Nation/World

Inside the Trump team’s push to stop its Park Service board from quitting

When members of a board advising the federal government on national parks resigned en masse this year, the Trump administration said it welcomed the news.

But new internal emails obtained by The Washington Post show Trump officials pleaded with angry board members to stay on despite their mounting frustrations with Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

The email records, released under the Freedom of Information Act, provide an inside look at the unconventional way the Trump administration has handled nonpartisan boards of outside experts advising the government on energy and environment issues.

The National Park System Advisory Board was authorized by Congress in 1935 to advise Interior Department leadership on how to run the national parks. By law, the board also must sign off on all new national landmarks.

Yet the internal emails show that didn't go as planned. Emails show board members worried Zinke was sidelining them as he reviewed the work of more than 200 outside committees to make sure they reflected the Trump team's priorities.

In October, Tony Knowles, the board's chairman and a former governor of Alaska, emailed Zinke requesting he meet with the board. The board met with both of Zinke's predecessors under President Barack Obama, Ken Salazar and Sally Jewell.

Knowles didn't get a response. The next month, he followed up by email with Mike Reynolds, who was then the Park Service's acting director. Knowles said the board members interpreted Zinke's silence to mean that "our Board will be dismissed." (That month, Zinke had announced the creation of a new "Made in America" outdoor recreation committee that covered much of the board's portfolio.)

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Reynolds, a 31-year Park Service veteran who in January was reassigned to run Yosemite National Park, responded in a flurry of emails over the next several days urging Knowles and the others not to quit. "I regret anyone feeling disrespected and I can't control their behavior," Reynolds told Knowles in response to the Nov. 8 message.

"I'm sorry there is no response from the Secretary yet but I hear that occurs to many groups right now," Reynolds wrote. "They have not focused on advisory groups . . . as other administrations have."

A few days later, Knowles warned Reynolds that a "number of members of the Board are suggesting that we all 'resign as a protest.' " Reynolds tried to reassure Knowles that higher-ups at the Interior Department wanted to keep the board going, since the department was requesting nominations to fill vacancies on the board.

Finally on Nov. 16, Reynolds emailed the entire board. "With so many competing requests for meetings, it is just taking a long time to get any response from the Department," Reynolds wrote."I apologize for this, and share your frustration. Please hang in there."

Despite Reynolds's best efforts, 10 of the 12 board members decided to pull the plug on their membership in January. "We understand the complexity of transition but our requests to engage have been ignored and the matters on which we wanted to brief the new Department team are clearly not part of its agenda," Knowles wrote in a resignation letter to Zinke. "I wish the National Park System and Service well and will always be dedicated to their success."

Publicly, the department was quick to blast the decision as a "hollow and dishonest political stunt."

[Interior Department blasts resigning park service board members led by former Alaska governor]

"We welcome their resignations and would expect nothing less than quitting from members who found it convenient to turn a blind eye to women being sexually harassed at national parks," Interior Department representatives said in statements to reporters following the mass resignation. It referred to a widely acknowledged culture of sexual misconduct in the Park Service, on which Zinke has pledged to take "action."

When reached for comment on the internal emails, which showed a different tone, Interior Department spokesperson Heather Swift referred to past department statements on the resignations.

In an email this month to The Post, Knowles bemoaned that the board's concerns were not taken more seriously.

"I think we were all disappointed to see the response to our letter was not to address the issues but to snidely 'welcome' our resignation and fabricate a charge that we were a political Board and 'turned our face' on the sexual harassment issues in the National Parks," he wrote. "It is so sad that our level of discourse and the treatment of volunteer public service has fallen to this level."

Zinke disbanded at least one advisory body – the Advisory Committee on Climate Change and Natural Resource Science, which aimed to help policymakers incorporate climate analysis into long-term planning. He also revived another panel, the Royalty Policy Committee, which had lapsed under Obama.

The Trump administration has grand ambitions for the Park Service, which faces a $11.6 billion backlog in much-needed repairs across the country. Zinke and many members of Congress want to pay for the upgrades with money the government collects from energy development on public lands.

The national park board never had the chance to formally weigh in on the infrastructure fund.

Although the board is required to meet twice a year, it never convened during President Donald Trump's first year in office.

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