Frustration. That’s what led nine of the 12 members of the National Park System Advisory Board to resign this week, joining a chorus of irked panelists across the country who have spent the year waiting to advise the Trump administration on public lands.
“It was, for many members, a matter of frustration that things really were not getting done,” said Judy Burke, the former mayor of Grand Lake, the Western gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park. She has served on the panel for three terms since 2010.
The advisory board had not been reappointed by the new administration and held no meetings last year despite its federal mandate to meet twice a year. And most frustrating, Burke said, were changes — such as the proposal to more than double entrance fees at heavily trafficked parks — that the Interior Department floated without consultation from the advisory board.
“It would have been nice if we had some opportunity to give input on that,” said Burke, who joined eight of her board colleagues in resigning Monday. “We have done a lot of good work, and we have kind of been slighted.”
In May, the Bureau of Land Management suspended Colorado’s four Resource Advisory Councils until September as part of a national review of the agencies advisory boards and committees. Those councils — typically 15 citizens apiece, including conservationists, ranchers, recreation users and energy industry representatives, who meet four times a year — provide local perspective for BLM policies.
The BLM’s Southwest and Rocky Mountain RACs, both in Colorado, were scheduled this week to have their first meetings since Donald Trump was elected president. They announced the meetings in the Federal Register and formed an agenda. But the new administration failed to renew the charters of the advisory councils, as required by the Federal Advisory Committee Act. So the meetings were canceled. (The agency’s Northwest RAC held a meeting in December, and the Dominguez-Escalante National Conservation Area Advisory Council held its final meeting this month as part of a long-standing plan to disband after drafting a long-term resource management plan.)
After suspending the RACs last year, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke created the Made in America Recreation Advisory Committee that will advise on public-private partnerships on all public lands with the goal, according to a statement, of “expanding access and improving infrastructure.”
The group consists largely of representatives for park and Forest Service concessionaires, as well as RV and motor boating industries.
“The Made in America committee looks to me like a collection of interests that profit off public lands but not a holistic group of stakeholders who are impacted by public land decisions,” said Scott Braden, a Conservation Colorado staffer who serves on the BLM’s Rocky Mountain RAC. “It’s not a substitute for the formalized diversity represented by the RACs. It’s just another data point that Coloradans are not being listened to when it comes to our 24 million acres of public lands.”
Burke said she understands the push to raise entrance fees at some national parks to help pay for $11.9 billion in backlogged maintenance. She just wonders whether the proposed increase — a suggested $70 for high-season entrance into 17 of the country’s busiest parks — is too big of a step.
“We need to make sure our citizens have access to their parks, and with that large of an increase, I think that might hinder some of our people from visiting — especially our Denver people who sit and look at the mountains but maybe can’t afford to get there,” said Burke, who thinks the price spike might drive more people to buy annual passes, which could ultimately decrease total entrance fee revenue for the park service. “I don’t mind an increase because I think it’s a good value, but I’m not sure that amount is going to serve its purpose.”
The Interior Department’s associate deputy secretary, Todd Willens, on Wednesday issued a statement saying the department “welcomed their resignations.”
Willens wrote that he “would expect nothing less than quitting from members who found it convenient to turn a blind eye to women being sexually harassed at national parks,” a reference to allegations that former Interior Secretary Sally Jewell failed to investigate reports of sexual misconduct, including physical assault, in the National Park Service.
“It is patently false to say the department had not engaged the board when as recently as Jan. 8, we were working with the board to renew their charter, schedule a meeting, and fill vacancies,” Willens said in a statement issued Wednesday, noting that the department would be filling the vacancies “with people who are actually dedicated to working with the department to better our national parks.”
Willens said the resignations of some of the advisory board members’ were a “hollow and dishonest political stunt.”
The marginalization of yet another on-the-ground advisory group is fueling the fight against Zinke, who is facing mounting criticism for shrinking national monuments in Utah and collaborating with businesses that want to operate on public lands.
“Secretary Zinke has made it clear who he is listening to — and that is oil and gas and uranium companies. Everything he has done has been through that lens. The new advisory committee he created is made up entirely of businesses that want to sell stuff in our national parks. There is no representative on that committee for people who visit the parks,” said Aaron Weiss, a spokesman for the Center for Western Priorities. “The resignations on Monday are just par for the course. It’s just amateur hour over there.”
