Trump and Musk are loathing are parks to death
By Erika D. Smith / Bloomberg Opinion
On Tuesday night, as President Trump spun fantastical tales to Congress about the hundreds of billions of dollars Elon Musks Department of Government Efficiency has supposedly saved by firing federal employees, sitting in the audience was a woman named Kate.
Until a few weeks ago, Kate was a ranger at Voyageurs National Park in Minnesota. But on Tuesday evening, she was in Washington, D.C., as an unemployed guest of the states junior senator, Democrat Tina Smith.
Musk and Trump should have to face the hardworking Park Rangers they sacked, Smith insisted on X. And indeed, they should. But more than that, Musk and Trump also should have to face Americans over the dangerous situation theyve created.
The mass firings come right before the tourist season for the National Park Service, when an estimated 325 million people are expected to check out the Grand Canyon, Zion, Yellowstone, Rainier and other iconic parks. But federal employees dont only hand out trail maps and rescue lost hikers. Across hundreds of millions of acres of national parks and national forests, many of them also do the grunt work of preventing, mitigating and fighting wildfires. Because climate change is making such fires more frequent, more unpredictable and more destructive, the cuts couldnt come at a more dangerous time.
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/comment-trump-and-musk-are-loathing-are-parks-to-death/

FirstLight
(14,976 posts)IDK if anyone remembers COVID, but there was a lot of vandalism and other issues without Park/Forestry personnel to keep people from being dicks. Everyone thought they could "social distance" outside and so the National Forests etc were inundated with people...at least here in Tahoe it was a nightmare.
I am most worried about forest fires because there's nobody to enforce no smoking or campfire laws and no burn days. Also, the trash will be horrible, compounding the bear issues. Our National Treasures don;t deserve this. But all they see is $$$
eppur_se_muova
(38,914 posts)Remember this protest sign ?