Look West: Public lands and energy news from the Center for Western Priorities
** DOGE $1 spending limit already affecting public lands
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Tuesday, March 4, 2025
NPS/Kurt Moses, Flickr ([link removed])
Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency has placed a $1 spending limit on most government-issued credit cards. The limit went into effect in February and is already affecting the management of national public lands. According to reporting by Wired ([link removed]) , National Park Service employees have so far canceled roughly 75 trips to oversee crucial maintenance work.
“Unless I want to pay for it myself, I can’t go," said one NPS employee ([link removed]) who was planning to go on a trip to oversee road maintenance at a national monument. “Today, instead of focusing on other work, I’m focused on three different contingencies on how to handle this. Do I go? Do I call my engineering team and tell them to reschedule? And if so, when? The project is on an indefinite hold.”
Travel is not the only thing the credit limit is affecting. “We went out and bought cases and cases of toilet paper the night before [the limit went into effect],” an NPS Pacific West Region employee told Wired ([link removed]) . The employee said there are currently only four credit cards with spending limits above $1 available for the region, which manages federal land in California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Nevada, as well as parks in Arizona, Montana, Guam, and American Samoa. Some national parks also pay for services like internet and cell phone service with credit cards, according to Wired ([link removed]) , leaving staff wondering if their work devices could soon be cut off.
** Quick hits
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The U.S. faces ‘devastating’ losses for weather forecasts, federal workers say
The Verge ([link removed]) | KUSA ([link removed])
Volunteers keep ski trails open in Colorado as DOGE slashes Forest Service jobs
Rocky Mountain PBS ([link removed])
Lawmakers revive failed land transfer movement in multi-pronged attack
Public Domain ([link removed])
America’s park and forest rangers are being fired, and oil and gas bosses are now in charge
Center for American Progress ([link removed])
Burgum terminates Biden-era lands rule advisory panel and five others
E&E News ([link removed])
Most of Utah is back in the grip of drought
KUER ([link removed])
Tiny Nevada town in shock after national park loses 20% of its staff
SFGate ([link removed])
Cheyenne lawyer, rancher Karen Budd-Falen accepts top Interior department post
Cowboy State Daily ([link removed])
** Quote of the day
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” Gutting NOAA puts Americans in danger... Trump and DOGE aren’t ‘trimming the fat,’ they are hobbling the services that all of us rely on every day to stay safe, to do business, and to live our lives peacefully.”
—a former NOAA employee, The Verge ([link removed])
** Picture This
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@GrandCanyonNPS ([link removed])
"Night and day the river flows. If time is the mind of space, the River is the soul of the desert.
Brave boatmen come, they go, they die, the voyage flows on forever. We are all canyoneers. We are all passengers on this little mossy ship, this delicate dory sailing round the sun that humans call the earth. Joy, shipmates, joy."
—Edward Abbey, The Hidden Canyon — A River Journey
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