“We Are Worried:” The Future of Public Land Under Trump

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Now, to the fight to save America’s green spaces. The Trump administration is axing key federal projects. And fears are growing that public lands, including iconic areas of natural beauty, could be devastated. In a conversation with Walter Isaacson, Carrie Besnette Hauser, the president and CEO of the Trust for Public Land, explains how these sweeping cuts will impact America’s parks and why every community needs access to these green spaces.

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WALTER ISAACSON, CO-HOST, AMANPOUR AND CO.: Thank you, Christiane. And Dr. Carrie Hauser, welcome to the show.

CARRIE BESNETTE HAUSER, PRESIDENT AND CEO, Trust for Public Land: It’s so good to see you again, Walter.

ISAACSON: You’ve just taken over the Trust for Public Land. And I think ever since Teddy Roosevelt, Americans have one thing in common as they believe that there should be great land for the public, like the park system and things. Tell me what your organization does in working with the National Park Service and others.

HAUSER: Well, thanks for asking. Trust for Public Land is a little over 50 years old. We’re a large national conservation organization that works in both rural and we’re urban communities, which I think is one of the things that makes TPL fairly unique. And the other thing that makes us unique is a lot of other land trusts and conservation organizations will often work to preserve lands and landscapes for the benefit of habitat or ecosystems. And one of the things that makes TPL unique is that our entire mission is making sure that we connect people to those outdoor places for all the health benefits, the mental health benefits and obviously, the ongoing conservation. If you connect people to those outdoor spaces, hopefully, they also become conservationists. They care about those places and they’ll protect them.

ISAACSON: When you say about connecting people, one of the things you’ve told me and that’s on your website is that one out of three Americans doesn’t have easy access to the outdoors.

HAUSER: That’s absolutely correct. TPL also has a program called The 10- Minute Walk, and our goal is to make sure that no American is farther than a 10-minute walk from a local park, a green space, you know, a national park, whatever that might be. And a hundred million Americans are still farther from a 10-minute walk. And that also includes 28 million children.

ISAACSON: So that means you really do work in urban areas, not just in the Yosemite National Park-like areas.

HAUSER: That’s absolutely right. It’s one of the things that really drew me to the work is the balance between urban and rural communities, which having lived in rural Colorado for the last dozen or so years, I really see that sort of urban rural divide. And it does make sense when you see big national landscapes like the National Park Service and some of those landscapes that you referred to earlier. And the outdoors can mean a pocket park in Detroit for a very urban community. And sometimes those communities don’t have access to other green spaces. So that balance has really been very important, and it really, again, centers around people.

ISAACSON: You know, we’re seeing a lot of upheaval in the federal government and what it’s doing. Tell me how you relate to or how it affects your organization, how you relate to what the federal government does on these things.

HAUSER: It does indeed. You know, Trust for Public Land certainly is a beneficiary of federal grants and contracts. And perhaps more important though, Walter, is that we are often a pass through to smaller local community organizations or nonprofits that might be building a local park, might be doing conservation work, whatever that might be. So, oftentimes, we are a conduit to that and certainly partner with those organizations. We currently have about a hundred projects that are in some form of limbo given some of these pullbacks, some of these stalls in federal grants, certainly are concerns around layoffs in the National Park Service and in other Public Lands managed entities. A couple of those, just as an example, we have a very large trail project outside of Chattanooga, Tennessee. We have a schoolyard project in Rural Oregon and we have a very large working forest conservation project, more than 10,000 acres in Northern Idaho, and that’s working for us. So, those are just a couple of examples of some of the projects that are very local and we work very closely with those local communities to activate those projects. And those are the ones that are at risk of not getting to completion.

ISAACSON: Tell me about your community school yards.

HAUSER: Well, it’s a fairly easy and simple idea. And I maybe would even ask you, you know, if you think of a public school yard in this country. What comes to mind? And I would speculate it’s concrete, asphalt, and a chain link fence. And we have 90,000 of those in the country that are public schoolyards. And just think about that very obvious opportunity to transform those schoolyards in our country. 90,000 of them. And they represent 2 million acres in the United States. And Trust for Public Lands’ Community Schoolyards program essentially goes in and transforms those school yards into much more climate resilient material. Those projects are done with the local community, school aged children help design them. Those local communities really own those particular projects. And we’ve done 200 in New York City alone.

