Episode 97: Funding Cuts, Harmful Policies and Your Visit to National Parks with Alan Spears

Disclaimer: Unedited AI Transcript

Larry (00:07):

You are listening to specifically for Seniors, a podcast designed for a vibrant and diverse senior community. I'm your host, Dr. Larry BARSH. Join me in a lineup of experts as we discuss a wide variety of topics that will empower, inform, entertain, and inspire as we celebrate the richness and wisdom of this incredible stage of life.

Larry (00:40):

A recent article in the Washington Post describes the current administration's attempts to cancel leases for many National Park Service buildings, saying that it could save taxpayers millions of dollars. This move came after the firing of about a thousand probationary workers. I wanted to learn more about the National Park Service and how funding cuts will affect visitors this summer. But even more than that, I wanted to learn about the cultural and historical background of our national parks and the politics affecting them. So I called on Alan Spears to help us out. Alan is currently the Senior Director of Cultural Resources in Government Affairs Department. He serves as National Parks Conservation Association's, resident historian and cultural resources expert. Welcome to specifically for Seniors, Alan.

Alan Spears (01:50):

Thank you. It's good to be with you.

Larry (01:55):

There was a note with your bio that you had the distinction of being the first person ever to be rescued from a tidal marsh by a park police helicopter. How did that come about?

Alan Spears (02:11):

Well, I'm happy to say that I, I survived to tell the Tale. And for about 17 years, I led the Friends of Kennelworth Aquatic Gardens Volunteer Service Organizing and Kennelworth Aquatic Gardens is a beautiful national park service site here in northeast Washington DC nestled on the banks of the Anacostia River. We had a National Public Lands Day cleanup organized and in 2001, about two weeks after September 11th took place. So we did not have a huge crew of people, but we had a handful of folks and we were determined to do good work on behalf of the park and the city and the park service. And it's a title Marsh area. And from the boardwalk, I could see that the tide was out. The mudflats were there in abundance, and there were tires that had washed into the marsh. And the marsh did not have enough power to take them out again when it left.

Alan Spears (03:11):

And I announced to the crowd of people who were with me that day, I'm gonna go get those tires. And a colleague of mine named Jessica, went out with me. Jessica May weigh 102 pounds soaking wet with a large chain around her neck. <Laugh>. I'm a much larger, much heavier guy. She sank first, but got herself out. I sank and kept going down to the point where I was like up to here about chest level in a title marsh. And it was interesting because the, the, so the park service folks called the local police department, and park police came out as well. And they had two officers. And the park police officers had these crisp black pants and these crisp white shirts. And this lieutenant and this captain took one look at me, one look at the mud, and went helicopter <laugh>. So the park police helicopter came over and they lowered what was what they call a Billy puke chair, which is basically a basket.

Alan Spears (04:07):

And I had just enough leverage to kind of work my way into that. And they lifted me out and carried me over to a field and got checked out by paramedics and then released. But it was all in the service of making sure that the, you know, the title Marsh Area and Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens was well protected, taken care of by volunteers like me. And unfortunately, those tires are probably still there. I'm not gonna go after them again, but we've gotten other tons of garbage out of that park site during the time that I was a volunteer coordinator there. So it's a story with a mostly happy ending.

Larry (04:43):

So this was no joke.

Alan Spears (04:45):

No, no, no. You know, it's interesting. I was never really in any immediate danger, but there had been a story in the newspaper about a gentleman who had gotten caught similarly in a title area in Alaska, like the month before that this happened to me. And his friends couldn't reach him, and they watched the tide came in and covered him up. I was never even close to that kind of danger. Covered in mud. I know that people are coming to take care of me, and then all of a sudden the sun comes out and it's like I begin to realize that there are people who pay good money for this. They go to spas for this kind of treatment. I'm getting it for free. So, but it was, it was substantial. It was serious. I think my heart was probably like 300 over 97 when they did the first measurements for blood pressure, but calmed down quickly. And I continued to go on and, and help folks organize bigger and better national Public Lands Day. And have always told my volunteers when I was running this, don't do as I did, make sure you say stay, you stay safe, and that you get the work done without having to call for a National Park police helicopter. The first ride for me was free. The second one they're gonna charge is 5,000 bucks.

