The Cherry Trees

Some of the oldest cherry trees Japan ever gave America — living since 1912, protected on the National Register of Historic Places — stood in East Potomac Park, on the man-made island between DC and Arlington. They also shaded one of the country’s oldest public golf courses. The President wants that course reborn as an elite PGA-caliber venue, a redesign sweeping enough to require environmental review and public process.

The administration skipped both. There are reports that more than 60 cherry trees are already gone, and the course has quietly crept past its old boundary into parkland. Reporting as of yesterday disputes some of these claims, but it’s hard to get a clear answer.

The renovation is moving forward. Golfers worry the new course will price them out. Park visitors just want their trees back. A judge, in his ruling on a lawsuit trying to stop the removal of the trees, allowed “necessary maintenance” and nothing more — a ruling the administration treats as a suggestion. Its official line is that the trees were hazardous, dying, routine removals—nothing to see here.

The cherry trees aren’t alone. Trees came down around the White House to widen its security perimeter. At the Kennedy Center this week, forty weeping willows disappeared from the Center’s upper terrace — casualties, perhaps, of the fight over whether the Center gets renovated or gutted; the administration hasn’t said, and replacement has become a promise made only after the fact.

There’s a legend about George Washington and a cherry tree: “I cannot tell a lie. I did it,” when accidentally damaging one of his father’s cherry trees with a hatchet. Today the trees still fall — we just don’t get the honesty as a consolation prize.

The Road Through Yosemite

Kingsbarn Realty Capital, a Nevada firm, owns 83 acres just outside the boundary of Yosemite National Park, and wants to punch a private road straight into the park. In exchange, the developer offers land of “equal value” somewhere else in California — as if a park’s boundary were a fungible asset, one acre as good as any other.

Congress already said no to this once. The administration keeps asking anyway. I’m sure there’s a financial reason for the persistence, and who will receive those funds. It’s also a slippery slope. Give or exchange part of a National Park once, and more will follow, especially in this administration.

If the swap goes through, it breaks tradition this country has honored for generations: parks get expanded, not carved up. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum told his confirmation hearing that the parks deserve protection down to “every single inch.” On August 24th, marking National Park Week, the President promised an administration “committed to protecting every acre of our lands and preserving the cleanest air and water in the world.”

Actions speak louder than words, and sadly, their words are meaningless.

What’s Next

Cherry trees. A private road through hallowed ground. Neither of these made a headline that stuck. All of them share the same quiet logic: erode the rules, count on nobody watching closely enough to stop it, and apologize only if caught. The question isn’t whether there’s a next outrage — there always is. The question is how much of what we’ve inherited will still be standing, running free, or intact by the time we notice. Spread the word to let them know we will continue to fight while this administration neglects and ignores our public lands.

Jeff Ayers co-authors the National Park thriller series for Minotaur as A.J. Landau, and the Jigsaw Puzzle Mysteries for Crooked Lane as J.B. Abbott. He has interviewed hundreds of authors for magazines, newspapers, and podcasts, and reviewed books for The Associated Press and Booklist. He currently reviews suspense thrillers and mysteries for Library Journal, Criminal Element, and firstCLUE. A retired public librarian and former co-executive director for ThrillerFest, he lives near Seattle, Washington. His website is jeffayersbooks.com.

https://www.newsweek.com/company-denies-felling-dc-cherry-trees-after-flurry-negative-reviews-12394633

https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/other/kingsbarn-ceo-jeff-pori-paid-4-million-for-land-outside-yosemite-why-trump-is-now-considering-a-private-road-through-the-park/ar-AA2bi4D2

Most writers don’t start out hoping they’ll run out of things to write, but that’s exactly what I wished when I became part of the Authors For Public Lands group.

The best thing, I thought, would be for our public lands to become so cherished, protected and expanded, there would be nothing left for this group to report. The crew, I figured, would quietly disband to write books, spend more time in the outdoors and meet a few times a year to chat about our lives and adventures.

Unfortunately, with the way things stand, there is plenty to write about. Last week was no exception.

According to an Aug. 18 Washington Post article, the Trump administration has proposed the repeal of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule which, over the decades, has prevented road-building and logging on some 45 million acres of pristine forest in the national forest system. Most of the land is in the western U.S.

The Agriculture Department was quoted as saying this so-called “roadless rule” hinders the fight against destructive wildfires. Getting rid of it, it said, would allow greater access for firefighting crews, additional firebreaks and encourage forest management practices by allowing individual forest managers to make decisions based on the land they oversee.

It seems benign on its face until you consider that, last year, an executive order called on the Agriculture and Interior departments to increase logging on public lands—an order which was stymied by the roadless rule.

So, is this a way to stop destructive fires that are such a part of modern life or a path to open public land to logging?

Let’s look at a bit of background.

For eons, fire kept forests healthy. Lightning would strike, setting off low-intensity flames every few decades. These blazes would get rid of choking brush, deadfall and forest debris but spare larger trees. Seeds would germinate, there would be more nutrients for young trees, and the forest would thrive.

Then, in 1910 the “Big Burn” happened. Flames raced through forests and towns in northern Idaho, killing 87 people, including 78 firefighters. It was set off by drought conditions, lightning strikes, sparks from coal-powered train engines and hurricane-force winds. Suddenly, it was decided that every fire, even low-intensity ones, needed to be stamped out. The unintended consequence was that flammable forest material kept piling up and fires became, not low-intensity burns, but conflagrations.

Unlike the slow burns, these conflagrations may not help forests. In fact, a recent study out of Western Colorado University suggests that these high-intensity crown fires may change the landscape so severely, the forest may never return to what it was.

We humans messed up.

But does repealing the roadless rule make things better?

Not if you consider the fact that according to experts and to 120 current and former firefighters opposed to the rule change, the majority of destructive fires are human-caused—arson, untended campfires, tossed cigarettes, and sparks from cars and power tools. It doesn’t seem like the best idea then to let more yahoos into the woods by giving them roads to drive on.

In addition, the roadless rule already allows the U.S. Forest Service to construct temporary roads to fight fires or do fire suppression work. Why throw out the entire rule if you can send in bulldozers when fires ignite?

To my mind, repealing the rule also doesn’t address the bigger problem, which is that climate change has made weather conditions more dangerous. I can’t help but look at the extreme weather—high winds, heat, drought—across the U.S., along with the unhealthy state of our forests caused by these very conditions and think we need to address our use of fossil fuels and carbon emissions instead of building roads into pristine wilderness.

A more effective solution, I think, would be to add more funds to what have already been allocated by the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The Biden-era act set aside $3.3 billion for fire reduction efforts over the next five years, including $2.4 billion to reduce hazardous fuels on federal, state and tribal lands, $500 million for prescribed burns and $500 million for tree harvesting and thinning in an ecological way, among other offerings.

It seems a better way to make our forests healthier and fires less damaging than sending bulldozers into untouched wilderness.

If you have thoughts on the proposed repeal of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, the comment period is now open. Simply go to regulations.gov and type in the docket page number FS-2025-0001 and leave your comment. You have until Sept. 21, 2026.

Peggy Townsend is a former award-winning journalist and author of four mystery novels, including her latest, “The Botanist’s Assistant.”

In 1915, the snowy egret was in a bad way. Sized midway between a crow and a goose, the snowy egret has a long neck, small head, and a slender black bill. The bird, not surprisingly given the name, has brilliant white plumage; delicate aigrettes grow from its crown, chest, and wings. Both males and females have this exotic plumage. The birds display these elaborate feathers in their courtship rituals. When they mate, snowy egrets often gather in great rookeries. Here, they hatch and raise their young.

These evolutionary accommodations—elaborate plumage and gathering en masse—proved calamitous for the species’ survival. At the beginning of the Twentieth Century, their fine and attractive feathers were highly coveted by milliners in both Great Britain and New York City. Large, showy hats, festooned with all types of feathers and even whole birds, became a fashion staple. When the demand for plumes peaked, the snowy egret feathers were worth more than gold. With hat-makers willing to pay exorbitant prices, hunters flocked to the egrets’ homes deep in swampy south Florida.

Big, noisy, nesting rookeries could be easily found in the backwaters of the Everglades. The volume nesting of the birds made mass killing possible. When the adult males and females were slaughtered and skinned, the unprotected eggs of the rookeries became feasts for predatory birds. Newly hatched orphans, meanwhile, starved or sunbaked. By the beginning of the Twentieth Century, it became harder to find enough exotic birds, like the snowy egret, to meet demand. The supply of birds dwindled to the point that plumes had to be imported from South America.

Starting in Britain, citizens recognized that some species were being slaughtered into extinction. Protests began. In this country, conservation-minded women attended church and took note of congregants wearing bird plumage. Returning home, the women wrote polite letters, setting out the cruelties in producing these hats. The efforts were small and local.

Legislatures passed laws restricting the hunting and transportation of migratory birds. As long as profits were high, however, enforcement remained problematic. Money trumped compliance. In 1905, Guy Bradley, a game warden, was murdered while attempting to arrest bird poachers in the Florida Everglades. He became America’s first environmental martyr.

Laws, enforcement, local action, and economic pressure helped in the battle to save America’s endangered bird species, but the movement needed something more.

And then, Irene Castle got sick.

Irene Castle and her husband, Vernon, were ballroom dancers. Elegant and sophisticated, the pair revitalized modern dancing in America. Irene became a stylish trendsetter featured in Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and other fashion magazines. In 1939, Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire portrayed the couple in the movie version of their lives. Women watched what Irene wore. In today’s parlance, Irene Castle was an “influencer.”

In 1915, at the height of their popularity, Irene needed to have her appendix removed. Before entering surgery, she opted to cut her long hair short. The new hairstyle would be easier to wash and maintain during her recovery. A new style was born. Irene Castle almost singlehandedly popularized the bob. The hairstyle became the defining women’s cut of the Roaring Twenties.

