It is hard to keep up with the havoc Donald Trump is wreaking on valuable government agencies, but the damage being done to an enduring treasure, the National Park Service, stands out.
Three-quarters of the agency’s advisory board resigned Monday night because of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s refusal to meet with them.
Nine of the panel’s 12 members, led by former Alaska Gov. Tony Knowles, handed in their resignations. The bipartisan panel was appointed by President Obama and the terms of all members who quit were set to expire in May.
Knowles, in a letter of resignation from himself and the eight other members to Zinke, said the board had “worked closely and productively through 2016 with dedicated National Park Service employees, an inspiring Director and a fully supportive Department.”
Since then, as explained in the letter, the board had repeatedly tried and failed to secure a meeting with the new interior secretary.
“[Our] requests to engage have been ignored and the matters on which we wanted to brief the new Department team are clearly not part of the agenda,” the letter reads.
Alaska Public Radio quoted Knowles as saying that the Department of the Interior “showed no interest in learning about or continuing to use the forward-thinking agenda of science, the effect of climate change, protections of the ecosystems, education.”
“And it has rescinded NPS regulations of resource stewardship concerning those very things: biodiversity loss, pollution and climate change,” he added.
Arkansas hasn’t felt the expansion of mineral extraction and reduction of park size that others have under Zinke, who’s used park resources for personal travel. But it has a share of the system and the diminishment of the agency bodes ill for all.