S4E5: DOGE Layoffs Are Sabotaging Public Lands

UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT

0:00:01 - (Chris): 90 miles from Needles the Desert Protection Podcast is made possible by listeners just like you. If you want to help us out, you can go to 90 miles from needles.com donate or text needles to 53555 think the deserts are barren wastelands? It's time for 90 miles from needles the Desert Protection Podcast. Thank you, Joe, and welcome to this episode of 90 Miles from Needles the Desert Protection Podcast.

0:00:52 - (Chris): I'm your host, Chris Clarke, and this has been an especially trying couple of weeks for those of us who care about public lands in the desert or elsewhere, with the deliberately destructive layoffs hitting federal agencies including the Interior Department, where at last count, thousands of people have been fired with no particular reason. We're going to be talking with Kristen Brengel of the National Parks Conservation association, who has been lobbying actively in the last couple of weeks about protecting the National Park Service staff who maintain our parks, who keep us safe when we're there, and answer our questions and teach us about ecosystems in the park.

0:01:33 - (Chris): Many of them are losing their jobs at the beginning of their careers, but I wanted to start with some good news. Believe it or not, there is some good news coming from a Desert national park press release that came out early this week describes a species new to science, actually a genus new to science growing in Big Bend National Park. And just cribbing a little bit from the press release here in March of last year, a volunteer with the Big Bend National Park Botany Program, along with a supervisory interpretive ranger, noticed some very tiny little fuzzy looking plants sprinkled among desert rocks in a remote area in the north part of the park.

0:02:16 - (Chris): They took photos. They went back to their office and consulted species databases, herbarium records, plant taxonomy, publications, et cetera, local experts. They posted the photos online to see if anybody knew what they were. Eventually they were joined in the study of these new plants by a number of botanical research groups, including the California Academy of Sciences, Sol Ross University in Marathon, Texas, and a collaborative of the National Autonomous University of Mexico and the National Polytechnic Institute in Mexico.

0:02:48 - (Chris): Those groups all joined park staff in the genetic analysis of the plant, and it turned out that this is not just a new species, but an entirely new genus within the daisy family Asteraceae Ovicula biradiata. Ovicula means tiny sheep. The leaves have a thick white woolly covering, and biradiata, which means two rays, references the two ray flowers in each inflorescence. For those of you who like common names better, researchers in the park have affectionately named the plant Woolly Devil.

0:03:22 - (Chris): Now I've said it before, and I'm definitely going to say it again because I only have so many ideas and I have to recycle them sometimes. But almost every time people really look at the desert, they find completely new things. You take a square meter of desert pretty much anywhere and look at it for long enough, there's a really big chance that you will find something nobody knew was there or even that nobody knew existed in the first place. And that's just fascinating to me.

0:03:49 - (Chris): It's what makes it so interesting to be working in the desert. And it's also what makes it so important to protect the public lands in the desert because they're the reservoir of this biological diversity that we often don't know is there. I mean, how awesome is that? And that's part of why this spate of completely unjustified, destructive layoffs across public land management agencies are just insanely stupid.

0:04:14 - (Chris): The Bureau of Land Management has lost hundreds of people. The U.S. Forest Service has lost between 2,000 and 3,400 people, depending on whether you believe DOGE or the U.S. Forest Service Public Employees Union. U.S. fish and Wildlife has lost almost 400 employees. As Kristen Brangle will tell us, 9 percent of the national Park Service's staff is gone. It's just an absolute gutting of the agencies that work to protect our public lands and not just the protected areas that are part of our public lands, but these agencies manage public lands in part, at least for conservation.

0:04:54 - (Chris): It's almost as if the administration doesn't want these lands protected and doesn't want the environmental impacts of big industrial projects on public lands to be looked at. It's almost like they just really don't like protecting things. Now, we got a note from one federal employee who's been listening, and it was actually an exit survey on our Patreon page. This person, whose name we will keep to ourselves, said, “I'm a federal employee and I have to watch my finances until this craziness calms down.

0:05:26 - (Chris): Love your show.” And they said that as they canceled their regular donation. We are absolutely indebted to this person, not only for supporting us, but for reaching out and letting us know if you want to help take up the slack that they have been forced to leave, go to 90miles from needles.com/donate and either Patreon or GiveButter. Pick which one you like better. Make a one time or recurring donation and we will be especially appreciative.