The bob, however, didn’t work with oversized, outlandish, feathered hats. The unadorned cloche or the turban became the hat for the stylish. The millinery movement trickled down to the greater population. Hat makers took note, and the demand for feathers declined. Without the plume trade, the mass killing of birds ended. Snowy egrets had the chance to rebound.

In the campaign to save plumage birds from eradication, there are lessons for today. Preserving species and safeguarding public lands are best accomplished by appropriate legislation and a willingness to enforce the laws. When government lacks the willingness to act, however, an organized citizenry can still make a difference. A multitude of small undertakings, like the church letters, can resist a seemingly overwhelming trend.

Bringing the multitude to bear, however, often requires an influencer. Artists, perhaps even writers, might raise awareness, show their audience a different course of action, and get people talking. The current threats to wildlife are varied—the bulldozers in Big Bend present the most recent challenge. Everyone can do something. Send some money, write to your member of Congress, talk to a neighbor. Small conversations may lead to big changes. Irene Castle, after all, didn’t set out to end the plumage industry. She wanted to make it easier to wash her hair.

*I learned many of the essential facts for this blog as well as numerous others in Ten Birds That Changed the World, by Stephen Moss.

Mark Thielman is the author of the Johnson and Nance Mysteries, dual timeline thrillers set in the splendor of America’s National Parks. The third book, The Firefall, was released in April 2026.

(Century-old mining tram apparatus at 12,500 feet in the San Juan Mountains, southwest Colorado. Author photo.)

Most folks I know—including me—have been busy blaming Donald Trump and his administration for the unending attacks on public lands since his reelection in 2024.

As this fall’s midterm elections approach, however, I’ve belatedly come to understand it’s not Trump and his administration that are doing such serious harm to our public lands. Rather, it’s the U.S. Republican Party.

The Republican Party bankrolled, and now fully supports, Project 2025, the fever-dream blueprint for a right-wing America written by the uber-conservative Heritage Foundation.

Project 2025’s chapter on federal land policy proposes selling off America’s priceless public lands, eliminating the provisions of the Endangered Species Act that help protect public lands, ending the use of the Antiquities Act by future presidents to create national monuments on those lands, rewriting the National Environmental Policy Act to favor polluting federal land and water by big business, and opening public lands to widespread despoliation by mining, logging, and oil-and-gas industries.

Trump’s Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum and Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins are currently hard at work implementing anti-public-lands policies across the board. In so doing, they’re simply following the orders of Project 2025, which was concocted by the Republican Party on behalf of the party’s wealthy industrial and corporate donors seeking to profit from the selloff and destruction of America’s otherwise widely and wildly beloved public lands.

In light of that fact, I’ve come to realize, the only way to end today’s ongoing attacks on public lands is to vote Republicans out of office at every level of elected government in the midterms this November.

While I continue to join others in condemning Trump and his administration for attacking our public lands, I also fully recognize the Republican Party’s lead role in inciting those attacks. I will vote accordingly this fall, and I invite everyone who cares for America’s public lands to do the same.

—

Scott Graham (scottfranklingraham.com) is the National Outdoor Book Award-winning author of the National Park Mystery Series published by Torrey House Press (torreyhouse.org). In addition to his ten-books-and-counting series, Scott is the author of five nonfiction books. An avid outdoorsman and public lands advocate who lives in southwest Colorado, he has worked as a reporter, editor, disk jockey, city councilor, and coal-shoveling fireman on the Durango-Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad.

A FELLOWSHIP OF FERNS

By Paula Munier

It’s that time of year again when the forest floor is crowded with ferns. Ferns often go unnoticed and unheralded, despite their fractal beauty. Indeed, if they are spoken of at all it is typically with annoyance at their abundance or anxiety about the ticks lurking in their fronds.

And yet ferns play a critical role in the ecosystem of forests—and they always have. This group of plants is one of the oldest on the planet, far older than flowering plants. We’re talking 360 million years ago, long before the dinosaurs and long before us.

What’s so special about ferns? Well, their fronds shade the soil, keeping it moist in the summer. And when they die off come autumn, they provide nutrients that enrich the soil. Their deep roots help prevent soil erosion, and the entire plant serves as shelter to a variety of animals, from insects and spiders and amphibians to ground-nesting birds like ovenbirds and hermit thrushes. Both wild turkeys and ruffled grouse hide their poults and chicks in ferns to keep them safe.

And while they make rough eating for many species thanks to tough fibers and tannins and toxins, ferns are also a food source for other species, including our own. Moose munch on wood fern and royal fern (above). Snowshoe hares and white-tailed deer feed on bracken fern and ostrich fern in spring.

As do human foragers, who search out the tightly looped shoots of ostrich fern known as fiddleheads. Fiddleheads are a delicacy prized by home cooks and award-winning chefs alike. Some cooks also use the fiddleheads of lady fern.

“Only spread a fern-frond over a man’s head and worldly cares are cast out, and freedom and beauty and peace come in.”

--John Muir

Take a closer look at the lovely kaleidoscope of these green feathery plants overrunning the trails the next time you wander through the woods. On a recent hike here in New England, we spotted several different fern species brightening the dappled gloom of the understory.

The interrupted fern (above) has been around the eastern part of North America for some 200 million years, according to fossil records, making it the oldest species of fern here.

Sensitive ferns (above), like many ferns, are eco-indicators, meaning that their presence indicates a certain kind of habitat. These ferns need constant moisture, and so when you spot a sensitive fern, you’ll typically find high groundwater and/or wetlands nearby.

The cinnamon fern (above), named after its dramatic cinnamon-stick style fertile fronds, is a great soil stabilizer, perfect for bogs and rain gardens. Its rootstock was used in indigenous medicine for such ailments as colds, chills, and rheumatism.

The New York fern (above) is also a wetlands indicator. Its pretty, wispy look and low-maintenance profile make it a favorite for those with woodland gardens or natural wetlands gardens. In addition to the shady forest floor, they’re also found in marshy, wet areas, and along the banks of streams. New York ferns thrive in damp, shaded woodland floors and stream edges, thereby providing the high-humidity environments beloved by toads and amphibians.

The Christmas fern (above) is an evergreen fern prized by the makers of holiday wreaths, floral arrangements, and other seasonal decorations. Its year-round dark green fronds make the fern a favorite of gardeners, too, especially as ground cover for shady spots and erosion-prone slopes, as well as providing shelter for wildlife. The plant was widely used by the North American indigenous peoples for medicinal purposes, including root teas for treating rheumatism, fevers, and stomach problems. It was also thought to be a good blood purifier.

“If we were required to know the position of the fruit dots or the character of the endusium, nothing could be easier to ascertain, but if it is required that you be AFFECTED by ferns, that they amount to anything, signify anything to you, that they be another sacred scripture and revelation to you, help you to redeem your life, this end is not so easily accomplished.”

--Henry David Thoreau

As the ever-wise Thoreau reminds us, if we want to have a deep connection with nature, we must abandon our books and our belongings and our busyness and go into the woods, to commune with the ferns. These ancient plants are time-honored friends of the forest, a fellowship of ferns as it were, supporting the flora and fauna of our natural world.

So the next time you wander into the woods, read the sacred scripture of the fronds, and redeem your life.

One fern at a time.

PAULA MUNIER is the USA TODAY bestselling author of the award-winning Mercy Carr mysteries from Minotaur. The latest, THE SNOW LIES DEEP, was hailed as “captivating” by PW and named The Poisoned Pen’s Cozy Club Pick for December. She’s also published three popular writing books and the memoir Fixing Freddie. A Natural Resources Steward of New Hampshire, she lives in New England with her family, four rescue dogs, and a rescue cat.

The July 4^th weekend in northeastern (NE) Minnesota was unseasonably hot, dry and windy. Those conditions had only recently begun and they would persist for the next several days. During Monday evening, July 6^th, a series of atmospheric storms spread down from Canada. The storms dropped very little rain. But the night sky was ripe for electrical activity and by morning lightning strikes started several fires in Canada and NE Minnesota, including the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCA). Over the next few days, a perfect storm of near-drought conditions, dried out forest fuels, high winds and hot weather caused those fires to blossom like the sped up anthesis of a deadly yellow flower.

Almost immediately The US Forest Service (USFS) detected and began fighting the fires. By July 11 the USFS was forced to close several parts of the wilderness to traffic, and campers and canoeists began to evacuate. Over the next few days approximately 6,000 wilderness travelers were escorted out of the woods. By July 14^th the entire one-million-acre BWCA had been closed. By July 18 the fires had become so problematic, the USFS upgraded the fight to a Type 1 Complex Incident Management event. On that Saturday the Southern Area Complex Incident Management Team assumed command of what has become known as the BWCA/Superior National Forest July Lightning Incident (SNF-JLI).

Elevating the battle to a Type 1 incident means significant additional resources – equipment and personnel – could be added to the efforts to fight 15 wildfires burning across the BWCA and surrounding counties. According to a July 24, 2026 there were 1,096 professional firefighters working to contain the blazes. They are accompanied by massive air, land and water resources.

The effects of the BWCA wilderness cannot be overstated. The cancellation of admittance forced some six to ten thousand visitors to alter their travel and vacation plans. Mid-summer is the height of the area’s tourist season. NE Minnesota communities like Ely, Grand Marais, and Tofte depend on the tourist traffic of the popular summer months to carry them through the rest of the year. Resort owners and outfitters have testified that the closure of the BWCA is having a colossal financial impact on their businesses, reducing their seasonal income by tens of thousands of dollars. These businesses employ scores of seasonal workers, which in turn had a profound financial impact on the area’s labor force.

