“America’s Best Idea” Slams Into One of Trump’s Worst Ones

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The National Park Service has lost a quarter of its permanent staff since January, and the White House has proposed slashing a third of NPS’s budget. Ultimately, Congress decided to claw back close to $300 million of already-approved funds for our parks. But the reduction is still notable, says Jon B. Jarvis, who served as the 18^th director of NPS.

“The thing to think about the budget and the park service is it’s an operational budget,” explains Jarvis. “The money pays staff to be in parks, to be there for the public, to help them have a good experience, to put out fires, to look out for wildlife, to tell the public how they can safely experience the park, to fix signs and plow roads and clean bathrooms and all of those things they have to do.”

By taking away the money, he says, you take away the operation and the ability to manage these parks for future generations.

On a recent episode of What Next, guest host Rob Gunther spoke to Jarvis about the history of the national parks and how the Trump administration is shaking things up. This transcript has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Rob Gunther: Can you tell me how the National Park Service came about?

Jon B. Jarvis: It is a bit of a miracle. It really goes back to individuals who saw manifest destiny. That was the desire of the country to occupy all lands and develop them. They said: “Wait a minute, there are special places. There are places that really should be set aside.”

The first national park was Yellowstone, in 1872. The concept was that these extraordinary landscapes should be preserved for the enjoyment of future generations. In 1916 there was an effort to create an agency to manage them, led by Stephen Mather, a Berkeley graduate and an independently wealthy individual who loved these large Western landscapes.

He came to Washington and created the NPS. And somewhat in the guise of the military, he hired former military officers as park superintendents. The early protectors of the parks were the Buffalo Soldiers. They were the Black soldiers based at some of the bases in the West. They were dispatched to protect places like Yosemite and Sequoia.

At first, the parks tended to be natural areas, mostly in the West. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president, all the historic sites, like the Civil War and Revolutionary War battlefields, were under the management of the War Department. But the then director of the park service, Horace Albright, convinced FDR to transfer those sites to the National Park Service. The service became the protector of not only these amazing natural landscapes but the cultural and historical sites of America. We’re now at about 430 park units across the country that run from the Virgin Islands to American Samoa.

Over the course of your four decades at the NPS, was the organization able to stay true to its mission of ensuring that these lands exist for future generations? Or did you see the institution change?

The agency stayed true to its core mission. There have been some dramatic changes. Early on in the park service, there was an inordinate focus on just the visitor experience. There were things that went on that we would not do today, like feeding bears and inviting the public to sit on bleachers as we fed them garbage in Yellowstone.

Starting in the mid-’60s, the NPS recognized that there needed to be a much greater emphasis on actually building a scientific program to better understand—and learn how to manage—these incredible resources for the future. They began to invest more in scholarly research around the historical sites and the natural resources as well. Today, at least until recent changes by the administration, there’s been a strong emphasis on a scientific basis for management and a scholarly basis of management for the historical sites.

You said “until recent changes.” Ever since Donald Trump took back the presidency, there’s been an assault on not just the National Park Service but the entire federal bureaucracy. There have been orders for reductions in force across multiple agencies. Can you tell me about how the NPS has been affected? 

Having served 40 years, I’ve worked under President Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton and both of the Bush presidencies. The park service has generally fared well; at least, it’s never been targeted for reduction. 

And the parks were popular. Last year, they hosted 320 million visitors. They’re a money generator. The national parks generate over $55 billion for the American economy. That is the local economy, that’s guides and outfitters, lodging, restaurants, souvenir sales, all of those things in gateway communities.

These are American jobs. These are local jobs. When you think about that from a constituency standpoint, there’s huge support for these parks to continue to operate as they have. In the past, if you talked to a lobbyist or representative of the Republican Party, they would say there’s no political benefit in beating up the park service.

There’s no benefit, and it doesn’t cost a lot of money to keep these things up and running, right? 

No, and I always like to make the point that it’s not a cost. It’s an investment. You get a 4-to-1 return. The government puts $3 billion into the operation of the park service, and it gets a minimum of $12 billion directly back, and then that cascades through the economy. It also has, in the past, hosted 60 million international visitors. People come from all over the world to the United States to see natural wonders, in particular the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, and Yosemite. So what’s been very challenging and surprising has been that in this new Trump administration, there has been a direct attack on the National Park Service, an attack on its personnel, its workforce, its budget, and its mission.

It seems as if the attacks are coming from multiple angles. We’re seeing a reduction in the workforce. But we’re also seeing more of an ideological bent too. There are directives to take down certain signage at parks that might be perceived as progressive. What’s going on? 

Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum put out a secretarial order asking the visitors to report back to Washington if they heard anything or saw any signs that were negative about the American story.

Let’s take an example of a park like Freedom Riders. That’s the story of when the public transportation system was desegregated to allow African Americans to ride anywhere they wanted to ride on the bus system. There was a group of individuals who tested that theory through the South, and the bus was attacked by the Ku Klux Klan and set on fire beside the highway. The KKK members held the door shut, attempting to burn these individuals alive. They fortunately did escape. Local police just stood by and watched. That’s well documented in American history. It was a dark period, obviously, of racism.

How do you tell that story in a positive light? We learn from these places. We should be saddened that they occurred, but we should learn from them. And that’s the value proposition of having these places in the National Park Service. The story should be taught authentically based on good scholarship. But the challenge is that the administration is asking the park service not to tell those stories or to modify them or to somehow make them sound good. There’s no way you can put a happy face on the history of slavery in the United States.

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