0:05:58 - (Chris): Before we jump into our interview with Kristen, I need to say a couple of things. First off, we're really indebted to Kristen for being flexible with us. We had a wonderful interview first thing Monday morning that went into a lot of detail and was engaging and funny. And it turned out that our remote studio app for some reason had glitched and we didn't actually record more than about 90 seconds of that interview.

0:06:19 - (Chris): Kristen and I went back and forth a couple of times in text to schedule an emergency retake and got that interview done late Tuesday night. And that's why this episode is one day late. We are absolutely indebted to Kristen for scheduling this interview with us. She has been insanely busy for the last couple of weeks, talking to international news agencies, running up to Capitol Hill to knock on lawmakers’ doors and tell them to fight back against this wave of really destructive, stupid layoffs. And we're thankful to her for that too.

0:06:51 - (Chris): It's really important work. I also wanted to define a couple of terms that we throw around in the interview, namely seasonal and probationary workers. Seasonal workers in the National Park Service are people that are hired for busy seasons is what it sounds like. It's a temp job. People will line up seasonal employment year after year, sometimes applying each year. Sometimes it's a springboard to a permanent gig with the Park Service.

0:07:18 - (Chris): Sometimes it's just a really good way to spend your summer in between semesters. These are generally people that are staffing the visitor centers during busy seasons, taking your money at entry kiosks and handing you maps. They've been hit hard by layoffs, though activists did manage to get some of those layoffs walked back. And seasonals would be less affected by these layoffs than we first feared.

0:07:42 - (Chris): I mean, who knows what's going to happen next week. But anyway, that's what seasonal workers are. The other term is probationary workers, and that sounds a little bit like some of the job experiences I've had where your boss comes up to you and says, “look, you're on thin ice. We really need you to shape up. You have six months.” It's not like that. That's not what probationary employees are. They've either just started their jobs. It's a yearlong status at the commencement of employment in which the Park Service wants to make sure that they hired the right person.

0:08:13 - (Chris): So probationary employees include a lot of people who are just starting their careers. They've just landed a job in public service with the federal government. They're often very young, bright, extremely enthusiastic, and well-educated people. But it's not just them. Probationary employees also include people that have been promoted within the last year or changed jobs within the last year. Sometimes these people have been working at the park service for 25 or 30 years.

0:08:41 - (Chris): Let's say you've been a superintendent at 19 different national parks over the course of a few decades, and you get promoted to regional director after working in the park service for 30 years. That promotion kicks off a one-year probationary period. And so a lot of the people that have been fired as probationary employees have immense experience and they are extremely expert in their fields. They know the Park Service inside and out and they're good at getting things done.

0:09:10 - (Chris): And I don't want to lay off any Park Service workers, but that's a spectacularly wrong-headed way of going about it. You're gutting the collective work experience of the agency. Now, we're talking about the National Park Service in this interview, but this applies just as well to the BLM and U.S. fish and Wildlife and the Forest Service and all of these agencies that have, at least as part of their mandate, protection of public lands.

0:09:35 - (Chris): So let's jump into our interview with Kristen Brengel of the National Parks Conservation Association.

0:10:07 - (Kristen Brengel): Hi, everyone. My name is Kristin Brengel. I'm the senior vice president of government affairs for the National Parks Conservation association and former colleague of Chris Clarke's and president of the Chris Clarke Fan Club.

0:10:21 - (Chris): Speaking in your other role, not as president of the fan club, what's been happening with park staff in the last couple of weeks?

0:10:29 - (Kristen Brengel): Well, I can start from the beginning and then give you the update that came out today. Okay, so this all started with a general hiring freeze, and the parks already had lots of vacancies, from superintendent positions to chief of interpretation and so on and so forth. Lots of vacancies. The hiring freeze put a kibosh on filling any of those vacancies. And then you had a situation where offers were rescinded for people who had taken a job but hadn't started yet. So there were about 2,000 folks in that category.

0:11:12 - (Kristen Brengel): And then we were very worried about the seasonals and really pushing on the administration to allow the seasonals to be exempt from the hiring freeze. Eventually, last week, that finally came through and the seasonals were allowed to be hired again. And so that process is underway right now. But then what happened on February 14 was 1,000 Park Service staff who were in their probationary period got fired, all in one fell swoop.