Climate Change is Altering Northern Forests

While there may not be a direct correlation between global climate change and what’s happening today in Minnesota, it is easy to attribute the region’s forest fires to specific climatological phenomenon. Climate science has told us the warming planet is resulting in increased significant weather events. Our seas are warming. Some of our land is becoming drier, creating prolonged droughts that devastate wild landscapes and agriculture. And occasionally storms are becoming more extreme, sometimes dumping several inches of rain on a given area over a 24-hour period. The devastation from some of these events is well documented. While these effects are general and global, what’s happening today in the BWCA is specific and local. The forests are dry. The temperatures have become unseasonably warm. An unusual number of lightning strikes started numerous wildfires. And strong, hot winds fanned the flames.

Given the preceding, the obvious preparation for addressing (and fighting) significant events like the SNF-JLI would be to increase emergency resources, especially within the USFS. Unfortunately, throughout 2025 the USFS reduced its staff by approximately 6,000-6,900 employees (20 percent). Numbers have not been released for 2026, but personnel reductions have continued.

In fairness, the USFS has stated they have sufficient resources to fight the fires currently happening in the SNF and the BWCA. Unfortunately, these fires, which typically occur in late August, are happening in mid-summer. Firefighters can only hope August turns out differently than past years, and no other comparable events happen anywhere else in the nation.

Addressing Climate Change (or NOT)

The near unanimous scientific opinion is that climate change is being caused by humans. Some of the primary causes are purported to be:

· Burning fossil fuels

· Deforestation

· Poorly Regulated Agricultural Production

· Industrial Practices and Processes

As natural disasters increase, common sense suggests we should do what we can to mitigate the causes of a warming world. Unfortunately, the US government has done the opposite. Since January 2025, some of the US efforts undertaken include:

· Repealing federal greenhouse gas vehicle regulations

· Reconsidering or repealing several power plant climate regulations

· Deregulating fossil fuel leasing, production and related efforts

· Slowing the transition to greener energy. For example, the administration has spent millions of dollars to prevent the construction of alternative, green energy sources like windfarms.

The preceding are just a few of the actions taken by the current administration to reverse American efforts to fight some of the human activities causing our climate to warm.

In summary, the BWCA, one of America’s most iconic wilderness areas, is burning. The entire wilderness area has been closed. While small portions of it may re-open to day traffic, and some overnights, public access to our shared wilderness for the rest of the summer does not look promising. For the first time in the BWCA’s history a huge percentage of the forest will be closed to visitors. While the reasons for that closure are complex, the effects of it are widespread, economic, and traumatic. In the future it makes sense to do whatever we can to address these difficult times and circumstances by mitigating some of the conditions that have caused these tragedies to occur.

Let’s work to make certain our government’s politics reflect common sense principles that set a new course of responsible stewardship of our public lands.

The best map source for BWCA fires can be found at https://inciweb.wildfire.gov/incident-information/mnsuf-july-2026-superior-nf-wildfires

Award-winning author Cary J. Griffith grew up among the woods, fields, and emerald waters of eastern Iowa. His childhood fostered a lifelong love of wild places. He earned a B.A. in English from the University of Iowa and an M.A. in library science from the University of Minnesota.

Griffith’s books explore the natural world. In nonfiction, he covers the borderlands between civilization and wild places. In fiction, he focuses on the ways some people use flora and fauna to commit crimes, while others with more reverence and understanding of the natural world leverage their knowledge to bring criminals to justice.

He is the recipient of a Minnesota Book Award, and a Midwest Book Award.

He lives with his family in a suburb of Minnesota’s Twin Cities.

The next reminder came as smoke moved into our area. Most of the smoke came from fires on the other side of the state including one on the Colorado-Utah border that claimed the lives of three firefighters. I didn’t know those firefighters, but I still mourned those who gave their lives to fight for this land.

A final reminder came when Trump made yet another sickening announcement. He was reducing the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante monuments in Utah by around three million acres. Trump was quoted as saying, “They took the land from the people quite honestly…We’re giving it back.”

No. You’re not giving it back to the people. You’re taking it from the people. Public land belongs to me. Public land belongs to you. The land belongs to visitors. Public land belongs to the animals who call it home.

Trump claims he’s giving it back to the people? No. Trump has one interest in mind and that’s money from oil, gas or other natural resources. He’s giving this land to those whose only interest is greed.

We’ve mentioned in previous posts contacting your representative. There are also organizations that are fighting to keep our lands public such as The Nature Conservancy, The Wilderness Society and Natural Resources Defense Council. Support them.

I thought I’d finish with a reminder of the natural beauty of these public lands by sharing photos I’ve taken over the years. Almost every photo was taken in a National Park or Forest. These photos remind me why I must continue speaking out. I hope they give you the same feeling.

Remember, we are all landowners of millions of acres and we have a responsibility to cherish the land and preserve it for future generations. Continue to speak out. Together, we can make a difference.

P.S. My camera has a telephoto zoom lens. I was at a very safe distance from all these animals. Part of enjoying public lands is making sure you remember that wild animals are just that, wild.

Coyote

This handsome fellow trotted by while I was in the Beaver Meadows area of Rocky Mountain National Park. I’d like to think when this Coyote turned and stared at me, he was saying hello.

Grizzly Bear

This is Spirit and we became acquainted at the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center in West Yellowstone, Montana. Technically, this is the only photo not taken on public lands, but I wanted to include it because Spirit ended up in the Discovery Center when humans taught her it was okay to eat food and become a nuisance. She never hurt anyone, but it was only a matter of time. One of her cubs is now living at the Denver Zoo. Spirit’s story has a happy ending as she’s quite content living at the sanctuary and thriving with the amazing staff who make sure the animals are all happy. But she’s also a reminder that we are not alone and that there’s a responsibility to being a good steward of public lands. If you find yourself in West Yellowstone, make time to visit Spirt and her other bear friends.

Bugling Elk

Every fall these handsome fellows do their best to win over some gorgeous ladies. Bull elk will bugle to attract the cows. They will also spar with each other to compete for the cows and keep their herd together. Hearing an elk bugle is a once in a lifetime experience. This fine fellow was in Rocky Mountain National Park.

Big Horned Ram

I met this good looking guy driving up to Estes Park. He was hanging out in the Big Thompson Canyon and Roosevelt National Forest. He was kind enough to pose for this picture.

Rainbow in meadow

I love nothing more than a good rainstorm in the mountains…if there’s no lightning. That gets a bit scary. But on this day, we had some quick storms and the reward for staying was this beautiful rainbow.

Buffalo in Yellowstone

We visited Yellowstone National Park about fifteen years ago. I was in awe and the buffalo herds up there added to the scenery. We were driving into the park early in the morning when I spotted this buffalo having breakfast. When I want to remember the essence of Yellowstone, I look at this picture.

Award-winning author Kathleen Donnelly is a retired K-9 handler. She co-owned and worked dogs for nineteen years with Sherlock Hounds Detection Canines. She continues to enjoy crafting realism into her fictional stories from her dog-handling experience. Along with working dogs, Kathleen trained horses and loves spending time with her own mare. Her love of the mountains came from growing up in Colorado and exploring the wilderness. She has a B.A. in Journalism from Colorado State University and formerly wrote for The Berthoud Weekly Surveyor where she won a Colorado Press Award. Her books have won or been finalists for multiple awards, including book of the year for the Pencraft Award, the Silver Falchions, and the Colorado Authors League. She lives near the Colorado foothills with her husband and four-legged friends.

Unfortunately, those delights have now been overrun with a crush of tourists that threaten to destroy not just enjoyment of the park, but the park itself.

For the past several years, Yosemite has used a reservation system during the park’s peak tourism season (May to October, and in February when the “Firefall” appears) to alleviate overcrowding in the park. But this year, President Trump signed an executive order urging parks to eliminate the reservation system, purportedly to improve access and boost local economies. (Other parks that previously had reservation systems, such as Arches and Glacier, also eliminated them this year).

However, the current chaos in Yosemite can be traced back to Trump’s original attack on the National Park Service, all the way back to the Valentine’s Day Massacre when thousands of Park Service employees were laid off. Over the course of 2025, the Park Service lost roughly a quarter of its staff, and Yosemite was hard hit. Internal emails leaked to the press show that the park is so understaffed that scientists—including biologists, wildlife specialists, and archeologists—are now being forced to clean bathrooms. The ripple effect is that there are fewer rangers at the entrance gates to help traffic flow, available to help guests at visitor centers, or help with upkeep at the park’s facilities.

The overcrowding “is an environmental disaster for the park, and it’s a safety issue for visitors,” Mark Rose, who manages the Sierra Nevada program for the National Parks Conservation Association, told the New York Times in a recent article. Meadows and trails are being trampled, and the lack of staff means they’re not being maintained in order to keep up with the crowds. The gridlock traffic means longer waits for ambulances and emergency services. Last year’s staffing cuts affected the sole locksmith in the park. Woe betide to you if you were unlucky enough to get stuck in a pit toilet.

What’s the real purpose of doing away with the reservation system? The Trump Administration claims it’s to allow greater access to the park, but that doesn’t really make sense. With the reservation system in place in 2024, the park experiences it's 6th highest visitation level ever. And visitors raved about the reservation system, saying that the reduced crowds greatly enhanced their enjoyment of the park. And the administration’s claim more visitors = more revenue doesn’t track either. Designated fee-free days (June 14th, and July 3rd, 4th, & 5th) fell over prominent travel weekends. Not to mention that entrance fees have been funneled to the president’s ongoing disaster at the Reflecting Pool in D.C.

The real answer lies in Trump’s eagerness to develop every inch around the park that his wealth donors can get their hands on. In the last decade alone, almost 900 hotel rooms have been added across 10 lodging developments, with another 1,500 lodging units proposed for the future. Indeed, the private developers who run the lodgings in and around the park have been the most vocal opponents to the reservation system. Rather than blaming the fact that they’ve oversaturated the market by overbuilding in the area, they blame the Park Service for any profit loss. And sadly, it seems that their argument is winning.