ISAACSON: How much of your money comes from private donations and can that make up for things that’ll be scaled back by the federal government?

HAUSER: It certainly can, and we’re probably at about 75 percent of our budget is private philanthropy. And we also recognize that there’s a lot of other social services and other parts of our country that are at risk right now. And so, asking private philanthropy to fill in the gap for all of those is — you know, is pretty significant. So, we’re certainly hopeful that the federal government and the current administration will really recognize that Americans across the board support public lands, they support the outdoors. Poll after poll will absolutely demonstrate that time and time again.

ISAACSON: People across the board support it and Democrats and Republicans, but even Donald Trump has supported it. He signed, what was it, the great American Outdoor Act. And I think you once said it was probably the most significant thing since Teddy Roosevelt. So, he signed that. What did it do and do you think he will continue to care about public lands? He seems to actually be interested in it.

HAUSER: Yes. That was signed in the Roosevelt Room in August of 2020. That was a bipartisan measure, and I would say it was the greatest gesturetowards public lands and the outdoors since Teddy Roosevelt, it was very, very significant. It — what it essentially did was it sealed in funding for the Land Water Conservation Fund, which helps with infrastructure for national parks and make sure that so much of those funds continue to help support so many of our public landscapes and the infrastructure that goes into them. And I would say, you know, fast forward four years later, just in January, president Biden signed the gr the Explorer Act, which was also bipartisan. It was unanimously passed through both the House and the Senate, and that also continues to support the outdoors conservation all the things that go into that. And again, a very significant gesture. It has — it was supported by members of Congress across the board, bipartisan, and it got across the finish line in the very final hours of the last Congress by consent.

ISAACSON: And do you think Trump is — President Trump is now scaling this back, or do you think he might still be an advocate for public access to the outdoors?

HAUSER: It’s hard to tell. I certainly hope he and the administration will certainly listen to the public around their support for public lands and just the simple dollars and cents around it. I mean, the outdoor economy is a $1.2 trillion a year economic impact to our country. It employs 5 million jobs across the country. The National Park Service alone, that’s a $55 billion economic impact. That’s a half a million jobs, and that doesn’t even include national forests, BLM lands. So, this is a huge economic engine. So, if nothing else sort of prompts support for the outdoors, outdoor recreation and certainly for conservation, just the basic economy should. And you know, I would maybe give you one more proof point, Walter, and that is that Trust for Public Land, one of the things that we do, Center of Excellence, is we help local communities, states, local taxing districts run ballot measures locally to fund parks and trails and historic sites and floodplain mitigation efforts. And we helped with 23 measures in November of 2024, and all 23 of them won.

ISAACSON: Even when Trump winning the presidential election, people were still voting for this.

HAUSER: Absolutely. I mean, we had four measures in Florida where President Trump won in the 68, 69, 70 percent range. And those measures also won by 70 plus percent. And they were climate mitigation, flood prevention, trails building, park building measures, Lake County, Florida being one of those. So, I think what it says is that when you work with local communities and work with local voters to describe and to sort of engender support around those measures, they get to the ballot and people can vote locally and they vote for the outdoors. And not only do they vote for it, the outdoors nature, access to nature, they are willing to help pay for it. And I think those are really important sort of proof points that I hope that our elected officials and certainly that the president will listen to. Because this is, again, very local, whether it’s a red community, a blue community, a purple community, a large urban center, a rural community, this is universal. The outdoors in nature is not a controversial topic. It is one very few places in our country where there’s actually unity.

ISAACSON: You say it’s a very local issue. Tell me why it shouldn’t then just be funded locally rather than a federal government issue.

HAUSER: Well, I would hope that there’s always a partnership. And many of these local projects have a mix of funds. They, they may be local, you know, local mayors and what, local cities certainly can fund parks and open space. But remember how many, how much public land exists in our country. So this is often a, a partnership between local municipalities, counties, states, and the federal government to really, I think, you know, hopefully create landscapes and trails and river corridors, clean water, clean air, all the things that come with conservation for, you know, future generations.

ISAACSON: One of the issues, of course, is what is sometimes received as a tension between preserving public lands and conserving it, versus resource extraction, I’ll call it, whether it’s taking out oil or logging or things. And the Trump administration now seems to want to do a lot more logging and oil and gas exploration on public lands. Can you make that compatible or is that an absolute conflict?

