Wes Siler’s Newsletter

Staffing levels across the national park system have fallen at least 15 percent since January 2025, even as the interior secretary has ordered that all attractions and features must remain open except at his personal command. At the same time, an order early this year re-directs all communications through the secretary’s office. And that’s creating delays between visitors dying and the public being informed. Delays that may be putting national park visitors at risk.

As of the time I’m writing this, a helpful note I left on a neighbor’s windshield has accrued 389,000 views on Instagram and 267,000 on Threads. So I thought it might be helpful to add some additional context. Here’s why it’s so problematic that Subaru pretends you can take its cars off-road, all wrapped up as simply and quickly as possible, so anyone can understand it. Subaru pretends its economy cars can go off-road in order to exploit an emissions loophole.

Both the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture are rolling out plans to expand access to taxpayer-subsidized public lands grazing on areas run by the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service, respectively. Just another instance of the administration prioritizing industrial activity over ecosystem health and recreation? A giveaway to a favored industry? An unspoken acknowledgement that other policies are killing American farmers?

Friday came and went in the Senate without a vote on Mike Lee’s plan to use the Congressional Review Act to dismantle management inside Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. That ended the 60 days that resolution had to move forward. It’s a big public failure for the tree haters, and one that could mark the end of the legislative attack on our public lands that began at the beginning of 2025.

A new, “Great American Outdoors Act 250” bill was just introduced in the House. It would reauthorize the expiring Legacy Restoration Fund at its current level—$1.9 billion annually—for the next five years. The problem is, the public lands maintenance backlog it’s intended to address is, according to recent testify by the interior secretary, expanding each year by at least ten times that amount.

The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources this morning voted to advance an amendment to the Wildfire Prevention Act that would eliminate the 2001 Roadless Rule—which protects 45 million acres of National Forest from logging—and prevent it from being restored in the future. While that’s going on, a USDA order is reportedly inbound striking protections from 5 million acres of recommended Wilderness.

An auction for oil leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge—which contains the largest untapped reserves of oil in the country—closed Friday without attracting any serious bidders. That’s good news for the American people, and the biodiversity we rely on for our survival. It’s bad news for Republicans, who made drilling in ANWR a signature goal of their One Big Beautiful Bill Act last summer.

It may seem unbelievable today, but what was then called “global warming,” was a pretty uncontroversial part of the mainstream conversation back in the year 2000. We were beginning to understand that our future was threatened, and not only that we needed to do something about it, but we could do something about it. And the generally understood reason for global warming was pretty unanimous and uncontroversial too: fossil fuel emissions. Largely fossil fuel emissions caused by burning oil.

Did you hear that Trump authorized off-road vehicles and hunting in national parks?! Does that mean the unwashed masses are going to be running over bison?! Will a pack of bloodthirsty hillbillies start murdering endangered species?! The reality, as with most things from this administration, is just some propaganda told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, but with very little actual significance. Here’s what you need to know about all this, plus what else is new on public lands this week.

Happy unofficial beginning of summer everyone. Anyone else feel like it’s uncharacteristically quiet out there right now? That could be the quiet before a storm of bad public lands news, or it could be a new normal, as larger developments in the political world short circuit Republican plans to give Americans’ natural birthright to billionaires. But first some housekeeping: Virginia and I spent Memorial Day weekend at the family cabins up by Glacier National Park with her brother and his wife.