The Park Service had the opportunity to institute a permanent reservation system but failed to do so before the Trump Administration took over in early 2025. And though the current superintendent of Yosemite, Ray McPadden, calls the reservation system “a last resort,” a recent union survey of Yosemite’s Park Service employees shows that there’s near unanimous support for it.

If you’re visiting Yosemite this summer, be respectful and always practice Leave No Trace mindfulness. If your plans are flexible, try to go on a weekday, or after the summer crowds start to ease in September. For more information on what’s happening at Yosemite, and around the country at other parks, check out the National Parks Conservation Association.

Nicole Maggi is the author of the award-winning National Park Mystery Series, beginning with A MURDER IN ZION, winner of the 2025 FOREWORD Reviews Gold Medal and the 2025 IBPA Silver Medal for Best Mystery, and following with LOST IN YELLOWSTONE. Both books garnered effusive praise from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly. When she’s not writing, she’s plotting her next escape to a National Park. Find her online at nicolemaggi.com and @nicolemaggiauthor on Instagram.

By John Goodwin

Retired National Park Service Ranger

Visitors cannot make informed decisions about their own safety if they’re not given timely information about potential hazards in our national parks. That’s why reports that the Interior Department discouraged parks from directly notifying the public about fatalities should concern everyone. The central issue is simple: when deaths and other hazards are not promptly shared, visitors are denied the information they need to stay safe. The Washington Post reported on June 24, 2026, that National Park Service staff were told by the Interior Department not to directly notify the public about deaths that occur in the parks. According to the Washington Post, the Interior Department memo was apparently issued in December 2025. According to Interior press secretary Aubrie Spady, it was to “create a more consistent approach to incident communications across the Department and is not intended to conceal fatalities or delay information.”

Keeping park visitors and the press informed has always been important, but unfortunately, it has always depended on the park superintendents. The superintendents are like a town/city mayor, and getting information out to the public runs through their office. The parks’ Public Information Officers (PIOs), Chief Rangers, and field staff are often caught in the middle, wanting to release information but often being told not to. During my career, I worked at parks that released information to the public and the press in a timely manner, but I also worked at parks that were extremely hesitant to release any information that could disparage the park’s reputation. The recent memo from the Interior Department did not create this problem. It did, however, reinforce a culture that has existed inside some parks for decades: when bad news threatens the park’s image, superintendents often hesitate to tell the public.

Releasing information to the public goes beyond relaying that an incident occurred. The public deserves to know the hazards in every park unit and what they can do to ensure their visit is safe. With close to 25% of park staff positions eliminated by the current administration, there are simply not enough park staff to interact with the public and advise them of every hazard. Signage helps, such as the graphic signs on trails leading into the Grand Canyon, which inform the public about heat hazards and the risk of hyponatremia. Even with that signage, three people died in the Grand Canyon between June 12 and June 16. The park only announced these deaths on June 19, three days after the last two fatalities had occurred. The park had an opportunity to increase public awareness while hazardous conditions persisted, but the Interior Department memo effectively delayed the release of the information.

When I was a law enforcement ranger, visitors were often surprised to learn that parks experience the same crimes as nearby communities, including assaults, domestic violence, thefts, vehicle crashes, accidental deaths and occasional homicides. Unfortunately, you probably wouldn’t know it from the lack of information that the parks have released over the years. That silence has created what many rangers refer to as the “Disneyland Effect”. Visitors entering the park through the entrance gates expect the park to be completely safe, just like Disneyland. They don’t realize that the beautiful waterfall they want to get a closer look at can sweep them to their deaths, or that the bear they encounter is wild and potentially very dangerous. Parks are not solely responsible for this misconception. Social media influencers often portray wilderness as glamorous while minimizing the preparation and risks involved, encouraging visitors to underestimate the hazards they may encounter.

A few months before I retired, I gathered my Chief Ranger, the Assistant Superintendent, the PIO, and other park staff to see what we could do to stem the tide of car break-ins. Golden Gate National Recreation Area, as well as the entire Bay Area, had seen a huge rise in car break-ins over the years. Rangers couldn’t be everywhere at once, so the suspects would simply wait until we drove by during our road patrol, then smash a window and grab what they could before driving away. Our park visitors, who were the victims of these crimes, would have their passports, cash, clothing, and luggage stolen.

During the meeting, there were ideas thrown out, such as increased signage, patrolling the high-crime area in plain clothes or setting up operations in surveillance vans, having rangers deploy stop sticks on the road to stop suspect vehicles fleeing the scene, and even observing and reporting suspects using a spotting scope from the top of a nearby cliff. We apprehended a few suspects using those methods, but it was not making a dent in the sheer number of incidents occurring daily. Another idea that management had no taste for was contacting the media. With only a few weeks left in my career, I reached out to a local reporter, Stanley Roberts, who had a daily news segment called “People Behaving Badly”. I asked Stanley if he’d be interested in doing a segment in the park regarding the break-ins. He agreed and came out to one of the hardest-hit areas to film a segment.

During the filming of the segment, I showed Stanley the piles of glass on the ground and didn’t pull any punches, saying that the park was number one in the entire park system for car break-ins. I detailed my efforts to ask all the car rental agencies in the Bay Area to post notices at their counters advising people not to leave anything valuable in their rental vehicles, as well as the signage and handouts I passed out to visitors, which were paid for out of my pocket. The episode aired a few days before I retired and created an uproar with management. Management wasn’t upset because the information was inaccurate. They were upset because it became very public. To me, that illustrated the difference between protecting the park’s image and protecting park visitors.

The People Behaving Badly segment did reach thousands of viewers, and the exposure led the park and the airport car rental locations to put up signage advising visitors not to leave items in their vehicles. People still visit the park, but at least now they’re more aware of the potential risks.

Information is one of the least expensive and most effective safety tools the National Park Service possesses. That is the point: when information is delayed or withheld, visitors lose the ability to make informed decisions about their own safety. So, what can a visitor do before and during their visit to the park? Park websites are a good starting point for information, but don’t stop there. Check independent sources, don’t leave valuables in your vehicles, monitor weather forecasts, carry the Ten Essentials, and don’t hesitate to postpone a hike if conditions deteriorate. Most importantly, understand that staffing reductions mean help may not arrive as quickly as it once did. The responsibility for your safety increasingly rests with you.

References

• Spring, Jake. “Internal memo orders staff not to reveal deaths in national parks.” The Washington Post, June 24, 2026.

• National Park Service. Official website. nps.gov

• Gerety, Rowan Moore. “Saving Lives at the Grand Canyon, One Salty Snack at a Time.” The New York Times, August 1, 2023

• Baio, Ariana. “National Park Service staff ordered not to confirm deaths or injuries: report.” Independent, June 25, 2026.

• “When Did The National Park Service Lose Its Voice?” National Parks Traveler, October 29, 2023

John Goodwin is the author of Echoes of the Badge: Stories From a National Park Service Career. He served 27 years as a law enforcement ranger for the National Park Service, and later as a council member in his hometown for eight years.

When I was hiking in Big Bend National Park in Texas, I asked a ranger whether the park had problems with migrants illegally entering the park. “No,” he told me. “Our biggest problem is kids partying, causing vandalism and setting fires.”

Big Bend is so vast and so rugged, it’s hard to imagine any migrant deciding that would be a good place to cross. I was there in springtime, but the weather was still blistering hot. The park staff, the local residents, conservation organizations—everyone expressed disapproval for a border wall within the park. But the current administration is determined to build it, and has awarded a $1.7 billion construction contract to do it. They waived the National Environmental Policy Act, Endangered Species Act, National Park Service Organic Act, the Clean Water Act, the Historic Preservation Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the Migratory Bird Conservation Act, the Archaeological Resources Protection Act, the Paleontological Resources Protection Act, the Federal Caves Protection Act, and a slew of other environmental laws. Another $2.6 billion contract has been awarded to continue the wall in other areas of Texas.

Most Americans who believe a border wall spanning our southern border is a good idea have never actually visited the existing border wall. I have, on two occasions, in eastern and western Arizona, and I can testify that building a wall in remote desert wilderness is a ridiculous waste of taxpayer money for very little benefit. The first problem is that the wall is not on the actual border, which is mostly the Rio Grande River. The wall is built where it’s convenient to build and maintain, and cuts off wildlife from water sources and traditional migration routes, as well as slicing off huge chunks of American ranch land. To handle the complaints of ranchers who have lost land, doors were added to the wall.

There was also no consideration of weather and changing landscapes when “designing” the wall. In places where floods had happened in previously dry arroyos, one side of the wall gets piled up with dammed dirt and debris while the other is tunneled under. There are gaps in many places, and of course those aforementioned doors.

Photo of existing wall

Then, of course, you can’t just build a wall and leave and hope for the best. So, there’s a road on the U.S. side of the wall for patrols and repair crews. Which then necessitates crew quarters and vehicle parking and maintenance facilities. And you can’t just have a continuous wall for hundreds of miles without multiple access roads to get to that border road, so you need to build a whole network.

We do need border security in the populous areas that cross our border. It’s there, and as far as I can tell, it’s working reasonably well. But spending billions to erect a huge wall (and all that accompanying infrastructure) across deserts and canyons and mountains and through our public lands where no road access exists? Our government could instead spend that money on surveillance technology and more park personnel to keep track of what’s happening in these remote areas. We could probably get some great wildlife knowledge out of that, too.

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Author’s Note: I was on an educational seminar the first time I visited the wall. I was so shocked by what I learned and witnessed there that I got a whole book out of it. Borderland is the fastest mystery I’ve ever written. With criminals and angry residents and ranchers and vigilantes and border patrol personnel, there was no shortage of suspects when my Latina wildlife photographer vanished after photographing a rare jaguar stopped by the wall.

