy office at the Department of Energy.
Resources diverted to benefit industry
While core public land services are strangled by staff cuts and frozen funding, the Trump administration is diverting resources to benefit the oil and gas industry. Soon after being sworn in, Secretary Burgum issued four orders aimed at prioritizing drilling or mining on national public lands and waters.
Among those secretarial orders, which elaborate on directives from President Trump, Burgum initiated a sweeping campaign to revise or eliminate a long list of conservation and wildlife requirements and safeguards for drilling and mining. The same order directs the Interior Department to rapidly plan for increased oil and gas leasing and permitting and to identify land conservation policies for modification and elimination, including protected national monuments.
From massive lease sales to gutting conservation and wildlife rules, these new priorities closely mirror the wish list outlined by industry insiders in Project 2025 and the American Petroleum Institute’s agenda for an incoming Trump administration. Meanwhile, after nearly a month, Secretary Burgum has issued no formal orders related to conservation, recreation, wildlife, commitments to Tribal nations, or any other core function of the agency—unless renaming the Gulf of Mexico or Denali counts.
What happens next
While initial firings have been reckless and haphazard, the trajectory the Trump administration is charting seems clear and intentional. And it is a frightening one.
If mass firings and reprogrammed conservation funding remain unchecked, it will become impossible to effectively steward the nation’s public lands, waters, and wildlife, even if resources are reshuffled to staff the more “popular” parks. Those self-inflicted harms could even fuel calls to sell off large swaths of public lands—calls that are already coming from close allies of President Trump and Elon Musk, such as Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources Chair Mike Lee. Meanwhile, Trump officials are focusing remaining agency resources to give corporations free rein to drill and mine public lands at the expense of water quality, at-risk wildlife, recreation-based businesses, and more.
However, safeguarding America’s great outdoors has strong, bipartisan support, and the escalating climate and biodiversity crises call for more—not less—conservation action. Recent polling shows that Americans want the government to steward public lands for the public. They do not want to fire its protectors, hand control to corporations, and watch the country’s natural treasures go to waste. In fact, recent park service firings have begun to prompt substantial outrage and protest. As the threats to America’s public lands and waters mount, this may be just a small preview of the opposition on the horizon.
The authors would like to thank Jenny Rowland-Shea, Kalina Gibson, Beatrice Aronson, Christian Rodriquez, Audrey Juarez, and the local and national conservation leaders who are building impactful and equitable conservation solutions every day.
About the authors: Drew McConville joined the Center for American Progress as a senior fellow after working for nearly 20 years to advance land conservation and climate change policies within and outside the government. Sam Zeno is a senior policy analyst for conservation policy at the Center for American Progress.
This article was published by the Center for American Progress.
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