0:11:46 - (Kristen Brengel): And then, so that brings it to today when we found out that 700 Park Service staff took the fork in the road deal, which is also called the Deferred resignations. And that's not attrition crisp, because it's. They're not going to be able to fill those positions because of the hiring freeze. So that means in the last basically week or so, the Park Service has lost 9% of its staff in just over a week.

0:12:21 - (Kristen Brengel): And it's not like there is a plan in place to handle this decrease in staff. Typically, you would know if someone was leaving, they give their notice this and that, because this has been so dramatic and traumatic. It's not like the Park Service had an alternative Plan B in place where they could handle the reduction that just happened. So that 9 percent was just mostly immediate, and the Park Service is just going to have to deal with it.

0:12:50 - (Chris): So 9 percent of NPS staff is how many folks around?

0:12:56 - (Kristen Brengel): So that would be about 1,700 people who were either terminated or left under duress.

0:13:05 - (Chris): Okay, yeah, that's. That's a significant blow, and especially when you consider that other land management agencies and Interior shed similar numbers of people. I think BLM is like 800 at last count. Something like that.

0:13:22 - (Kristen Brengel): I think so, yeah.

0:13:24 - (Chris): And I expect that Fish and Wildlife and certainly the EPA is taking a hit, and it's just bad news for land management and species protection and all that kind of stuff all the way around.

0:13:37 - (Kristen Brengel): Yeah.

0:13:37 - (Chris): So what recourse do people have? You know that presumably there are a number of people who have officially lost their job who would love to have that rescinded. What kinds of things can NPCA and the rest of us do to push back against this?

0:13:56 - (Kristen Brengel): So really, Congress has a big role in all of this, whether they believe it or not. They're the ones who make the laws and policies and fund the government. So really, they should be pushing on the administration to stop this constant firing of people, and they need to help get these positions reinstated. And so what we're calling on folks to do is to call their member of Congress, call their senators, tell them, this is terrible.

0:14:26 - (Kristen Brengel): It's going to ruin our parks. And we want these positions reinstated immediately. And we want a waiver for the Park Service so that they don't have any of these positions eliminated now or in the future. Your members of Congress are supposed to be responsive to their constituents. And so we need to apply as much pressure to these folks and get them to act. And I was just up on the Hill today lobbying offices, and they need more pressure. They really do. And even though we heard that the hotlines have been ringing off the hook, it's not enough.

0:15:01 - (Kristen Brengel): They need to feel the pain. And they need to hear the stories of the park rangers who were fired and hear that people aren't going to be able to make their rent. These young people can't buy groceries. They need to hear that someone's career just went down the tubes. I think trying to make sure that there's a human face on what's happening is critically important. So I really, really appreciate all the park rangers who were fired posting on social media because it's absolutely putting a face on this and not letting people just get away with the number, which the numbers are very high, but we want them to see who they're affecting.

0:15:45 - (Chris): Yep. And as far as the impact on park visitors goes just in the desert here, we've been hearing that visitor centers like at Saguaro are going to be closed some days out of the week. Great Basin is ending the cave tours. I think there are some additional restrictions at some other really large parks just based on the number of people that have been lost. But there's some public safety aspects to this too, right?

0:16:13 - (Kristen Brengel): Yeah. So we didn't actually get a list of who got fired. We didn't even get a list of how many in each park. We're still trying to get ahold of that information so we have a better understanding of it. But because we're hearing from so many park staff people, we're kind of piecing the story together at this point. And it is kind of unbelievable how many search and rescue people were fired. And in addition to that, we also heard the dispatchers were fired, which. That is a really tough job.

0:16:49 - (Kristen Brengel): It's not the best paying job within the Park Service, but critically important for parks to be able to communicate with each other, other federal agencies, counties, to make sure that information is being passed along to each other when there's a problem or an incident or anything that needs to be communicated among the various jurisdictions. And so, you know, I think about this all the time. And Chris, you and I have worked in park advocacy together, and we know how much visitors get themselves into trouble.

0:17:21 - (Chris): Yep.

0:17:22 - (Kristen Brengel): And I keep thinking that you were on this Utah trip with me, maybe you weren't, but when I was, when I was hiking up to Delicate Arch and Arches, I had to stop people who had flip flops on because for people who have done that hike before, it's very straight up and down and it's on the smooth rock and then you get up to the top and you're, you know, walking very slowly on very thin benches, you know, in order to get to Delicate, you do not Want to do that in flip flops. And so I've stopped people along the way and said, it's time. You should go back and get your sneakers to do this one. Yep, that's what park rangers do every day.