Larry (05:57):

Wow. how many, how many national parks are there around the country? We're all familiar with the, with the big ones, the popular ones, grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Bryce, Cy, and Denali. But there's a lot more that include historical sites and cultural and recreation areas.

Alan Spears (06:22):

So our national park system right now consists of over 430 units. I think it might be 4 32, 4 33, but you're absolutely right. Many people are familiar with the Capital N, capital P Park. So that's Yellowstone, Yosemite, Everglades, Shenandoah, and the places that are known as being the large landscape, naturally oriented parks. But within that, the Park Service also has national monuments, national battlefields, national Historical Parks, national Historic Sites. The nomenclature for the Park Service consists of maybe 30 plus titles for individual park sites. And there are about 430 of those. The interesting thing I find my background is as, as you shared with listeners is a, is a historian. And what I stumbled into when I first got working for MPCA was the fact that every national park in the system has a responsibility for interpreting, managing, and protecting and preserving historic and cultural resources. What a wonderful field to gamble through as a historian and an advocate for national parks. But yeah, we're at about 432, I think right now.

Larry (07:29):

Tell us about some of the historical parks.

Alan Spears (07:33):

Well, where do we start? I mean, this is subject matter that's near and dear to my heart. I grew up in Washington, DC and in the 1970s, my parents were looking for fun, inexpensive, and educational things to do with their only kid. Turns out we're only about 75 miles away from Gettysburg National Military Park. And so we would go to Gettysburg at least once a summer, sometimes two or three times a summer. And I love that battlefield. My favorite television show for people who are old enough to remember was the Rat Patrol, the, you know, the Desert Patrol folks that were in the Jeeps with the machine guns. So I had a, a fascination and an affinity for military history from an early period in my life. And here we are going up to Gettysburg and there's cannons all over the landscape and there's statues of guys with guns.

Alan Spears (08:21):

And I fell in love with that park and that story of the way, like an 8-year-old, 9-year-old, 10-year-old kid would fall in love with it. But I kind of grew up with Gettysburg. The park grew up with me as well, and I began to learn more about the history of that site the sort of hollowed ground that's there and at other places like Shiloh and Antietam and Harper's Ferry, and began to get a better sense of what that conflict meant in the period in the 19th century and what it still means for us today. And so my career as a historian dates back to my parents taking me to Gettysburg and Anti. And if you don't like my historical analysis, you have only to blame the park service for that 'cause it's their fault.

Larry (09:05):

Overall, how many visitors does the park do the parks get?

Alan Spears (09:10):

There was

Larry (09:11):

In the course of a year,

Alan Spears (09:12):

Yeah, there was record visitation in 2024, was 331.8 million visits. And so clearly people in this country and all across the the world are enamored by our national parks. They wanna get to the large places like Yellowstone and Yosemite and the Grand Canyon, but they also wanna get to the smaller places. We worked with community folks to establish the Emmett Till and Mamie Till Mobley National Monument in July of 2023. President Biden designated that via the use of the Antiquities Act. It's a site that tells the tragic story of the murder of a 14-year-old African American kid in Mississippi in August, 1955. And our community partners consistently tell me that there are groups that are coming in from all across the globe and all across the country to learn about that history. So it's the big places and the small places in our national park system that are driving up these visitation numbers to record levels like we saw in 2024.

Larry (10:09):

So the extent of funding cut to the National Park Service are going to affect millions of people's visits.

Alan Spears (10:23):

Absolutely. We are very concerned right now that we are seeing an unprecedented assault on our national parks and on the staff that work in our national parks. And that's not just hyperbole. So the budget for the National Park Service hovers somewhere around $3 billion. We are looking potentially at an FY 26 budget should that get formed and come out of Congress that would cut that budget or leave the funding flat, which is the same thing as a cut given the cost of living increases that the Park Service will have to absorb. But we're also seeing as the visitation for National Parks increases, that the staffing levels are being reduced. The probationary employees who got fired about a thousand on February 14th this year, some have been reinstated, but then there's another or a court order saying that there should be a pause on that.

Alan Spears (11:14):

And then we have got reductions in force that are pending right now, along with buyouts and forks in the road. And what we're seeing right now is that so many of the people that we value who are doing great work protecting our, our public lands and our national parks are being pushed out at this point in time. It's not like these folks are taking buyouts because their plan is to go live on a beach someplace and live out the rest of their days writing good or bad poetry. They're being pushed out because if they don't leave now, it's very likely that they could be fired in another couple of weeks or another couple of months. And we're getting to a point where we could see up to 20, 25% or more of the current Park Service Force lost to reductions in force or buyouts, early retirements.

