The Trump administration has also cut funding and staffing at the National Parks. What effect has that had?
Senator Heinrich: I think it’s very unsettling when something as central to our identity as our national parks and public lands is under attack from our own government. It’s a cultural issue, and economically, it’s a disaster. Our national parks are an economic engine for these gateway communities. But they’re also who we are. And when someone comes along and says we’re going to erase the hard parts of our history, that doesn’t make us stronger—it makes us weaker. I think over time there has been a concerted effort to try to defund the management of public lands in general and then create a narrative that these lands aren’t being managed well enough because we defunded the ability to do that. So, therefore, we should be able to sell them off.
But what worries me the most about the park service is that the administration followed up the idea of land selloffs with the idea that they would just transfer management of what they call ‘small P national parks,’ meaning national historic sites or national monuments, to the states. There are a lot of problems with that. One is that you wouldn’t even be able to effectively provide fire management and suppression. And some of our so-called ‘small p national parks’ are our crown jewels. The Valles Caldera National Preserve in New Mexico is 89,000 acres and stunning. People call it New Mexico’s Yellowstone. We made it a national preserve because we wanted a model that embraced hunting and fishing as part of its management. I don’t want to see something overlooked just because it’s not a full national park, because those areas are often the most important in terms of our nation’s history and natural resources.
Why should we remain hopeful that America’s public lands will remain protected?
Senator Heinrich: Changes to our public lands is not what the American public wants to see happen. I have enormous faith that this is so disconnected from the wishes of the American people that we’ll be able to build a coalition to protect our public lands, from left to right and everywhere in between.