President Trump hasn’t been shy about wielding his pen and his phone to change public land policy, and last week was no different. On July 3rd, the president signed two orders he says are designed to “Make America Beautiful Again.”
The first will establish the Make America Beautiful Again Commission. This Commission will be responsible for advising the president on a variety of priorities outlined in the executive order. These include promoting responsible stewardship of natural resources while driving economic growth; expanding access to public lands and waters for recreation; encouraging responsible, voluntary conservation efforts; cutting bureaucratic delays that hinder effective environmental management; and recovering America’s fish and wildlife populations.
Our land management agencies already strive to achieve all of these goals, but this new Commission, composed of the heads of various executive departments, will be tasked with putting their heads together and figuring out different ways to accomplish them. The order claims that years of mismanagement, regulatory overreach, and neglect of routine maintenance have limited outdoor access and threatened conservation funding. This commission will be tasked with finding new ways to expand access to hunters and anglers, protect clean water, recover wildlife populations, and improve conservation efforts.
These all sound like good things, and it’s a nice change of pace after the last six months of opening up sensitive areas to mineral extraction and attempting to sell millions of acres of public land.
The Washington Post ran an interesting article about how this executive order was in part thanks to the work of a conservative conservationist named Benji Backer. Backer was a guest on Mark Kenyon’s “Wired to Hunt” podcast not too long ago, and he operates an outfit called “Nature is Non-Partisan.”
It’s also worth noting that some conservation organizations, such as the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, applauded the move.
“By aligning efforts across agencies, states, conservation organizations, and private partners, we can better deliver outcomes that benefit fish and wildlife habitat, recreational access, working forests, water quality, and our public lands,” said Joel Pedersen, president and CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. “We thank President Trump for recognizing that land and water priorities are vital to sustaining outdoor traditions for future generations. We look forward to working with the administration to ensure its implementation.”
The proof will be in the pudding, but this is a good start.
At the same time, the president is still pushing to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, and there’s no inkling that he’s planning to fully fund the budgets or restore the personnel of the Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management.
That contradiction became especially apparent in the second executive order the president signed on July 3rd. This one was titled “Making America Beautiful Again by Improving Our National Parks.”
Now, you might recall, because you are more than six months old, that the president and his DOGE team have been systematically slashing staff at the National Park Service. In fact, the National Park Conservation Association announced earlier this month that the staffing crisis has reached a “breaking point.” They say the permanent workforce is down 24%, which has left bare-bones crews struggling to keep up with the busy summer season. The understaffing has left visitors frustrated, delayed maintenance, and reduced educational programs that park-goers depend on.
The president’s executive order isn’t reversing any of those previous decisions. Instead, it aims to increase funding for the national parks by charging foreign visitors a higher entrance fee. The order says, “It is the policy of my Administration to preserve these opportunities for American families in future generations by increasing entry fees for foreign tourists, improving affordability for United States residents, and expanding opportunities to enjoy America’s splendid national treasures.”
I don’t mind increased fees, but we have to keep in mind that the Park Service reports that the deferred maintenance portfolio stands at nearly $23 billion. Only about 100 of the 400 national parks charge any kind of entrance fee, and those are usually in the $30 to $70 range. About 14 million foreigners visit the national parks every year, so increasing their fee by $50 would generate about $700 million–but only if we assume all 14 million of those foreign tourists visit one of those 100 parks that charge an entrance fee. That’s a big assumption.
Increasing entrance fees for foreigners might still generate millions for the Park Service, but it’s a long way from putting a dent in the deferred maintenance backlog.
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