Alan Spears (12:00):

So who's gonna be left to help manage these places? And you are right, it is gonna have extremely adverse impact on visitor services. That's gonna be the frontline people who might be absent. But my concern, our concern at the National Parks Conservation Association is, is that it also is gonna have a very deliberate knock on effect to park safety research monitoring tribal consultation, historic preservation, all these behind the scenes things that are critically important to managing and maintaining our public lands. And we're losing people who are gonna be able to manage tho those processes effectively.

Larry (12:40):

How are they, how's the staff taking all this?

Alan Spears (12:45):

Well, the morale for National Park Service folks has been down for some time. And, you know, I am a staffer at a 5 0 1 C3 nonprofit organization. I'm not a federal employee. I'm not a National Park Service person, nor have I been designated to speak for National Park Service folks. But I can tell you from close observation that the morale is subterranean. You know, if you think about the levels in a parking garage, you go down to P four park Service morale at this point in time, agency morale is probably down around P five, P six. It's below the parking levels. And what we see are people who have had long careers of service.

Alan Spears (13:27):

And we have some folks right now who just simply don't wanna understand, don't care to understand, don't care to learn about the critical role that Park Service staff play in making sure that places like Yosemite or the Frederick Douglas home or Gettysburg National Military Park are well taken care of. And they're just being trashed in the media. They're being told that they're not, they're work work is not worth it. That they don't fit the mission and vision that the standards, that they're not working up to the standards of the agency. So not only is it a dismissal, but it is sort of a disrespectful way of treating people who have given a lifetime to federal service in many instances. And so morale, I would say is very, very low at this point. So if you do get to a national park, make sure you thank somebody if they're in that Grand Green uniform and wearing that flat hat, if it's a volunteer in Park Parks make sure you're thanking them for their service and for their commitment to these places that we hold most dear.

Larry (14:25):

And then you'll probably have to face vandalism in the parks too, if nobody is supervising.

Alan Spears (14:33):

That's always a concern. And I think it's very much a concern right now that you know, it looks like the law enforcement and security elements are gonna be those that are not as badly impacted by some of these reductions in force or the firings and so security. But it's still gonna be an issue if you don't have people, the frontline rangers, who have the experience enough to say, when people are coming into the visitor center when they're getting their permits for camping, here's how you act at a national park. You know, NPCA has a know Before you Go program that's on our website, and people can visit that@www.mpca.org to learn about how you interact in these places and treat them with respect and care and love. But not everybody's gonna check out our website. Not everybody's gonna go to the parks website.

Alan Spears (15:20):

And if you wind up at the visitor's center and it's short staffed because somebody's responsible for parking cars and cleaning toilets and doing security, you might miss an introductory lecture from someone who says, if you come across things that are irreplaceable, historic, cultural, leave them be, you know, it's one of the first rules of leave No trace, take only photographs, leave only footprints in areas that aren't sensitive. And so we've got great concerns about that, and it's in large landscape, natural parks, but it's also on our battlefields and historic and cultural sites. You know, Gettysburg is a park that I love and that I know well. And there have been more than a few instances where people have, you know, attached a tow rope to a Ford pickup truck and drag the statue off its base. And when we, we, we, the parks don't have enough people to kind of maintain and protect and provide security for these places, these sorts of things can happen. And we're, we're very concerned about vandalism and the abuse of, you know, the abuse of the privilege, the honor that we have, of being able to go to these places and see these things.

Larry (16:30):

You mentioned NPCA. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. What is that for our list?

Alan Spears (16:35):

So we are the National Parks Conservation Association. It's very important to point out that in a universe of initials that we are not the National Precast Concrete Association, nor are we the National Police Canine Association, but we are the National Parks Conservation Association. And we were established by the first director of the National Park Service, Mr. Stephen Ting Mather, who recognized in 19 16, 19 17, 19 18, in that early period after the Park service had been established in 1916, that parks were gonna need a citizen watchdog work dog group to help protect them from all the nefarious schemes that were happening then. And that still continued to happen today. So we are 5 0 1 C3 advocacy organization. We are a membership organization, so if anybody out there has an extra couple of dollars and they wanna become a member of NPCA now more than ever, that would be great. And we do our best through our main office in Washington, DC and I think we've got 10 regional offices spread across the country to advocate on behalf of our national parks to work with people in communities to work as best we can with our park service partners to promote policies and legislation that we think are good for parks, and then to try to knock off the stuff that we think is gonna hit the parks in a, in an an adverse way.

