The folks who live at our house are big fans of National Parks. We’ve been to a lot of them. Most of them, in fact. There are 63 National Parks. Lillian’s been to 62. I’ve been to 57. I might catch up some day. If they all survive.
Because there are a lot of threats to our park system these days, and we worry about them. So does an organization called Save Our Parks. They send me e-mails about them. Here’s how they describe themselves:
“Save Our Parks is a campaign to save America’s parks and public lands—from our most beloved national parks and heritage sites to national forests, wildlife refuges, and public lands. The unprecedented assault by Donald Trump’s administration and his cronies on America’s shared natural heritage must be checked and thwarted. Save Our Parks is an accountability effort aimed at informing, exposing, and combating Trump, billionaire Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, and their cronies’ systematic dismantling of America’s national parks and public lands.”
They’re dead serious about what they do. They believe our national parks are in serious trouble, and they lay that trouble right at the doorstep of Doug Burgum, our former North Dakota Governor, now the United States Secretary of the Interior.
I’m a little troubled by some of the things they say about Doug Burgum, but only a little, and only because he’s a North Dakotan and used to be a friend of mine. But after reading some of the things they send me, I’ve moved completely over to their side.
I’m going to share some examples of messages they send about things I didn’t know about, things that make me sad. For example:
HELENA, MT – Doug Burgum’s National Park Service is reportedly considering a land swap that would open up Prince William Forest Park in Virginia to a data center developer, according to a new Heatmap News investigation. Interior officials have been quietly negotiating the exchange with Highland Digital for more than a year, working with a lobbyist who previously served as a senior Interior adviser under the first Trump administration, while Burgum’s cronies are stonewalling a congressional inquiry into the deal.
Here’s the whole story.
Data Center Doug Burgum Is Shopping Around National Park Land for AI Developers
This one is more troubling:
HELENA, MT – Breaking new reporting reveals the Trump administration’s National Park Service under Doug Burgum has spent more than a year quietly working to carve a strip of Yosemite National Park out for a private developer. It’s the latest development in Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s fail-by-design push to sell off public lands and privatize America’s national parks. National Park Service staff in California and Washington, DC have been directed by Interior Department leadership to negotiate a land exchange handing a Nevada-based company access to a roughly quarter-mile strip of the park.
Here’s the whole story.
Doug Burgum Caught Plotting to Hand Off Piece of Yosemite to Private Developer.
This one is even more troubling.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is running out of ways to avoid answering for how he is mismanaging the nation’s public lands, parks, and wildlife. In the last few weeks alone, reporting has revealed a department allegedly shredding records and using disappearing messages to dodge federal retention law, a politically connected operative parachuting into the one office meant to police Interior’s own conduct, and a Secretary who kept publicly repeating a false claim even after his own department’s evidence forced federal prosecutors to drop the underlying charge. It’s all part of a pattern of secrecy that’s been embedded into the core of Burgum’s Interior Department since the beginning.
Here’s that story.
Take note of the last paragraph in that story:
“Doug Burgum runs the Interior Department like a kid who has their hand in the cookie jar and knows they are about to be caught. Burgum’s shredded records, got caught violating ethics requirements, repeated debunked claims his own department’s evidence proved it false, and buried a Project 2025 loyalist in the inspector general’s office to avoid accountability.“
Uffda. That’s our former Governor they’re talking about.
The work the Save Our Parks group is doing is really important. I guess if it takes being mean to Doug Burgum to make their points, then that’s the price Doug is going to have to pay for what he’s been doing.
I’ll end this little rant by sending you directly to the Save Our Parks News Page, where you can read until the coffee pot is empty about the group’s investigation into the Interior Department’s assault on our national parks and find a map of parks deemed in trouble.
But I want to share a little more news about the Interior Secretary. Some of you might have seen the photo of Trump unveiling his plan for changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America, with Doug looking over his shoulder and smiling. Well, I guess, he’s getting it done.
A story in the online news service The Hill reported that Doug Burgum told them Trump had asked Apple to change the name on its maps.
I just learned the two biggest online map makers, Google Maps and Apple Maps, are jumping right onto that bandwagon. Take a look at Google Maps with Lake Ontario/America right in the middle, here. Didn’t take Google long to get on board.
Apple is hedging a bit. If you go to their map site (which will probably start in Bismarck or wherever you live–I’m not an Apple user and couldn’t quite figure it out) and scroll over across the country until you get to the big lakes, you’ll see that they have drawn a line marking the international border, and you’ll see the name Lake Ontario on the north side of the line and Lake America on the south side, (although Lake America is in parentheses. I guess Doug needs to get that fixed. He should expect better from Apple).
As for me, I’m kind of siding with the Canadians. After all, we have a Great Lake named after one of our states, Lake Michigan. I don’t see anything wrong with them having one named after one of their provinces, Lake Ontario.
But here’s the coup d’grace. Somebody, I don’t know who, has already created a website called lakeamericamaps.com with a fine map and a complete tourist guide for travelers to enjoy the new Lake America. Never underestimate American ingenuity. You can even buy a Lake America cap!
Okay, enough. But I don’t think I am the only North Dakotan disappointed in our former Governor, and even a little embarrassed from time to time. But dang it, Doug. Dang it!
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