Pamela Beason is the author of the Sam Westin Wilderness Mysteries, the Neema the Gorilla Mysteries, the Run for Your Life trilogy, and other books.

https://pamelabeason.com

John Muir

For generations, humans have had the intuitive sense that going out into nature made us feel better. Time outside plugs a hole in our lives. At Authors for Public Lands, we’ve campaigned to protect our national green spaces. We’ve reported on threats to our shared lands. Our reasons vary. For some, it is an extension of their life’s work. For others, parks offer inspiration for our current projects. We talk about preserving and protecting our best idea as a responsibility to future generations. We’re nature’s advocates. Sometimes we feel like we’re shouting into a storm. We write about protecting nature from humans. Today I’d like to think about protecting nature for humans.

It’s easy to think of the physical benefits of nature. A walk strengthens muscles, improves cardiovascular health, reduces stress, and improves oxygenation. But what about the mental health benefits? Does psychological research support Muir’s notion that nature is good for the brain? And if so, what are the mechanisms that achieve those benefits?

Environmental neuroscientist Mark Berman studies whether exposure to nature improves our mental health. He compares natural environments and urban spaces. His research demonstrates that exposure to nature boosts one’s ability to perform cognitive tasks that require working memory. cognitive flexibility and attention control.

In one experiment, he divided the test subjects into two groups. He first assessed each participant’s mood prior to the test. Then the subjects engaged in an exercise that involved hearing and rearranging a sequence of numbers. The sequences varied in length. The test required participants to focus their directed attention.

Following the exam, study members were sent on walks along urban streets or through an arboretum. The walks were a measured distance. Upon their return, the participants repeated the testing. A week later, they did it again. This time, each participant break occurred in the alternative environment.

Test results improved markedly when participants walked in nature, but not in the urban environment. The results held when the experiments were controlled for temperature, exercise, and familiarity with testing. Other tests confirmed the results. Berman reported a 20% improvement in test scores with exposure to nature.

Their moods improved too. But that’s a separate area of study.

At the risk of getting mired in the details, I find the mechanism fascinating. Berman assigns the improvement, not to the mood betterment that might be induced by nature, but rather to Attention-Restoration Theory. The perceptual features of natural places grab our brain’s bottom-up attention. Nature requires soft fascination. By contrast, our top-down, directed attention is given a chance to rest and replenish. In nature, one sees the trees and hears the ocean. The hiker observes the shapes of mountains and rocks, but these features don’t command focused attention in the way that crossing city streets alert for turning cars, flashing Walk/Don’t Walk signs, honking horns, screeching brakes, or advertisements designed to arrest one’s attention do. That part of the brain that concentrates gets a break. When asked to work again, those parts of the brain that handle directed attention are rested and perform better.

Natural environments, in general, have fewer straight edges, lower color saturation, and less hue variability than urban environments. These elements contribute to the softly fascinating environment. One theory posits that humans process natural stimuli more easily because of fractality. A fractal is loosely defined as a self-similar object. Think of a snowflake. Its shape is repeated within itself. Regardless of the spatial scale, we see the same shape. A snowflake is easy on the brain. Now consider a deciduous tree. The trunk separates into major limbs. Each limb splits into branches. At the end of each branch is a leaf with a vein structure modeling this splitting. A tree might be viewed as a natural fractal. Next time you see a tree, think of it as an earth-grown M.C. Escher print.

It is easier to test short-term benefits to nature than long-term. Nature exposure, however, has been linked to improved sleep and reduced acute and chronic stress. Sleep and stress are two of the major risk factors for many mental illnesses. Evidence mounts that green space exposure lowers a variety of psychopathologies, including anxiety disorders, ADHD, and depression. The research demonstrates the correlation rather than causation. The mechanisms behind long-term benefits are still being researched.

If a physician discovered a drug to improve brain performance and lower the incidence of mental disorders with no side effects, she might well be in line for the Nobel Prize in medicine. We have it. It’s outside.

We need to safeguard our public spaces not for their benefit, but for our own. They might just save our lives.

Mark Thielman is the author of the Johnson and Nance Mysteries, dual timeline thrillers set in the splendor of America’s National Parks. The third book, The Firefall, was released in April 2026.

Huddled under a rock ledge on Kearsarge Pass in California, I watched a powerful storm march toward me. Thunder echoed off walls of granite and lightning forked the dark sky. I hugged my knees against my chest as pea-sized hail bounced off the ground in a jaunty rhythm.

I had never felt so alive or so awed by the beautiful freedom of being in the wilderness.

I couldn’t help but be reminded of that moment when I read in the June 3 Washington Post that the Trump administration is diverting at least $90 million from national park entry fees to fund a huge fireworks show and fix up a bunch of fountains in Washington D.C. to mark our nation’s 250^th anniversary.

Now, I’m all for celebrating the founding of our country. What our nation has given us in terms of freedom, justice and opportunity is definitely worth commemorating. However, using money that has traditionally been spent to maintain and improve our national parks and monuments for a forty-minute fireworks show feels like expecting the Mona Lisa and getting a tacky, dogs-playing-poker painting instead.

For me, no amount of pyrotechnics will inspire the same awe of visiting Yellowstone or Arches national parks, for instance. Certainly, no fountain will rival the Grand Canyon or Yosemite Falls. No speeches will match the whisper of the wind through the pines. I’ll hazard a guess that many of the 323 million annual visitors to our National Parks, when asked if they’d prefer a burst of fireworks or the ability to revel in nature, might agree with me.

This fireworks expenditure might feel differently if the Park Service had not already been gutted by the current administration. Our national parks and monuments are reportedly struggling to keep gates open and services running in the wake of the loss of a quarter of its permanent staff, according to the National Parks Conservation Association. There’s also no denying that infrastructure like campsites, restrooms, roads and trails needs maintenance and repair, which is being threatened by the decision to divert funds to pay for a chest-pounding display of fireworks and fountains.

To me, this feels like a let-them-eat-cake decision, where glitter is supposed to blind us to the reality that our national parks—open to every class of people—are being slowly destroyed by decisions in Washington.

So, what to do?

It’s too late to stop this misguided use of park funds but you can contact your senators urging their support for Senate Bill 1547, the America the Beautiful Act, which proposes $11.2 billion in funding over the next eight years to meet some of the tens of billions of dollars in deferred maintenance at our national parks and monuments.

It’s far less than what is needed but it’s better than what we’re getting.

You may also call your U.S. representative and tell them that park money should be spent on parks.

Meanwhile, as the fireworks fly, you might also contemplate this quote from Theodore Roosevelt:

“One of the chief attractions of the life of the wilderness is its rugged and stalwart democracy; there every man stands for what he actually is and can show himself to be.”

Peggy Townsend is a former newspaper journalist and author of her fourth mystery novel, The Botanist’s Assistant.

Recent reports reveal that entrance fees collected at National Parks have been redirected to fund projects in Washington, D.C. — a significant departure from the longstanding practice of keeping 80 percent of a site’s revenue for local use. With a nearly $24 billion maintenance backlog, chronic understaffing, and parks starved of funding, the timing couldn’t be worse. Americans preparing to celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday are understandably frustrated.

An estimated $90 million has been funneled to D.C., much of it spent on questionable vanity projects and no-bid contracts:

• Fourth of July fireworks ballooned to $1.6 million — more than five times the typical budget — featuring over 860,000 pyrotechnics launched from 10 sites, a 40-minute show (double the usual length), and effects lining the Reflecting Pool.

• The Reflecting Pool received a no-bid contract justified by claims of urgent need, with its stone bottom painted “American flag blue” and waterproofing repairs completed for $13.1 million — more than seven times the original $1.8 million estimate. A lawsuit attempted to block the painting, but work was completed regardless.

• A “Trump Promenade” extending from the Lincoln Memorial via footbridges over Parkway and Ohio Drives to the Potomac River carries an estimated price tag of $13.1 million.

• A 250-foot arch proposed for Memorial Circle would be topped by a 60-foot gilded, winged Lady Liberty — nearly twice the height of the Arc de Triomphe. Its location, less than a mile from Reagan National Airport, would require red aviation warning lights, as the structure would intrude into protected airspace.

• Four brass horses surrounding the Lincoln Memorial were regilded in gold under another no-bid contract at a cost of $5 million.

• Logan Circle, Meridian Hill Park, and Freedom Plaza saw fountain restorations, marble repaving, and a dozen new statue installations totaling more than $30 million.

• The White House grounds have been dramatically altered, with the East Wing gutted to make way for a ballroom, the Rose Garden removed, and a UFC Octagon, seating, and a stage under construction on the South Lawn. And in a moment in court this past week, the Statue of Liberty was used as an example of how a president could destroy a historic landmark, such as the East Wing, and the courts would be unable to undo the damage afterward.

America’s 250th birthday should be a moment of reflection, pride, and unity. Instead, the funds meant to preserve our most treasured public lands and landmarks have been diverted for projects that many Americans view as wasteful, politically motivated, and unworthy of the occasion.

This is your moment to act. Call, email, or write your congressional representatives and senators today. Tell them to restore National Park funding, require competitive bidding on federal contracts, and ensure that America’s semiquincentennial is remembered for honoring our heritage — not squandering it. The parks, the monuments, and this milestone belong to all of us. Demand they be treated that way.

https://5calls.org/

Jeff Ayers is the Anthony Award-nominated author of several books, including Voyages of Imagination: The Star Trek Fiction Companion for Simon and Schuster/Pocket Books. He has interviewed hundreds of authors for magazines, newspapers, and podcasts, and has been a book reviewer for The Associated Press and Booklist. He currently reviews suspense thrillers and mysteries for Library Journal, Criminal Element, and firstCLUE. Jeff co-writes the National Park thriller series for Minotaur under the name A.J. Landau and co-writes the Jigsaw Puzzle Mysteries for Crooked Lane. He is a retired public librarian and former co-executive director for ThrillerFest.