Larry (17:56):

One of the big problems is that recently there's been an attempt to rewrite and erase part of American History by an executive order to remove content that quote disparages Americans. The White House has issued an executive order entitled Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History. The order corrected the department of the directed, not corrected, sorry, the order directed the Department of the Interior to conduct a review of historic monuments and memorials and similar properties for quote unquote partisan ideology. Mm-Hmm

Alan Spears (18:46):

<Affirmative>.

Larry (18:47):

What's that all about?

Alan Spears (18:49):

Well, I think if there's any good news or silver linings to be celebrated here, I think it comes from the fact that the president loves American history. So do I. So we've got that in common. But I think the effort here is, again, it is that sort of culture war that involves critical race theory and diversity, equity and inclusion, and the fear. Some people have that by telling history that is inclusive and accurate. And I would say because of those things, inspiring that we've got a problem here and couple things. One, it's important to understand 'cause I think there are really a lot of people out there who love parks, but don't recognize that the Park Service plays a mighty role in protecting and interpreting the history, the history and culture of our nation, and really helping to promote in a great way our shared national narrative.

Alan Spears (19:40):

And so we have worked with the Park Service over the last 20 years to make sure that the sites that we have in the system and the stories that are being represented represent the voices and the faces and the stories of all Americans. I think that makes us stronger. I don't think it makes us weaker. And the executive order to return sanity to historic preservation, I think ultimately and inevitably leads to essentially a whitewashing of the story. Because if we're not gonna be able to talk about the contributions of black and brown people, the fights that have been waged for equality in this country, whether we're talking about the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in March of 1965 with John Lewis to get to Montgomery on the summit, the Montgomery Trail as a park service site, or the uprising in 1969 that launched the modern L-G-B-T-Q movement at Stonewall in, in Manhattan, we are leaving out or being forced to leave out huge chunks of our shared national narrative.

Alan Spears (20:36):

And the stories, like I just recently mentioned Emmett Till, that's not a happy, easy story, but it is our history. And, you know, when I see the President's executive order and my love of history, this history of the country that we are in right now, here's the way that that strikes me. It's like, you know, in the second World War, we stood together with our allies, marshaled our resources, and we fought against fascism in one. We do great things. And now we are being asked to believe that the contents of an interpretive sign or brochure in a park service visitor visitor center might be the thing that undermines this nation. I don't think so. And so I think the request from me and from NPCA for folks out there, if you're hearing these sorts of things, is don't believe the hype. We have a really broad, deep and diverse history.

Alan Spears (21:36):

Scrubbing that of things that maybe are complicated or complex for some people does not make this nation greater. It makes us smaller and it makes us meaner because we lose our ability through national parks and through libraries and any other federal program that's talking about the breadth and depth of our history to understand the full contributions of people from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds. And when we do that, it's a lot easier to point fingers and make others of people who are actually citizens and who have contributed mightily to making this country what it is today.

Larry (22:09):

You said he liked history, but it's his own version of history that he likes.

Alan Spears (22:16):

Yeah. you know, it reminds me of a quote that I think I heard, actually. It was president Obama said this of Tippo O'Neill who grew tired of listening to one of his fellow members of Congress in a debate. And he told the man that he was entitled to his own opinions, but that he was not entitled to his own facts. And I think that that is, again, part of what we're talking about here is the fact that we have a history. There are good things about that. But there are, as Abraham Lincoln might have said, many instances when we have not lived up to the better angels of our nature, that's a part of that story too. And that I think is worth worthy of examination and maybe even critical that we examine that so that we can learn from past mistakes and errors, maybe come together, do a little bit of healing, and then figure out the way forward. 'cause If we don't figure out if we don't learn from some of those past mistakes, we're just gonna keep, continue to repeat them. We're seeing a little bit of that right now.

Larry (23:18):

Part of that was the story about the removal of the information about Harriet Tubman and the underground Railroad.

