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Protests at Glacier as national parks reel from Trump cuts: ‘They’ve gutted staff, gutted funding’
“It feels like the government is setting us up to fail,” said the Glacier employee.
As Republicans tout their stewardship of public lands, Montana protesters say their park is suffering – and help is urgently needed
Dozens of former rangers, park volunteers, and local residents protested at the gateway to Montana’s Glacier national park on Wednesday against the staff cuts and hiring freezes that have thrown many national parks into crisis, including Glacier.
Current and former staffers and watchdog groups say the cuts have meant staff are not able to keep up the facilities and infrastructure. Some say the park has been left with inadequate infrastructure and too little staff to be able to respond to emergencies.
Although it might look to visitors like operations in Glacier are normal, “it’s like walking down a Hollywood movie set where the front looks great but there’s nothing behind it,” said Sarah Lundstrum, Glacier program manager with the National Parks Conservation Association.
After the federal government canceled all national parks’ internet contracts this year, Lundstrum said, Glacier now uses StarLink, which some staffers say is spotty, goes down entirely, and often fails to connect park dispatch and 911 calls. There’s only one IT person remaining to address technical problems, those staffers, who asked to remain anonymous because they fear retaliation for speaking out, in a park that spans the Continental Divide, has no cell service, and regularly sees lost and injured hikers and encounters with wildlife, including the park’s dense population of grizzly bears.
“They really need to put some money into those, because this place is crazy with people. It’s being loved to death. But there’s no way that they can do the maintenance and all the things that need to be done in the park now.”