(Zion National Park, Utah. Author photo.)

AS A MYSTERY WRITER, I spend my days concocting plot lines in a made-up world of intended, villainous consequences. Those intended consequences then give way to unintended consequences that solve the murderous riddles at the heart of my books.

In Donald Trump world, all consequences are meant only to be intended, including pushing for rampant, increased oil and gas drilling on public lands, and bombing Iran.

But unintended consequences keep slipping in.

In an unexpected gift for those who favor increased protection of America’s publicly owned parks, monuments, prairies, and forests—that is, virtually all Americans—it appears Trump’s war on Iran may result in increased preservation of America’s magnificent and priceless public lands, the same lands the Trump administration has been working so hard, and so intentionally, to destroy.

Increasingly, conservation advocates are noting that the oil price shock caused by Trump’s war of choice is redounding, in a bank-shot way, to the benefit of public lands.

Despite the Trump administration’s opening of lands owned by all Americans to oil and gas companies to drill all they want, the firms have announced they are not increasing production despite the potential for increased profits from the Iran war. The companies explain that it takes years to ramp up production on public lands, far too long to justify starting up drilling operations for what are likely only short-term price peaks.

“We’re not adjusting our plan,” a Chevron representative told the New York Times. “It comes back to discipline.”

Instead, by making future oil and gas price expectations highly unpredictable through his months-long shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz, Trump has spurred a boom in renewable energy in America and around the world. That’s because adding solar and wind energy production is far quicker, and increasingly cheaper, than drilling for oil—and results in less drilling on, and destruction of, public lands.

Energy writer Jonathan Mingle says Trump’s war mongering has shown “just how risky reliance on oil and gas can be, and taught the world that true energy security lies in accelerating toward a cleaner, electrified future. On the far side of all the unnecessary, completely avoidable misery triggered by Trump’s war of choice, future historians are likely to look back on this moment as an inflection point—one that ushered in a new era of electrification and homegrown, clean autonomy.”

Economist Paul Krugman uses the same “inflection point” wording, noting, “The global energy transition—the shift from fossil fuels to electrotech, which uses solar, wind and batteries to power an electrified economy—is accelerating. It’s now clear that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz marks an inflection point: the global green energy curve, which was already on a rapidly rising trajectory, has suddenly become even steeper.”

It’s too soon, of course, to say for sure that the unintended boost Trump has given renewable energy through his war with Iran will result in long-term benefit to America’s public lands. But it’s certainly beginning to look that way.

* * *

Meanwhile, the fight to protect and preserve public lands continues. If you’d like to join the fight, or offer financial support, these three nonprofit organizations, among many others, are doing great work:

- The Wilderness Society (https://www.wilderness.org/) focuses on designating wilderness areas, defending federal land policy and tracking public lands legislation.

- The National Parks Conservation Association (https://www.npca.org/) defends national parks from mining and drilling threats.

- The Conservation Lands Foundation (https://www.conservationlands.org/) is dedicated specifically to protecting, restoring and expanding Bureau of Land Management National Conservation Lands.

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Scott Graham (scottfranklingraham.com) is the National Outdoor Book Award-winning author of the National Park Mystery Series published by nonprofit environmental and social justice publisher Torrey House Press (torreyhouse.org), available in print, ebook, and audiobook wherever books are sold. In addition to his ten-books-and-counting series, Scott is the author of five nonfiction books. An avid outdoorsman and public lands advocate who lives in southwest Colorado, he has worked as a reporter, editor, disk jockey, city councilor, and coal-shoveling fireman on the Durango-Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad.

IN PRAISE OF POLLINATORS

By Paula Munier

In her #1755 poem To make a prairie, Emily Dickinson writes:

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.

Emily Dickinson was wrong. Revery alone will not do. We need the bees, just as we need the birds and the butterflies and the bats and the beetles and the moths and the wasps and the flies. Without our pollinators, there are no prairies, no crops, no gardens. And those pollinators are disappearing, thanks to loss of habitat, the proliferation of non-native species and diseases, pesticides, and climate change.

More than 22 percent of our native pollinators here in North America are at risk of extinction, with bees, butterflies, and bats topping the list. Public lands provide critical habitat for pollinators, from our national forests, state parks, and wildlife refuges to our university

campuses, city and town green spaces, along with private lands open to the public. Coupled with American Indian lands, we’re talking species-rich ecosystems making up nearly 40 percent of our country’s land mass that can help boost the declining numbers of pollinators if managed properly.

That’s a big if.

You can help support ecologically sound land management that benefits pollinators. For more about public lands in your area and beyond, check out the Gap Analysis Project run by the U’S. Geological Survey.

You can also celebrate National Pollinators Week, in which we honor our pollinators, spread the word about the need to protect them and their habitats, and encourage everyone to take action on their behalf.

And this year’s National Pollinators Week is coming right up!

National Pollinator Week

The theme for this year’s Pollinator Week is Life on a Leaf: Celebrating Caterpillars and Host Plants. This theme highlights the all-important pollinators in the United States—around 11,000 species of moths and 750 species of butterflies—and the hundreds of plant species they depend on for breeding, feeding, and overwintering.

Don’t know much about caterpillars? The Caterpillar Lab hosts programs throughout New England where you can get up close and personal with caterpillars and learn to be pollinator-friendly, at home and in your community. For more on caterpillars in your area, check out the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign (NAPPC).

During Pollinator Week, activities run the gamut from plantings, garden tours, online workshops, and more. Look for events in your area on social media tagged #PollinatorWeek, and/or check out this map in Pollinator.

Note: You can download this year’s poster and print it here:

https://www.pollinator.org/pollinator.org/assets/generalFiles/Life-on-a-Leaf-Final-Print-3_26_26_Poster-final-CMYK-high-quality.pdf

Pollinator of the Year

The Pollinator of the Year is the Swallowtail Butterfly. There are some thirty species of the Swallowtail here in the U.S. and nearly 600 species around the world. Swallowtails frequent gardens, puddles, and flowers; the caterpillars provide food for other species and the adults pollinate wildflowers and garden flowers and herbs, flowering shrubs and trees, most notably azaleas.

Here in New Hampshire, the Eastern Black Swallowtail caterpillars love herbs, especially parsley, so much so their nickname is “parsley worms.” The butterflies that emerge in late spring and early summer feed on nectar from lilacs and cherry and apple blossoms, while those that emerge later in the summer feast on milkweed, phlox, butterfly bush, zinnias, and Joe Pye weed.

Do It for the Birds and the Bees

Supporting pollinators on our public lands is a good place to start. But it’s not enough. Some sixty percent of our land mass is not public land, so it’s up to us to do what we can in our own communities and our own backyards, during National Pollinator Week and beyond.

You can start by planting native species, avoiding pesticides, and providing sources of clean water—all necessities for all pollinators wherever you are. Here are some more ways to support the birds and the bees and more:

For the birds:

· Plant nectar-rich native plants in clumps, the better for the birds to see the blossoms. The best colors to attract birds: red, orange, and white.

· Put up birdhouses and nesting materials.

· Add a birdbath or a bubbling fountain to your garden.

For the bees:

· Plant native plants rich in both pollen and nectar, as bees need both. For example, lavender and sunflowers are rich in nectar; borage and rosemary are rich in pollen. Here in New Hampshire, pussy willows provide much-needed pollen for native bees come spring, swamp milkweed and goldenrods are good sources of nectar and pollen in summer and fall, and asters help bees ready for winter. The best colors to attract bees: white, yellow and blue.

• Leave some parts of your ground bare, giving native bees the mulch-free soil in which to do their nesting.

For the butterflies:

· Plant nectar-rich native plants, particularly host plants: milkweed for monarchs, willows for mourning cloaks, thistles for painted ladies. The best colors: red, yellow and purple.

· Add stones or pebbles to sunny spaces in your garden where butterflies can rest.

· Put up butterfly boxes.

For the bats:

· Plant fragrant native flowers that bloom at night, like evening primrose. The best colors: white and pale colors.

· Leave the snags.

· Put up bat houses.

For the beetles:

· Plant native plants with strong, spicy scents and cave-shaped blooms or clusters of blooms. The best colors: yellow, cream, white, green, and rust.

· Mulch your beds and don’t rake your leaves.

· Plant some areas with perennials where you can leave the soil undisturbed.

For the moths:

· Plant a moon garden, with native nocturnal blooming plants. The best colors: white and pale colors.

· Plant trees and fruit-bearing bushes as moths need the sugar from the sap and overripe fruit.

· Leave the leaves and other debris.

· Use as little outdoor lighting as possible, turn off your lights at night.

· Add a mud puddle to your garden; moths need the mineral salts.

For the wasps:

Note: Wasps are not only pollinators, they’re great for pest control, especially when it comes to aphids, cutworms, grasshoppers, stink bugs, and weevils.

· Plant native plants known for their fragrant blooms, sugary sap, and easy-to-access nectar as well as fruit trees. The best colors: white and yellow.

· Leave a muddy spot where they can gather mud for their nests.

For the (flower) flies:

Note: Flower flies—also known as hoverflies—are not only good pollinators, they’re great for pest control, as their larvae feed on aphids.

· Plant native flowering plants with easy-to-access nectar and pollen. The best colors: white and yellow.

· Build a hoverfly lagoon, i.e., a breeding habitat. Fill a small plastic container with water and add some twigs and leaves. Put it in a shady spot.

Happy National Pollinator Week

You know what to do. Go forth and prosper your pollinators!