Alan Spears (23:28):

That's right. So it looks like an image was removed I believe it was from the Underground Railroad Network to Freedom website. I don't have an explanation about why that happens. I mean, I think it's important to say right now for folks to understand it is not park managers and park superintendents or chiefs of interpretation who are doing this at individual sites. I had a conversation about this when I was visiting a national park and the chief of Interpretation, we had this conversation and as we were leaving the visitor center to return to me, and he said, you know, I gotta go check my website to see if something's been taken down or erased. So there's folks out there with algorithms that are trying to go through and flag pages that might have information that people find troubling doing their best to restore sanity to historic interpretation on National Park Service websites.

Alan Spears (24:22):

But the Tubman thing was, I didn't understand how that got, when you remove Harriet Tubman from a website that is dedicated to the history of the Underground Railroad, it's a little bit like taking the iceberg out of the Titanic story. It just doesn't make sense. And so I'm not sure where that came from. Was it directed at Tubman because she was an African American woman? Was it because there was a quote about slavery and injustice? It's impossible to say, but there's some people running around trying to flag this stuff in support of the President's executive order about restoring truth and sanity to American history. I would prefer to have another executive order that talked about ensuring that our national parks, the nation's leading historian and storyteller has the budget and staffing so that they can continue to excel in telling the full American experience. I think that's a better way to go. We need a paradigm shift on that.

Larry (25:28):

It it's difficult to even respond to the scrubbing of history of, of things that actually happened and reinterpreting them because of one's personal beliefs.

Alan Spears (25:45):

Yeah. And I think it sets a dangerous precedent if you, you know, look at the nations that have done this sort of thing before. It's not a host of heroes. It's a rogues gallery. And we are now doing the same thing again, it's, I don't think that this nation is in jeopardy of being undermined from within by the contents of a Park service brochure. In fact, what I would say, again, looking for that paradigm shift is that we are better as a country when we're able to pull together. And, you know, censorship can come from all different directions. And we saw in the last several years, especially during the covid pan pandemic, which is still with us, but back in the days when it was really raging, at least more than it is right now, that there were efforts to correct the history of this country that was coming from, or maybe scrub the history of this country that we're coming from the left.

Alan Spears (26:35):

I didn't agree with those either. We are better as a people when we were able to come together and talk about these subjects. Subject, let's just take the instance of slavery being a root cause of the American Civil War. You can agree with me that that's the case. You can disagree with me. But the idea is that if you disagree with that, do your research, write your book, and then let's show up on the field of ideas and have a conversation about your values, your input, your thinking on and mine. Or better still, we can get Park service rangers, interpretive rangers who know this issue a lot better than I do, and we can have that free exchange of ideas. We gain nothing through censorship and erasure. Nothing.

Larry (27:23):

Alan, we mentioned this when we were talking about the podcast. There are a couple of issues that I know are out of your area of expertise, but I hope you can make a couple of comments about them. Sure. Those of us who have visited national parks had no idea that national parks are on tribal lands, and they exist because of a legally binding treaty between the United States and tribal nations. Defunding cuts affect this part of the National Park information.

Alan Spears (28:08):

Oh, yeah, absolutely they do. So there is a trust relationship between federally recognized tribes and the government of the United States. It's a government to government relationship, and there are obligations that both sides have to have to meet in order to keep those relationships moving in an effective way. And when budgets are cut and when staffing levels are reduced, it means that the Park Service will have fewer people to manage those relationships with tribes, less money to manage those relationships with tribes, to do things like ensure that cultural and historic resources are, are well cared for, to enforce things like the nagpra native American graves and protection and Repatriation Act that the, that's enforced. And it takes us backwards, you know, in the same way that the Park Service has made great strides towards telling more diverse stories. They have made some strides towards being really great partners with tribes and nations in this country. And when we see funding from the federal level cut, when we see that Congress is having some difficulty, reor reauthorizing the Historic Preservation Fund at a higher level, which would I hope provide more money for tribal historic preservation officers, also known as Tippo we're in some trouble because it, it's not a zero cost to ensuring that tribes get their preservation needs, their legally mandated preservation needs met by federal land management agencies like the National Park Service. So yeah, the adverse staffing and funding levels are gonna cost us in this realm too.

Larry (29:49):

It's almost a matter of disrespect.

