Protect the National Park Service

I am writing to you today to urge you to reject the anti-park provisions in the Senate's budget reconciliation bill. The National Park Service has been understaffed for years. This bill cuts funding further, eliminating national park staffing and programs. The oil and gas industry should not be drilling on public lands and waters, but if they are permitted to do so, they should pay fairly for the privilege of increasing their profits. However, this bill allows more drilling and also lowers the rates that oil and gas companies pay to drill. The bill permits the destructive Ambler industrial mining road through Gates of the Arctic National Preserve in Northwest Alaska, which MUST not be allowed. The worst part is that the bill requires the sell-off of millions of acres of public lands across the West without any community input or guardrails on what could be developed. Many at-risk lands border national parks and are critical to the ongoing protection of wildlife habitat, clean water sources and public access points to nature, and the potential ecological disasters and die-offs are unfathomable. This bill will do irreparable harm to our parks. It is a direct effort to dismantle the National Park Service and to despoil the environment we need to protect for the health of the planet and the health of our people. I urge you to oppose these dangerous provisions as the Senate moves forward with reconciliation. Thank you for your time.