National parks facing 'nightmare' under Trump, warns ex-director of service

Source: The Guardian

Americans should “raise hell” to protect US national parks through the “nightmare” of Donald Trump’s presidency, according to a former National Park Service director, amid alarm over the impact of the federal government shutdown.

Jonathan Jarvis claimed the agency is now in the hands of a “bunch of ideologues” who would have no issue watching it “go down in flames” – and see parks from Yellowstone to Yosemite as potential “cash cows”, ripe for privatization.

Jarvis, who led the NPS from 2009 to 2017, faced intense scrutiny, a five-hour grilling in Congress and calls for his resignation after closing all 401 national park sites during a previous shutdown, in October 2013.

He was certain, despite the backlash, that it was the right thing to do: keeping them open with a skeleton staff would have put parks and their visitors at risk, his team concluded.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/14/national-park-service-trump-administration