0:18:00 - (Kristen Brengel): And last summer, of course, you know this, Chris, how many people were so badly dehydrated in the desert parks? And how many people did we hear have, like, almost die in Death Valley last year because they were so dehydrated? And then we had the folks who died in Big Bend from being dehydrated. So one of the. One of the things the Park Service was doing last summer was asking visitors to bring twice as much water as they think they need.

0:18:29 - (Chris): Right.

0:18:29 - (Kristen Brengel): Because it was so hot in the parks last summer. They were really trying to get out the public education on that. Now, that's what Park Service rangers do every day. They're not just saying hi to you. They're scanning you and telling you, like, you might want to bring your hat. You know, do you have sunscreen? Do you have enough water? They're asking you in a really, really friendly way, but they're asking you because they're worried about and hearing that we've lost so many search and rescue people in various national parks.

0:19:02 - (Kristen Brengel): That means in some cases, you might be on your own this summer. And, yeah, they're not going to get to you very quickly.

0:19:09 - (Chris): It's kind of legendary, the number of ways that people can get themselves into trouble. I mean, pretty much every time I'm in the Grand Canyon, I have to counsel somebody. One memorable time was this group of young people that were on the Bright angel trail within about 100 yards of the top, and they were heading downhill, and they all had, like, flip flops or thongs, and they were carrying air mattresses that had been inflated, and they were going to go float into Colorado. They had a Chihuahua that was walking with them, which not allowed. And also, that Chihuahua would not have made it all the way down to the river, let alone back out.

0:19:49 - (Chris): It's just. It's astonishing how often that kind of thing happens in the parks that I think I managed to persuade them to turn around and just by talking about the hefty ticket that they'd get for having a dog there. And that same hike, a ranger took me aside and said, I'm a little concerned that you're going to get hyponatremia because you have so much water. And I said, yeah, you're right. I carry this much because I give it to people that didn't plan for it.

0:20:17 - (Kristen Brengel): Yeah, that need it.

0:20:18 - (Chris): She said, oh, okay.

0:20:19 - (Kristen Brengel): But, yeah, we were floating down the Grand Canyon last May, and it was last week of May, so it was just feeling nice and warm outside during the day, cool at night. And right when we got to the point where the bridge is, I guess it's on the Kaibab Trail, we pulled over to have lunch, but we were in rafts and there were a whole ton of people down by the river, you know, catching some shade under a tree, and some of them just looked rugged, you know, really rugged. And sure enough, the leader of our raft said, who needs water here? And was handing out drinks and various things, snacks to all the other people, not their clients, but the other people who were there to make sure they had enough salt, salty snacks.

0:21:07 - (Kristen Brengel): So it's a daily occurrence in places like the Grand Canyon. And I'm not sure if they lost search and rescue people there, but it's a great example of easily what happens. And, you know, we don't say these stories to make fun of people. We say them because people don't know any better and they don't prepare and they don't read up on their trip and they think the Colorado river might be a casual river like the Buffalo in Arkansas or something like that, and it really isn't. It's just such a swift moving river.

0:21:39 - (Kristen Brengel): Get yourself into danger really, really quickly and with an enormous amount of rapids. I can say that because I went through, I think I counted 93 rapids. So it's a tough environment. But if you don't read up on it and you don't know better, you get yourself into trouble and you don't mean to. You just thought you were having fun, you know, and we want people to have a lot of fun when they go into national parks and we want people to be educated. And I've just been saying, you know, in every media outlet I've talked to lower your expectations going into parks this summer and very much do your homework, make sure you have the right equipment, make sure you know where you're going, make sure you're looking at the weather.

0:22:18 - (Kristen Brengel): Just take care of yourself and don't. This is not the year to go on a rigorous hike. I'm a sea level person here in Washington, D.C. i take my hikes very seriously when I'm at elevation and I will turn back around if I don't feel well, if I feel dizzy. But people don't have that awareness. And so, yeah, we're worried about folks going into the summer and worried about the Fact that so many of these positions have been eliminated.

0:22:45 - (Kristen Brengel): And this is sad and we need all these people to come back and do their jobs this summer. But somehow this, all of this media work that we're doing is just not penetrating with certain people who can help make a better decision here.

0:23:00 - (Chris): Yeah. This summer is especially frightening. Just, I mean, we had a 90-degree day here today.

0:23:06 - (Kristen Brengel): Wow.

