Parks Stewardship Forum

Recent actions by the current administration have proven that the current structure supporting the systems of federal public lands and waters is far more easily bypassed and undermined than ever before imagined. The effects on the management of the agencies involved—their highly committed workforce decimated and despondent—and on the lands, waters, and air themselves, which seemingly had been well protected, are vivid and shockingly apparent. The foundation is now crumbling and becoming largely ineffective, the result of a Unitary Executive and a politically complicit Congress that care mostly about power, money, and personal aggrandizement. A Refoundation of our national aspirations regarding our environment, coupled with a return to a full, honest reckoning with our richly varied history, is critically needed. And Refoundation is an opportunity. An opportunity to reflect seriously on what we value most, what experience has taught us, what today’s political and judicial chaos means, what future climate and environmental disruption means. And then, in turn, what foundations of environmental protection and historic preservation are needed for the future.