Spring is here, and nearby public lands are seeing robust visitor numbers before July’s blistering temperatures send all but the heartiest souls into the shade. 

Some things, however, aren’t the same as they were this time a year ago.

Staffing at Joshua Tree National Park is in flux, as is the designation of the Chuckwalla National Monument. In both cases, federal mandates were announced and either reversed or rescinded in short order—contributing to a climate of confusion and secrecy. 

In January, shortly before he left office, President Joe Biden issued the long-awaited Chuckwalla designation. Two months later, President Donald Trump’s administration issued a fact sheet saying the Biden proclamation would be rescinded. Shortly thereafter, the mention was removed from the memo.

This uncertainty is not relegated to Coachella Valley. In February, the National Park Service abruptly laid off 1,000 park employees, including six Joshua Tree rangers. Five weeks later, the terminations were rescinded thanks to court orders. Meanwhile, more than 700 national park employees took buyouts. 

Theresa Pierno, president and CEO of National Parks Conservation Association, an advocacy organization, characterized the Trump administration’s actions in a statement as “chaotic whiplash.” 

The confusion is the point, said Nick Graver, an organizer with Resistance Rangers, a group of off-duty rangers and their supporters; he helped organize a recent protest at Joshua Tree National Park. Graver said he thinks additional layoffs are being planned by the federal government. 

“The thing is, this administration is operating in a very secretive way,” Graver said. “The acting director (of the NPS) might have seen the reduction in force plan, but that’s it. It’s not out where anybody can see it.”

Getting information is difficult. Public lands are a vast network of sometimes-overlapping management, and in the current political climate, staffers are often hesitant to talk or give personal information due to a fear of retribution. 

Some indigenous tribal leaders entered the discourse in April, sending a letter to the Trump administration and Department of the Interior Secretary Doug Burgum requesting restraint and citing tribal sovereignty. The letter asked for an opportunity to meet with the Trump team for “appropriate and robust tribal consultation.” The letter highlighted the goal of the tribes in co-stewarding the Chuckwalla National Monument monument and urged the Trump administration to refrain from taking any actions without appropriate tribal input. 

The Chuckwalla National Monument stretches from the Coachella Valley to the Colorado River and spans the area where the Sonoran and Mojave deserts meet; it shares its northwestern border with Joshua Tree National Park. The Bureau of Land Management has authority over Chuckwalla National Monument, while Joshua Tree is under the Department of the Interior/National Park Service. 

The Independent was referred to the White House for questions about BLM funding, staff reductions and outreach to the public—but the phone number we were given was disconnected. Efforts to reach Joshua Tree personnel were unsuccessful.

“We see Chuckwalla as being part of a larger story about public lands right now. We can see there are certainly efforts to change our relationship with nature and with public lands. There’s been some effort in Congress to make it easier to sell public lands.”

Colin Barrows, CactusToCloud Institute

The CactusToCloud Institute was involved in the campaign to designate Chuckwalla. The nonprofit organization advocates for “the California Desert and (its) plants, animals and people.” Colin Barrows founded the nonprofit organization along with three friends who decided to become certified California Naturalists and UC Climate Stewards.

“We’ve been involved in working to designate Chuckwalla since 2021, so, four years. And are now, of course, we’re wanting to make sure that designation stays intact,” Barrows said.

The uncertainty around federal directives is cause for concern, especially when questions about Chuckwalla’s status are not being answered, he said.

“We’re concerned citizens and advocates, so we don’t have any more foresight into what the Trump administration might do than anybody else,” Barrows said. “But what I will say is, we see Chuckwalla as being part of a larger story about public lands right now. We can see there are certainly efforts to change our relationship with nature and with public lands. There’s been some effort in Congress to make it easier to sell public lands.”

In addition to his work with Resistance Rangers, Graver is a graduate student at UC Riverside. His work in Joshua Tree, researching native vegetation and the effects of climate change and wildfire on desert plants, is directly tied to his activism. 

“The work I do is conservation biology. The purpose of it is to inform decision-making by land managers on how to preserve the land,” he said. “We expect plant populations and the ranges of species to shift due to climate change, and we expect patterns of fire in the desert to shift.” 

Joshua Tree National Park is down approximately 50 positions, according to Graver. He worries that Joshua Tree, Chuckwalla and other public lands will become so underfunded that the kinds of conservation he is studying will become obsolete. 

“If there are not land managers to preserve the land by the time I graduate, then it will be all pointless,” he said.

“There was a new effort to pressure employees to resign (recently), and another deferred resignation program—and that’s basically under the threat of being fired later on. They’re pressuring people to resign and providing them an incentive, and that’s happening across the nation. It’s happening on all public lands. It’s not just parks. It’s happening to the people fighting disease as well, and people who provide medical care to veterans. But it is happening to park rangers, and so that’s what Resistance Rangers is campaigning against.”

The volunteer group helped organize a nationwide day of protest in March in support of the fired park employees. After the threat to Chuckwalla’s status was discovered, Resistance Rangers joined several advocacy groups to rally in People’s Park in downtown Palm Springs.

The Mojave Desert Land Trust works with various governing agencies to ensure public lands have as much support as possible. The group’s public policy officer, Krystian Lahage, told the Independent that the MDLT tries to provide information about the things going on in the desert while steering clear of politics. 

“The role that we envision for ourselves is kind of being a nonpartisan hub of information,” Lahage said. “We’ve always worked collaboratively with the National Park Service and BLM. We acquire land, and we convey it over to them, so we have a strong partnership.” 

Lahage said the reduction in staffing and other cuts will be challenging, but the parks can still be a source of enjoyment and leisure for the community. 

“We’re certainly concerned with staffing,” Lahage said. “… We don’t have to look further than the last shutdown to see what happens when our parks are left open with inadequate staffing. We had damage to infrastructure. We had damage to trails, damage to the landscape. One of the superintendents for the park said that it could take 200 to 300 years for some of that damage to be resolved. We feel right now it’s our role to stand up and fill in the gaps when possible, to make sure that these lands are still being protected. 

“We’ve done a big amount of acquisition (of land within) Joshua Tree National Park, which has been handed over to the National Park Service. We have done the same with wilderness areas for the Bureau of Land Management, and so those areas, those lands, are passed in a certain trust. Those lands aren’t at risk, but we still need the folks to be out there to staff them, to make sure that the interactions with visitors are balanced, and then (to protect) visitor safety. We certainly feel the confusion, but we’re trying to make our role be one of disseminating as much information as we can about what happens when there isn’t staff, and what happens when there isn’t funding. We’re really trying to, in the community, alleviate some of the confusion, where best we can. Of course, we don’t have all the answers.”

Lahage said patrons of the parks may want to adopt an extra measure of awareness and precaution.

“We’re about to hit the busiest season, especially in the California desert—spring is the happening time, right?” Lahage said. “That’s when our most visitors come out, and the wildflowers start blooming. Some folks are not prepared for hiking in the desert when they come back to the desert. You’ll see them carrying like a tiny little water. 

“The folks working in our parks are not just taking care of (the parks). They’re also making sure we can (enjoy them) safely, and making sure that folks who come, no matter where in the world they come from, or if they’ve never had the economic or physical ability to come to our parks, have the ability to do so safely, and enjoy and then take ownership in their lands.” 

Confusion on Public Lands: The Trump Administration’s On-Again, Off-Again Layoffs and Pronouncements Have Conservationists Baffled and Worried  is a story from Coachella Valley Independent, the Coachella Valley’s alternative news source.