0:23:07 - (Chris): In what day is February 25th is when we're talking. And 90 degrees in Twentynine Palms. And it's. I fully expect that we're going to have Death Valley break their record this year. I'm going to have to go see our friend Mike and stand in front of that thermometer in front of the visitor center with him. But. And that's the kind of thing that will get you dead. Search and rescue won't have a problem finding me right in front of the visitor center. But that's the kind of thing that people go out and try and hike in just for the experience and it's a bad idea.

0:23:42 - (Kristen Brengel): Yeah. I think last summer people were testing the theory on whether you could bake cookies in your car in Death Valley and they successfully did.

0:23:51 - (Chris): Yep.

0:23:52 - (Kristen Brengel): So it's no joke out there. But yeah, I think we can expect that. It's going to be another hot summer and once you book your ticket to go somewhere, it's hard to convince yourself to not go. And so people are going to try to do some of these hikes in the heat.

0:24:09 - (Chris): As an aside, here's a quick note that we have done a couple of episodes in the past on how to keep yourself safe in the desert during the summer. And you can find both of those episodes by going to 90 miles from needles.com category safety. Both of those episodes will pop up. Hope they're useful. How much is NPCA relying on the economic benefits argument? Thinking about all the money that visitors to national parks bring into gateway communities, things like that. I know that in the desert parks there's roughly $4 billion in 2023 that came into gateway communities, the vast majority of which were like red leaning or solid red.

0:24:50 - (Chris): But I'm curious how that argument is playing both in your work in public advocacy and also in lobbying. Has that been useful at all?

0:25:00 - (Kristen Brengel): Yeah. I'll just start off by saying I'm a tried-and-true old school conservationist. I care deeply about the resources. I want them protected; I want them preserved. I want to make sure my kids and grandkids can enjoy these places. I love talking about the resources and values and the why. Why do we Want to protect this, the night sky, the animals, the river. That's what I love to talk about. Talking about the economy is not always my favorite thing, because that's not why parks were established. They weren't established to be money makers, but they are.

0:25:36 - (Kristen Brengel): And our parks bring in $55 billion to the U.S. economy, which is stunning to think 325 million visitors per year bring in $55 billion to the US economy. Those are inescapable numbers. Right? They're just a fact. And as you know, living in 29 palms and being surrounded by all these communities in Southern California, these gateway communities, this is how they make their money. This is how they live all year round, is they sell meals to tourists, they sell gear, they provide guiding services.

0:26:16 - (Kristen Brengel): These are all important functions outside of national parks. And these parks that just do so well economically for those surrounding communities. I mean, everyone who owns a hotel, a B and B, you name it, they make quite a lot of money during the busiest season of these parks. And so these gateway communities are completely dependent on the parks providing a great experience. And we used to always say, you know, a healthy park means a healthy economy outside of in the gateway communities. And if the park's not healthy, if the resources aren't being protected, well, the toilets aren't open and available or they're gross, if the visitor center hours aren't happening all the time and there aren't that many park rangers to help you, your experience can be diminished.

0:27:05 - (Kristen Brengel): And we want people to have the best experience possible in parks, and then they will enrich the gateway communities and make sure that the gateway communities are stable. So we are really worried about it. I think the argument is very persuasive for a lot of people, whether you're a Republican or a Democrat. I think everyone is worrying about jobs right now, and parks have a ripple effect on the economy.

0:27:33 - (Kristen Brengel): It's just no doubt, it's pure math when you look at the economics of this. And the Park Service also makes it really easy to look up how much every park brings in. So you can actually go onto the Park Service website, download their Excel spreadsheet, and look at how much each park benefits the gateway communities economically. And so I think if for some reason you're one of those crazy people who doesn't love our national parks, but you love money.

0:28:01 - (Kristen Brengel): Well, these parks make a lot of money for these surrounding communities. And so, you know, we embrace and we want people to stay in the hotels and eat in the gateway communities and enjoy themselves, but our politicians need to realize that they're not just hurting the parks or quote, unquote, reducing the federal workforce. They could be hurting local economies and their own constituents.

0:28:27 - (Chris): A couple years ago, during the government shutdown, in the first hours of the pandemic back in 2020, I think there was a mandate that went out. Maybe I'm thinking of the wrong shutdown, but there was a mandate that went out that superintendents, not parks, because of the optics involved.

0:28:45 - (Kristen Brengel): Yep.