Alan Spears (29:52):

I think it's a huge matter of, of disrespect at this point in time. And again, you know, you started off by saying that national parks are all on tribal lands, and that's very true. And it's just the right thing to do, I think, to figure out how, again, we come together collectively and move forward so that these lands can still be enjoyed by the public and still be respected as national parks, but also as tribal homelands. And I don't think those things are mutually exclusive, but it's gonna take some people and some money to make sure that those things happen in an equitable and impactful way for both folks. And that's in jeopardy right now.

Larry (30:36):

And one other thing that concerns me, that, again, is out of your area of expertise is the president's phrase, drill baby drill <laugh>, and some of that drilling and mining is on public lands that's close to the parks.

Alan Spears (30:58):

Well, actually just this week, the Bureau of Land Management announced that they were approving a mine within the boundary of Mojave Mojave National Preserve. They don't actually have the jurisdiction to do that because Mojave National Preserve is managed by the National Park Service and the company, if I have my facts rate, as an Australian company that wants to do this project because they feel like they have or could get access to rare earth minerals in Mojave Subsurface but they haven't done a plan, which is one of the first major steps that would need to be done so that the Park Service could approve the plan so that they weren't messing around just in any old place inside Mojave National Preserve. If the Park Service actually felt like that was an okay thing to do. But there has been no approval process and it's, you know, coming across jurisdictions.

Alan Spears (31:46):

And so we are also concerned about the emphasis on energy and development and other things like that. And, you know, I'm not the expert on this. Again, people can visit our website to learn more about this issue from the people who run it and manage it on a day-to-day basis. But I think what we want is common sense to be applied. And what we are seeing, I think, from some of the policies that are coming out right now that are guided towards national parks are being implemented enacted on or against national parks, there's a punitive nature there, right? And so the idea is could this company look for rare earth minerals outside the boundaries and maybe well beyond the boundaries of national parks or federal lands? The answer to that is yes, but choosing to look inside the landscape is, it's sort of like that finger poke in the eye.

Alan Spears (32:38):

It's that extra little bit of punitiveness. And we're seeing that across all all elements of National Park policy right now, including the fact that the credit cards of some federal land management agency personnel have been reduced to a limit of $1. You can put $1 on your federal credit card. And so some of our National Park Service colleagues right now are calling upon friends groups and private citizens to help feed animals and pay for potable water at events and other things like that because their credit card gets maxed out if it goes to a dollar and 1 cent. That kind of thing, along with, you know, looking for minerals inside the boundaries of national parks. We've got a lot of acreage in, you know, in on the federal rules, but it's not everything. And a common sense policy for American energy independence doesn't have to be predicated on drilling inside the boundaries of national parks or public lands. It doesn't have to be, but they're making it that

Larry (33:38):

There is so many other issues of importance to talk about that are dependent on, on politics, the effect of climate change on the parks, the effect of quality of the air and the scenic views and the effect on wildlife and historic sites.

Alan Spears (34:02):

They all blend together. And I think part of the challenge that we're having right now, aside from the general political environment that we're seeing, is that it becomes too easy sometimes, even for folks like me who are in this on a daily basis, to silo things so that you've got concerns about climate change and you've got concerns about historic preservation. But if you look at a place like Harper's Ferry, which is just up the road from me here in Washington dc we are seeing an increased severity of storms that are dropping more rain over a shorter period of time. And it used to be at Harper's Ferry that the flooding happened in the lower town when the banks of the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers spilled their banks and, and flooded the lower town. But right now we're seeing a high volume of rain that's coming from washing down the hilltops and flooding some of the historic buildings that the Park Service has been using for interpretive spaces.

Alan Spears (35:01):

And that's an example of how climate and our climate emergency is adversely impacting the ability of the National Park Service to manage its historic preservation duties and obligations, rising sea levels, increasing storm severity, fires, drought, all these things are having an impact of some sort on the ability of the agency to conduct historic preservation. And it looks like one of the things that we might be losing, or at least it will be bleeding off personnel and funding, would be the ability to inventory and monitor historic and cultural resources and natural resources in the National Park Service so that experts can keep an eye on these things on a month to month, year to year basis, and note the changes and identify opportunities to adapt and mitigate when it comes to climate for natural and historic and cultural resources. So it's all related, it's all part of the same whole cloth. And so we can't pull out the single threads of these things, and it's all jeopardized by current funding levels and by current policies especially if we get to a point again where the National Park Service cannot use the words climate change to address a major issue that is confronting the entire planet, not just our national parks.

