Employees who maintained America's most wild places say they are concerned for public safety and for wildlife.

Summary

The Trump administration’s recent mass layoffs of national park and forest staff have sparked outrage as services deteriorate and safety concerns grow.

Around 1,000 National Park Service employees (5%) and 3,400 Forest Service workers (10%) were terminated on February 14, causing long entrance lines, trail closures, and reduced visitor services.

Former employees like wilderness ranger Kate White worry about visitor safety and ecological damage at popular destinations.

Conservation work for endangered species has halted, and wildfire response capabilities are threatened. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum defended the cuts as deficit reduction, while critics call for policy reversal.

  • stickly@lemmy.world
    4·
    1 day ago

    The problem runs deeper than 5 years ago. For example, imagine if the de facto official retirement plan wasn’t siphoning public tax money to be locked into the private stock market. Uncle Sam doesn’t get to touch those tax deferred contributions for decades.

    So instead of having that money to decrease the deficit or invest in programs that would reduce the financial burden of retirees (training nurses, preventative healthcare, etc…), they only get their cut at the end of the line. That money explicitly does no public good during those years, that would run counter to the profit motive of their private pool of shareholders.

    There are dozens of examples like this, look at the banks and automakers we bail out with no public equity. We leverage our public good on the promise of private growth making up the difference later. Turns out, it doesn’t work so well…