"President Trump’s zest for rapidly shrinking the government is triggering anxiety about conservation priorities that have been embedded for more than five decades in the country’s national parks and wildlife refuges. Amid the staffing whiplash — chaotic firings and reinstatement of rangers, scientists, and other civil servants — America’s most vulnerable plant and animal species face new peril in their struggle to survive.
Even as fired workers are being offered reinstatement under federal court orders, the White House is asking the Supreme Court to halt the rehiring orders for 1,000 National Park Service employees and thousands in other agencies. And employees and park advocates worry about natural resource implications of the administration’s direction more broadly: budget freezes, lease termination at some offices for natural resource staff, and likely more firings under a looming “reduction in force” the president has ordered.
Add to that Trump’s headlong push for more energy development and mining on public lands and it’s hard not to see a bullseye on the government’s longstanding efforts to preserve American species deemed so precarious that they are listed officially as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
The half-century-old act protects such vulnerable plants and animals as grizzly bears in Yellowstone, tiny birds found only in Hawaii’s tropical forests, blubbery-looking manatees in Florida, and close to 1,000 rare plants across the country. Signed by then-President Richard Nixon, the ESA is the government’s promise to fend off their extinction."
Rita Beamish reports for the National Parks Traveler March 29, 2025.
Advertisement 