Larry (36:11):

Is it down to that?

Alan Spears (36:14):

I know that, I think, I believe that in the first term of the Trump administration, they were prohibited from using the words climate change. I don't know if there's been a policy, but I do know that you know, we are being, it is suggested to us that a report that we want to a bill that we actually wanna move in Congress would be more likely to receive bipartisan support if climate change was removed and acts of nature was, you know, replaced those words. And so what we're seeing is, I think, an idea that somehow, it's almost like history. If you can just kind of ignore it, it goes away. So if, yeah,

Larry (36:53):

I was gonna say, if you can change the direction of a hurricane with a magic marker, you certainly can avoid talking about climate change, <laugh>. What can we do as citizens to help?

Alan Spears (37:12):

Well you know, we still have a democracy, and so it's time for everybody who cares about, and I'll limit this to, to national parks, who cares about national parks and public lands and the historic and cultural, scenic, recreational and natural resources that they interpret and manage and preserve. It's time to stand up. It's time for your voice to be heard. You know, there's a lot that, at least in my opinion, is challenging right now. So many things are going wrong. But we are an advocacy organization. NPCA is, we're not in the despair industry, but having hope at this point in time is incumbent upon taking action. And action means advocacy. There are no more sidelines, if you are a park lover and a park advocate, there are no more sidelines. And so I think what that translates into is contacting elected officials at the state and local level and the national level, federally elected officials.

Alan Spears (38:14):

And if you've done that once, that's fantastic and thank you. But go back and check in with them again because there are so many things that are pending and on the agendas of people and making sure that they understand that national parks are important, that we have a commitment that's over 100 years old to manage in perpetuity for the benefit, enjoyment, and inspiration of the public, these most special places on our landscape. It is far too late to start walking back on that promise. And they need to hear that. And you can visit our website again, because, and this is not another, you know, ruthless plug for NPCA, but we have anecdotes about what funding cuts and staffing reductions will mean. You can insert those into your talking points, into your messages that you're conveying to your elected representatives and what you're sharing with your communities, your grasstops leaders and your grassroots folks.

Alan Spears (39:04):

But there needs to be a movement right now to protect and preserve these places. It doesn't happen in isolation. So, you know, if people are worried about a number of other issues, I get that. But you can be worried about immigration, you can be worried about climate change, and you can also have concern about national parks and weave those things together as an advocate effectively. And that's what we need people to do. If I might, there are two other things. For anybody who's going to a national park in the next couple of weeks or couple of months, please take your cell phone and please take photographs of the interpretive materials that you see on display, especially as they relate to history, women's history, the history of black and brown people, tribal history and tribal relations, and L-G-B-T-Q communities. If you see an interpretive sign at a park, take a photograph of it, just store it on a file someplace.

Alan Spears (39:51):

And if you read in the future about these signs or these interpretive materials being scrubbed or changed, that's when you can take your photograph from this month, last month, next month and share it with someone in the media, share it with somebody at NPCA so that we can help develop a record of what happened, what it looked like before, and what it looks like now, so that we can track what's being scrubbed. And then the last thing that I would share is, you know, and I mentioned this before, when you get to your parks, or if you are just in a grocery store and you are bagging some broccoli to take home and you are wind up standing next to somebody in a park service uniform, give 'em a hug, give 'em a fist bump, give 'em an elbow bump. Tell 'em what you, you think that what they do is awesome and make sure that they know when you meet them at parks whether it's NPS staff or volunteers in parks, that you're grateful for them being on that wall, being on that line and helping to protect and preserve some of the most special places on our landscape.

Alan Spears (40:49):

They need to hear that 'cause they're not hearing it right now from this administration or from leadership. So they need to hear it from us.

Larry (40:59):

Alan, and I am grateful that you took time to come on specifically for seniors and talk about national parks and the NPCA. Thank you so much for being against,

Alan Spears (41:13):

Oh, this is absolutely my pleasure. Let's go again at some point in time and maybe we'll have better news to share

Larry (41:18):

And maybe we can show some of the pictures that people take.

Alan Spears (41:25):

I'd love that. It's been,

Larry (41:26):

It's been great, Alan. Thank you so much. Thank you.

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