0:28:45 - (Chris): I'm wondering what the likelihood is that somebody's going to hand that down again.

0:28:51 - (Kristen Brengel): Yeah. So there's an executive order that tiers back to Doge that talks about reduction in force. And in that executive order, it implies essential staff, which you'll remember, Chris, that was the phrase of who could still be in the park during a shutdown.

0:29:14 - (Chris): Right.

0:29:15 - (Kristen Brengel): Was essential staff. And that's how you didn't violate a law called the Anti Deficiency act, was you only had essential staff there. Well, this executive order is kind of scary because it harkens back to those shutdowns and it harkens back to the idea of just allowing essential staff and keeping the parks wide open with minimal people to manage. What happened. I think that was the shutdown in 2017.

0:29:41 - (Kristen Brengel): People were cutting Joshua trees down for firewood. People were riding their off-road vehicles all over the place and tearing up the desert. So trash piled up, lots of problems. I think you told me this at the time that volunteers were going in and picking up the trash in the parks because the park service itself couldn't collect the trash.

0:30:04 - (Chris): Climbing outfitter and guide service here called Cliffhanger Guides rabble roused and they got a bunch of people to show up every single day with mops and Lysol and the local county supervisor. I think I'm not supposed to say this in public, but I'm going to anyway. She paid for the trash company to come in whenever the dumpsters got full and haul them away. She paid for that out of pocket. So even though our politics are wildly divergent, I got to give her credit for that one. And I'll always be thankful for, for that because it was a really nice thing.

0:30:38 - (Chris): And yeah, it was. Businesses and people that are responsive to businesses just really stepped up. And Josh, here's the.

0:30:49 - (Kristen Brengel): Here's the thing that kills me is that, you know, people who live in the communities outside of parks love the parks and want to take care of them and hate to see stuff like that happen. This is the problem I have with all of this, Chris. It's a problem of our own making. It doesn't have to be like this. You don't have to fire all these people. You're not saving the government any money by firing all these people.

0:31:14 - (Kristen Brengel): It's so small. 1/15 of 1 percent of the federal budget is the National Park Service. You're not creating an efficiency. You're not saving money. You're not doing any of that. What you could be doing is costing people money, harming people, making people in gateway communities unemployed. So you're not helping anything by destroying the staffing situation at our national parks. And this is a problem that only exists if all of these folks in the administration keep pushing for these staffing cuts.

0:31:46 - (Kristen Brengel): But really, there's no government shutdown right now. There's no reason to have fewer staff like this. It's just a choice.

0:31:55 - (Chris): Yeah.

0:31:56 - (Kristen Brengel): And it's almost like pushing a button. Right. Like, you can either save the National Park Service staff or you can cut them. And it's just a choice that a few people are making.

0:32:11 - (Chris): Yeah.

0:32:12 - (Kristen Brengel): So that. That's what kills me about all of this.

0:32:17 - (Chris): Well, I want to thank you for especially considering that we did all this already yesterday and technical glitch just ate the recording. Just full disclosure for the listeners, but I'm going to close with a question I asked you at the end last time, which is three favorite desert national parks.

0:32:35 - (Kristen Brengel): Yes. And I think I remember all three that I told you before. I'll start with Guadalupe Mountains, which is fabulous and probably not visited enough. And if you look at my bio@npca.org, you'll notice a very happy picture of me in Guadalupe Mountains in the fall, which is a great time to go visit. It's nice cool weather and beautiful fall foliage. So highly recommend Guadalupe. And then I would say probably Canyonlands is one of my favorites. And it's just some of the best hiking you could possibly do in the country.

0:33:11 - (Kristen Brengel): And it's so pretty. And the sun rises and the sun sets. It's just really one of the most amazing, most scenic national parks. And then I have to say Joshua Tree, because just such a wonderful, wondrous place where, you know, just looking at these plants and the rocks and it's so different from anything that you could ever see here on the East Coast. And it just blows your mind when you get there and you realize you're allowed to climb those rocks and you can go have some fun. And so I'm really, really looking forward to getting out there and seeking some more adventure out in Joshua Tree. And I'll come see you and we'll hang out with the doggies. But yeah, it's funny, when I was in California, when I saw you, we couldn't go into Chuckwalla because of all the security that was there. The day the president was going to sign the proclamations, my colleagues took me out to Santa Snow National Monument.

0:34:10 - (Kristen Brengel): What a treasure.