May your Spring and Summer be filled with the songs of the birds, the buzz of the bees, and the beauty of the butterflies….

Yours,

Paula

“If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would have only four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.”

--Albert Einstein

Last April, Congress passed H.J. Resolution 140. In summary, Congress used the Congressional Review Act to overturn the moratorium on mining in the Superior National Forest. The moratorium was put in place by the last administration, largely to protect the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) from acid runoff. By using the Congressional Review Act, Congress was able to overturn the law using a simple majority, rather than the 60-vote supermajority normally required. The vote to allow copper-nickel mining near the BWCAW was along party lines.

As I mentioned in my last post – Mining, Yes, But Not Sulfide Mining Near the BWCA - https://authorssupportingtheparks.substack.com/p/mining-yes - there are a variety of reasons why this kind of mining near the Boundary Waters is bad. The most glaring issue is the certainty a sulfide mine will generate pollution. Psychologists tell us the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. Regarding sulfide mining, there have never been any sulfide mines operating in the world today that did not result in pollution. Never. Full stop.

A second glaring issue is the track record of Antofagasta, the Chilean-based mining conglomerate spearheading the effort to mine copper-nickel on the edge of the BWCAW. Again, if past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior, Antofagasta’s mining past is at best littered with poor mining practices, and at worst indicative of potentially criminal behavior. According to a Reuter’s article (Jan. 23, 2026), “Chile’s environmental regulator said on Friday it has fined Antofagasta Minerals about $775,000 for failing to comply with water management regulations [emphasis added] at its Centinela copper mine.” In the past, there have been several other legal issues involving Antofagasta, suggesting the company is more concerned about extracting copper from the earth than protecting the BWCAW’s pristine waters.

Fortunately, Antofogasta cannot proceed with its copper-sulfide mine without first addressing a few important issues, some regulatory, some legal, and some political.

First, the company needs to present, in essence, a Mine Plan of Operations. The plan needs to be very specific. Some of the issues it must address are …

· the size and location of the copper-nickel deposit

· the quality of the ore

· the ore’s sulfide mineral content

· the geologic structure and chemistry of the area where the mine will reside

· ground water flowage

· how and where they plan to mine

· how they plan to extract the ore

· how they plan to manage waste from operations

· and the list goes on ….

Perhaps most importantly, once they present a Mine Plan of Operations, they need to go through an environmental impact statement (EIS). The EIS is a complicated, multi-year, multi-agency effort. While those behind overturning the mining moratorium in the Superior National Forest (SNF) might bemoan the EIS process, it’s there for a reason. Namely, to protect public lands. In this case, the BWCAW. While the US Forest Service would likely be the lead agency to work on the EIS, it will probably also include the Bureau of Land Management, the US Army Corps of Engineers, and the Environmental Protection Agency. While federal oversight of our public lands has, under the current administration, been poor or at best mixed, we should find comfort in the fact Minnesota state agencies and officials will also be participating in the EIS and other issues. When it comes to mining and safeguarding our public lands, Minnesota has had a very good, thorough, science-based approach to making its determinations.

Keep in mind that during this process there will likely be ongoing litigation, primarily by environmental groups keeping an eye on the entire effort. Again, no one likes unnecessary litigation, and the US court system moves at a snail’s pace, but the legal oversight is there to address any potential issues that arise, including the 100 percent polluting record of copper-sulfide mining operations, and the problematic mining history of Antofagasta.

Finally, the politics governing this mining effort will be ongoing. Tribal governments will weigh-in with their issues. Similarly, the Republican majorities in all three governmental branches are likely to change. While the Executive branch will not change until 2028, the House of Representative and the Senate are up for grabs in 2026. While the Senate may remain Republican (or not), most pundits predict the Democrats will gain the majority in the House.

To be sure, our public lands debates are American issues technically unrelated to political parties. That said, the current politics have such a poor environmental and climate change record it behooves all of use to carefully consider the November election and vote for representatives who have a clear record of demonstrated reverence for the public lands we use, and for the generations who will use them in the future.

Award-winning author Cary J. Griffith grew up among the woods, fields, and emerald waters of eastern Iowa. His childhood fostered a lifelong love of wild places. He earned a B.A. in English from the University of Iowa and an M.A. in library science from the University of Minnesota.

Griffith’s books explore the natural world. In nonfiction, he covers the borderlands between civilization and wild places. In fiction, he focuses on the ways some people use flora and fauna to commit crimes, while others with more reverence and understanding of the natural world leverage their knowledge to bring criminals to justice.

He is the recipient of a Minnesota Book Award, and a Midwest Book Award.

He lives with his family in a suburb of Minnesota’s Twin Cities.

By Kathleen Donnelly

When I heard about the Trump Administration’s decision to relocate Forest Service headquarters from Washington D.C. to Salt Lake City, Utah, I was curious, was there any way this could be beneficial?

During Trump’s first term, he moved the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) headquarters to Grand Junction, Colorado. This proved to be detrimental to the agency. Under Biden’s Presidency, the BLM headquarters moved back to Washington D.C. President Biden appointed Tracy Stone-Manning to lead the BLM and help piece the shattered agency back together. Stone-Manning recently wrote a thought provoking article with her personal experience. She makes many valid points based on her firsthand knowledge.

I continued my research. The Forest Service provided a list of myths and truths on their website. I found these interesting to read. While the information sounds positive, I have to go back to the article about the BLM. Many of Stone-Manning’s talking points give another perspective on what’s on the Forest Service website.

Other news sources point out that this move could be very detrimental before the “fire season.” Anyone who lives in the west knows there’s no longer a “fire season.” The threat is now year round. Ironically, as I was typing up this piece, my phone alerted me to a wildland fire not far from my house.

The fire danger is real. Drought is real. Climate change is real. The idea of having headquarters out west where these problems are taking place sounds beneficial. However, after lots of research and reading opinions from both sides the only thing that has become clear to me is that this move is meant to dismantle and cripple the Forest Service. There’s no better place to do that than Utah. Senator Mike Lee wants nothing more than to sell public land. I doubt there’s any coincidence that Trump chose Utah as the new Forest Service Headquarters.

Do the research yourself. Along with the headquarters move, regional offices are closing. All research management will move to one office right up the road from me in Fort Collins, Colorado. Based on the history of the BLM, very few employees will move with the changes and it makes sense. Why uproot your family when you can take a buyout or even retire? Experience will be lost. Scientific advances will be lost.

After reading articles and listening to interviews, I couldn’t find one pro to this move. I feel for the men and women who work hard to protect our public lands. Right now, they are in a fight not only for their jobs, but the land they love.

Let’s help with that fight. Let your representatives know how you feel about the Trump administration’s decisions. But most importantly, vote. Remember, the mid-terms are coming up this year. Let’s do our part and vote for a Congress that will protect our public lands.

Award-winning author Kathleen Donnelly is a retired K-9 handler. She continues to enjoy crafting realism into her fictional stories from her dog-handling experience. Her love of the mountains came from growing up in Colorado and exploring the wilderness. Kathleen hosts the podcast, Sit. Stay. Read., a part of the Authors on the Air Global Network. She lives near the Colorado foothills with her husband and four-legged friends. Visit Kathleen’s website, kathleendonnelly.com, where you can sign up for her newsletter and find links to connect with her on social media.

For nearly two centuries, the Presidio was defined by its tactical military importance. But by the late 20th century, that identity began to shift. In 1962, it was designated a National Historic Landmark District. A decade later, in 1972, Congress created the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA), with a provision that the Presidio would be added to the park if the Army ever left. That moment came in 1989, when the Base Realignment and Closure Commission announced the Presidio would close. By 1994, it officially became part of the National Park Service, and in 1996, Congress created the Presidio Trust to manage it.

Today, the Presidio covers 1,500 acres and welcomes about 7 million visitors each year. It truly is one of the crown jewels of the National Park Service with miles of trails, museums, and visitor centers. Around 3,000 people live here, and there are about 300 businesses, including restaurants, hotels, the Walt Disney Family Museum, the Sport’s Basement and the Lucasfilm Campus.

Unlike any other unit in the National Park System, it is financially self-sufficient. By 2013, it was covering its own costs through leases and partnerships. In fiscal year 2025, it generated a $45 million surplus, which was returned directly to maintenance projects, historic preservation, and public access.

So why is the Trump administration fixated on the Presidio?

In February 2025, Trump issued an executive order titled “Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy,” targeting four agencies, including the Presidio Trust, with the goal of eliminating what was described as waste and abuse. On April 11, 2026, his administration fired all six appointed members of the Trust’s board. (A seventh seat, appointed by the Secretary of the Interior, remains vacant.). Then, on April 21, 2026, it was reported that Trump ally Roger Stone was hired by the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe. This same group petitioned the Trump administration in 2025 to repeal the 1996 Presidio Trust legislation.

The Trump administration’s actions have sparked immediate concern and speculation. Some believe it is political. Speaker Emeritus Nancy Pelosi was instrumental in creating the Presidio Trust, and critics believe this could be an effort to dismantle something closely associated with her legacy. She has also been an outspoken critic of both Trump and Stone. Others suspect another motive, that the land itself, sitting at the edge of the Golden Gate, is simply too valuable not to attract outside interests keen to reshape it into something entirely commercially driven.

Pelosi has dismissed the move publicly, saying she does not “take it personally if he (Trump) wants to insult something as innovative and wonderful as the Presidio” She has also stated “previous Republican appointees to the Board have respected the Presidio” and that she has “every confidence that the Presidio Trust will continue to be protected by the strength of the legislation which created it.”

Others have been more cautious. Local officials, including San Francisco Supervisor Stephen Sherrill, have voiced concern. He stated, “when Trump does something, there’s always reason for concern just because of his history.” Senator Adam Schiff has called for an end to what he described as “partisan attacks” on the Trust.

