Trump National Park Grandstanding, While he is Cutting Funds

President Trump is donating the first quarter of his annual salary — totaling $78,333 — to the National Park Service, but that is only a fraction of what the Park Service stands to lose if Trump’s budget were adopted. While there is currently a backlog of $12 billion for the National Park Service overall, this money will only scratch the surface. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said he will put the money toward the $229 million backlog in infrastructure for national battlefields. Press secretary Sean Spicer delivered an oversized check for that amount to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke at the start of Monday’s White House briefing. Jeff Tittel, Director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, released the following statement:

“The President’s publicity gimmick doesn’t work when it comes to national parks. While he is giving a little bit of money towards national battlefields, he is trying to undermine and destroy our national parks. This is really a token gesture because he wants to allow fracking, mining, and drilling on public lands, while putting our coast more at risk. When you look at what is happening to the entire park system there is a need of more than $12 billion to fix our current backlog, but Trump’s budget will slash the Department of Interior’s budget by $1.6 billion. Instead of fixing our parks, Trump’s vision for our national parks is to extract natural resources, while leaving more pollution and dirty air for communities and park visitors. This check shows Trump is hypocritical because he has declared war on open space and the environment.”

“What Trump is doing is donating taxpayer money, not his own money so he can get a write-off on his taxes, which will cost taxpayers more money. At the same time, Trump doing is going after the Department of Interior by going after its budget. His budget already hurts programs to improve our parks, while eliminates programs for the National Wildlife Refuge and National Heritage areas. He has even supported loosing funding for acquisition of new parks and funding the Land and Water Conservation Fund. While President Obama added the most national parks than any other President in history and protected 290 million acres, Trump vowed to roll back the National Park Service and repeal some of the President’s recent national monuments. Congress is even looking to repeal the Antiquities Act, which helped save national parks and Trump is going along with their plans.”

“Trump is going after the Department of Interior budget so he can eliminate its staff so he can hand them over to the fossil fuel industry and corporate polluters. Instead of keeping fossil fuels in the ground, Interior Secretary Zinke will go in lock step with Trump’s plans will to drill off our coast, mine in our national parks, and frack our public lands. This means will see more proposals for offshore drilling off our coast, threatening our ocean ecosystems, economies, and public health. This will not only ruin our park system, but increase pollution and climate impacts for everyone. That is why it is so important we demand Congress to protect our public lands and stand up to Trump’s rollbacks.”

“Instead of holding our federal lands held in the public trust, Trump and Zinke will put our national parks at increased risk from the privatization. We need real funding for our national park system, but instead Trump wants to allow corporations to take over our parks for private profit. This means we might see the Denali Trump Hotel or a Trump National Golf Course opened at the rim of the Grand Canyon next to a uranium mine. In New Jersey they could build a hotel in Sandy Hook or a ski area in the Delaware Water Gap. We must come together and stand up for the outdoors and protect our national parks from Trump’s attacks.”

“Donald Trump is looking for greencover and some groups may give him that greencover. In order to get money for open space and wildlife grants, some groups will support offshore drilling because it will give them money from the Land and Water Conservation Fund. What they don’t want to understand is that Trump has initiated war on public lands by opening up our land for mining, coasts for drilling, and parks for fracking. Some groups will ask for more funding for wildlife grants, but they won’t oppose Trump’s attack on open space or endangered species. This goes along with Trump’s green cover by giving the National Parks Service $70,000 from his Presidential paycheck. We don’t buy Trump’s gimmicks and we don’t buy Trump’s agenda.”