0:34:11 - (Chris): That's a great place.

0:34:12 - (Kristen Brengel): Oh my goodness. I was not expecting the amazing hike that we had there, but it was really beautiful. And that's the greatest part of the California desert is just all of these tucked away treasures everywhere and it just makes you want to explore them even more.

0:34:28 - (Chris): And they're all so different.

0:34:30 - (Kristen Brengel): They are. And I, I don't know why I had this weird picture in my brain of what Santa snow was, but it blew my mind. I was not expecting that. But highly recommend folks get out there and check out Santa snow if they haven't.

0:34:44 - (Chris): Yep, it's a great place. And Morongo Valley is extremely proud of being right in the middle of it all.

0:34:50 - (Kristen Brengel): Oh my God. And isn't that just the most beautiful valley? So it just. The trees are so pretty. So yeah, highly recommend some of the newer national monuments that have been designated and I can't wait to come back out and do Chuckwalla and check out that one. But you guys out in the California desert, you have all these little pockets and treasures out there and the rest of the country really doesn't know about it. So I hope people get out in the appreciate some of these BLM lands.

0:35:19 - (Chris): Yeah, it's an amazing landscape for sure, and so underappreciated.

0:35:24 - (Kristen Brengel): And I do worry about, I don't know what's going on at the BLM right now, but I do worry about the staff over there and I worry about weakening the staff and not having as many people to manage those lands because there are some artifacts on these BLM lands that are completely, completely unprotected, as you know. And it's just we were hoping to get some of these places even more resources. This period of time is so disappointing because I think so many of us that work in conservation had many hopes and dreams of better staffed parks and public lands and then more money going in through bills like the Great American Outdoors act to fix up the roads and visitor centers and so forth and bathrooms.

0:36:09 - (Kristen Brengel): We had so much momentum going for us with all of these agencies. And to think that just a couple weeks later we're talking about massive staff reductions. It's so depressing after all the hard work we put into building up the agencies and building up the protections on public land. I hope folks hang on and sit tight and keep advocating and keep calling Congress and don't stop. We can't stop right now. We have to win. These places are depending on us and.

0:36:41 - (Chris): We will have links in our show notes to easy ways to find out who represents you in D.C. and how you can call them. And Kristen Brengle, really nice to see your face and thank you for talking to us.

0:36:53 - (Kristen Brengel): Thanks Chris.

0:37:35 - (Chris): Well, that wraps up this episode of 90 Miles from Needles, the Desert Protection Podcast. Huge thanks to Kristen Brengel of the National Parks Conservation association for joining us in explaining what's going on with the Park Service and its conflict with the Doge Bags. Also thanks to Joe Geoffrey, our voiceover person, and Martine Mancha, our podcast artwork artist. Our theme song, Moody Western is by Brightside Studio.

0:38:02 - (Chris): Other music used in this episode is by Right Time Music. Now this is where I would ordinarily thank people who are new donors to the podcast, and we don't have any for the last couple of weeks. Check out 90 miles from needles.com donate in order to rectify that and you can get your name mentioned on the next episode. Also, given how things are, we have relaunched our Signal account. If you for any reason want to get in touch with us in a relatively secure encrypted venue, you can reach out to us on signal at hey 90 miles 21.

0:38:41 - (Chris): Hey90miles.21. Look forward to hearing from you there. If you are coming to us with sensitive information, we will of course respect your confidentiality. We are unseasonably warm here in the desert, or at least in the southern Mojave where I am. Looks like it might be a really hot summer. We are still working on our online gathering place where desert defenders can get together and trade notes and socialize and share ideas without being subject to an algorithm or troll bots or, you know, other things like that that happen in corporate social media.

0:39:17 - (Chris): If you want to be informed when we get that set up, go to 90miles from needles.com Patreon which takes you to our Patreon page where you can sign up for free. We'll make sure that you get that announcement when it's time. You can also give us money there if you want. Now try not to doom scroll too much. I mean we all need to know what's going on. But do go outside and look up at the night sky. Listen to the birds.

0:39:43 - (Chris): Walk your dog if you have one. If you don't have a dog, walk somebody else's. Look up a friend you haven't talked to in a while and get in touch, see how they're doing. It's all about human connection. That's the main ingredient in how we're going to get through and counteract all this crap that's coming down from the administration. And I will see you at the next watering hole. Bye now. 90 miles from Needles is a production of the Desert Advocacy Media Network.