It’s worth remembering that the Presidio is part of the National Park System, and its status is not easily undone. It was created by Congress, and it would take an act of Congress to remove or significantly change that designation. Though relatively rare, it has happened before. Mackinac National Park, which was established in 1875, was transferred to the state of Michigan in 1895.

I spent 14 years working as a Park Ranger for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, from 2003 to 2017. Since retirement, I’ve continued to spend time with my family in the Presidio. I’ve seen firsthand what it was back then and what it has become. In 2003, the Trust was in the beginning stages of repairing the overall run-down condition that the Army had left the Presidio in. What exists today is something entirely different: an urban oasis that integrates history, recreation, and community in a way few parks do.

The Presidio is a park I worked hard to protect as a ranger for 14 years and continue to fight for. It’s a place that preserves and interprets the human history of the many people who walked these lands. It provides the public with abundant recreational opportunities. It generates all its own funding. It also stands as an example for how public lands can adapt to modern realities without losing their core purpose.

So, the question remains: if something is working this well, what exactly is the Trump administration trying to fix? Or perhaps more importantly, what do we stand to lose if we let it slip away? Please help protect this treasured park by contacting your representatives and letting them know it deserves the protection it was granted by Congress in 1994.

References

• Wright, Sarah. “SF’s Presidio ‘Will Continue to Run Normally’ after Trump Fires Board, Officials Say.”KQED, April 13, 2026.

• Presidio Trust. Official website.Presidio.gov

• Wang, Francis. “What’s Next for SF’s Presidio Trust after Pres. Trump Fired All 6 Board Members.”ABC News, April 13, 2026.

• Dineen, J.K. “Trump ally Roger Stone hired to lobby for Bay Area tribe seeking control of Presidio.” San Francisco Chronicle, April 21, 2026

John Goodwin is the author of Echoes of the Badge: Stories From a National Park Service Career. He served 27 years as a law enforcement ranger for the National Park Service, and later as a council member in his hometown for eight years.

One such species of wildlife is Rice’s whale, of which there are estimated to be only 50 individuals left. The Committee’s action, in essence, condemned these whales to death.

Who is the God Squad?

The Endangered Species Committee was created in the 1970s as a response to the Supreme Court’s decision to block the Tellico Dam in Tennessee, because the dam would likely obliterate a species of tiny fish called snail darters. That decision dissatisfied a number of Congresspeople, who created the Committee in order to allow exemptions from federal wildlife protections. Because the Committee could literally hold the fate of a species in their hands, they became known as The God Squad.

The God Squad is made up of seven votes: the secretaries of the departments of Interior, Agriculture, and the Army, administrators of the Environmental Protection Agency and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. The final vote goes to a representative from the affected state or states, to be appointed by the president.

The application process to have an exemption considered by The God Squad is rigorous, and all deliberations must be open to the public. An exemption must also contain reasonable mitigations to protect any affected species. Since its inception, the Committee has only voted on applications 3 times. Before this year, the last vote was in the early 90s, when the Committee voted to allow timber sales that would threaten the northern spotted owl. But the owl was saved by the Clinton Administration, which put safeguards in place that greatly reduced timber sales.

The Latest God Squad Vote

Given the Trump Administration’s relentless quest to consume our natural resources and gobble up our pristine public lands, it’s no wonder that they would utilize The God Squad in their destructive mission.

The Administration claims the exemption is a matter of national security. According to White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers, “As authorized under the ESA, the Committee unanimously voted to grant an exemption to Gulf of America oil and gas activities from the ESA so that America’s energy streams would not be disrupted or held hostage.” No doubt, they are using the war in Iran as a reason for why the U.S. needs to open up domestic oil production…and the conspiracy theorist in me would point out that using the war as an excuse to drill in our protected lands and waters would be a very conscious benefit to starting the war in the first place.

Note that there’s already oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico; it accounted for 15% of total U.S. crude oil production and 2% of total U.S. dry natural gas production, per the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

True to Trump Administration form, the latest God Squad vote lacked pretty much all the conditions necessary for a lawful exemption vote. The Committee met for 15 minutes, none of it was public, and no mitigation measures were put into effect to protect the whales. Defenders of Wildlife is just one of several conservation groups challenging the vote. Says Jane Davenport, senior attorney in the Biodiversity Law Center at Defenders of Wildlife, “Let me just be really clear. There’s zero of the conditions they would need to meet in order to tee up a lawful vote.”

What Does This Mean For The Whales?

To protect Rice’s whales, ships must follow safe-speed regulations and monitor the location of whales to avoid boat strikes, among other safeguards. Now, those regulations are gone. Without these measures in place, the Rice’s whales, the only whale endemic to the U.S., have little hope to avoid extinction.

Given the Trump Administration’s unquenchable thirst for our public lands, this won’t be the last time they deploy The God Squad. The “Unleashing American Energy” executive order states very clearly that stripping away protections in order to mine the nation’s “abundance of energy and natural resources” is of top priority. Under the guise of building “economic prosperity,” the administration intends remove every obstacle in order to reap profit from our wildlife resources and public lands.

However, the March decision isn’t a done deal, given the number of petitions that have been filed for review by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. So continue to stay informed, call your representatives, and get in touch with the organizations fighting this fight—like Defenders of Wildlife—to see how you can get involved.

Note: The main resource for this post was the National Parks Traveler newsletter. I highly recommend checking them out and subscribing to support them!

*Sorry, I refuse to call it Gulf of America.

Nicole Maggi is the author of the National Park Mystery Series, beginning with A MURDER IN ZION, which was nominated for numerous awards, and following with LOST IN YELLOWSTONE. Both books garnered effusive praise from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly. She also penned THE FORGETTING, an International Thriller Writers Thriller Award Finalist, a Junior Library Guild selection and a #1 Kindle Bestseller. When she’s not writing, she’s either driving her teenager to the mall or plotting her next escape to a National Park. Find her online at nicolemaggi.com and @nicolemaggiauthor on Instagram.

An 1872 Mining Law Threatens the Future of Our Public Lands

The foundation of U.S. mining policy is the General Mining Law of 1872, passed during the post–Civil War push to settle and develop the West. Unbelievably, this 154-year-old law still governs mining on public lands in the U.S., with little change over the decades.

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The 1872 law 1) opened most federal public lands to mineral exploration, 2) allowed individuals and companies to stake mining claims without competitive bidding, and 3) permitted claimholders to obtain ownership (a “patent”) of land for a small fee. There were no federal reclamation requirements, no environmental reviews, and no royalties paid to the federal government (the landowner). Private companies were able to easily take possession of public lands, extract the mineral wealth for pennies, and leave behind abandoned shafts, tailings piles, acid mine drainage, and heavy metal contamination.

By the mid-20^th Century, Congress passed a wave of environmental laws that reshaped mining regulation:

• National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) (1969): Required environmental review of federal actions.

• Clean Water Act (1972): Regulated discharges into waters of the United States.

• Clean Air Act (1970): Limited airborne emissions.

• Endangered Species Act (1973): Protected species from habitat destruction.

• Mining in the Parks Act (1976): Regulated mining activity within units of the National Park System and limited the application of the 1872 General Mining Law inside park boundaries.

• Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA) (1977): Imposed bonding and reclamation obligations for coal mines.

SMCRA obligations for coal mines—but no equivalent federal statute was enacted for hardrock (minerals, not coal) mining under the 1872 law. The U.S. currently has hundreds of thousands of abandoned hardrock mines. Environmental risks include: leaching of heavy metals into streams, potentially lethal soil contaminants, and unstable shafts, tunnels, and tailings dams.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) placed dozens of former mining areas on the Superfund National Priorities List for cleanup. But who pays for the complex cleanups and water treatment needed to prevent downstream contamination?

Unfortunately, no federal royalty is dedicated to hardrock mine cleanup. Many of the responsible companies no longer exist. Some sites are more than a century old with nobody to claim them. So, cleanup funding for hardrock mines typically comes from a mix of federal appropriations, Superfund resources, and state programs. In other words, from our taxes.

According to current requirements, new mining projects on federal lands must undergo environmental review (NEPA), obtain Clean Water Act permits, comply with air-quality standards, protect endangered species, and post financial assurance sufficient to cover cleanup.

However, the Trump administration often chooses to bypass all regulations in favor of opening new mines in public lands. With aid from the courts, this administration has drastically reduced the authority of the EPA and the Clean Water Act. An Australian company has been granted the right to mine gold in the Mojave National Preserve. Lawmakers state that the Bureau of Land Management relied on a 1985 plan of operations that predated the Preserve’s 1994 creation and originally covered gold extraction, not rare earth exploration. This permit is still being challenged in court.

The Mining in the Parks Act of 1976 was intended to curb and regulate mining within the National Park System while respecting certain preexisting claims. The Mojave National Preserve dispute illustrates the modern complexity of that framework—especially when old mining plans intersect with contemporary critical-mineral priorities.

Under President Trump, federal policy has broadly favored expanded mineral and energy extraction on public lands, including approval of infrastructure to support Alaskan mineral development, reopening protected Arctic lands to drilling, expanding coal leasing, fast-tracking deep-sea mineral extraction, and considering monument boundary changes to affect mining access.

The Mojave case is significant because it directly tests how far mining can proceed inside National Park System units under a law originally designed to limit such activity.

According to National Park Conservation Administration, 123,788 active mine claims sit within 30 miles of national parks and monuments in western US and Alaska, and 1,200 of those claims are within park boundaries.

What can we expect in the future?

Pamela Beason often includes the impacts of current U.S. laws in her Sam Westin Wilderness Mysteries. She is also the author of the Neema the Gorilla Mysteries, the Run for Your Life suspense trilogy, and other mystery novels.

https://pamelabeason.com

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