HAUSER: Yes. I would say that it’s a fairly nuanced question and it’s a fairly nuanced answer. And I think I would again say it depends on whether or not local communities and places where that activity might occur are involved in those activities. You know, I live in Colorado, I live in Western Colorado, in Chaffee County, that is 80 percent public lands. We are surrounded by national forest, 14,000-foot peaks. It is a riches of public lands. And we are also always waiting for the next wildfire, particularly in dry climate and drier, drier seasons. So, if there is a way to work with local communities to do fire mitigation, to have forestry activity that thins those forests and make them safer, but also protects the ecology and the beauty of those particular places, there probably are some win-wins. What doesn’t happen, and it was certainly what would concern me and concern Trust for Public Land is any form of clear cutting. Anything that would essentially bring a commercial enterprise into smaller, local, rural communities and take the economic benefit out of those communities. If it helps support those communities, you know, if it works with local tribes, you know, in particular. I mean, we — TPL has done a lot of projects with local tribes. There’s a good example in Maine, that that’s a partnership with the local tribe. That’s a forestry activity. It maintains outdoor activity. So, there are some examples, as long as it is done in collaboration with local communities, with local land managers that I think it can work.

ISAACSON: Give me an example, if you have one, of the Trust for Public Land, helping form a collaboration between preservation, but also the use of lands, sort of logging, oil, gas, whatever it needs to be.

HAUSER: Sure. Well, I mean, in the news today and certainly in the news this week is housing. And that’s a really big question, right? Again, I live in Rural Colorado, in a place where public lands are abundant and places to put affordable housing are not. You know, Montana’s a good example. We have a park project in Bozeman, Montana that we worked on. It was 60 acres, created a local park and eight acres were carved off for affordable housing for that community. So, there are absolutely efforts that can work, particularly if a local voter is voting on something that they know will do both. You know, I think very few of us lack a very top-down approach that maybe doesn’t take into the account those local nuances and those local partnerships. We know best on the — you know, in our local communities. We know what best can work. These are people that have collaborated for very long time. And if we start there, I think some of those answers can really emerge.

ISAACSON: You just referred to the idea that public — that housing could be built on public lands and solve the affordable housing thing. And of course, there was that announcement together with, I think it was the secretary of interior and the secretary of housing and urban development in the Trump administration saying they were going to do that. Are you going to be involved in seeing if this can work and do you think it’s a good idea?

HAUSER: Well, I hope we’re invited to the table. I mean, I think the best minds and a whole host of organizations that might be helpful to that conversation will make for better decisions. And certainly, there’s not — I don’t think there’s absolutes around this. I don’t know that I or Trust for Public Land would support the notion that sort of across the board, you think about public lands for sort of commercial activity or for extraction or for housing. There may be examples where that could work. And remember that only about 7 percent of public lands in this country sort of reside near big urban areas where housing is, you know, in the greatest situation of a crunch. So, it’s not quite that easy and there are probably some opportunities and some approaches, as I said earlier, as long as thatis done in an engaging way inclusive to those local communities, it brings the experts together and isn’t just sort of some across the board statement that, hey, we’re going to turn public lands into either commercial enterprises or to solve all of our problems. It’s going to have to take compromise. It’s going to have to take creative solutions. And I think that they are there and I hope that Trust for Public Land is at the table when those questions are asked.

ISAACSON: How worried are you about the cuts that seem to be impending for the National Park Service and other related agencies, and what are the dangers if those go through?

HAUSER: You know, we are worried. I think we join lots of other nonprofit NGOs, government agencies that are really concerned about these cuts. We are going into the very heavy season of spring break and summer vacations where people will be out. I just came across Washington, D.C., and you can see the buds of the cherry blossoms starting to come out. The traffic is heavy. You know, that entire Washington Mall are public lands, those are public spaces. Those are places that tell our history in our country and to not staff them adequately would — frankly, would be sort of unfortunate situation just from basic economics. They are huge economic drivers. They’re places that create memories for families, for generations and we need to make sure that they are accessible. And we also need to make sure that they’re cared for. We’ve seen massive wildfires in California. We’ve seen flooding in Florida, North Carolina. We’ve seen all these natural disasters. And one of the things that our public lands do is that they buffer some of those really extreme weather events. And the more we take care of them, the more that our communities will be buffered from those extreme events.

ISAACSON: Dr. Carrie Hauser, thank you so much for joining us.

HAUSER: Thank you, Walter.