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Retired National Park Service superintendent and Chief Ranger Walt Dabney is touring North Dakota this week to discuss the importance of public lands amid federal funding cuts and staff reductions. The 79-year-old served 43 years at 6 parks across the country, including Yellowstone and Yosemite. According to Mary Steurer from the North Dakota Monitor, Dabney hiked the Maah Daah Hey Trail Sunday and saw both the impact of less maintenance due to mass layoffs, and how volunteers are stepping up. Conservationists showed him a new Bear Creek bridge completed in July after the old bridge collapsed in 2023. This was a combined effort between employees and volunteers, cutting a potentially months-long project down to a few days.
However, conservationists pointed out that deferred maintenance on Badlands trails raised safety concerns, and staff cuts and furloughed workers means less people to take care of the trails. Dabney said he’s worried about the future of the parks.
Dabney’s goal during this tour is to educate the public about the origin of the National Park System, what parks offer the American public and why he thinks they must be protected, according to Steurer. Dabney says he’s using his voice to speak on these matters because the talks of transferring federal lands to states is contentious, and mass layoffs have made federal employees afraid to speak out. He’s giving free public talks at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at Dickinson State’s Beck Auditorium, Wednesday at the Heritage Center in Bismarck, and Thursday at UND’s Gorecki Alumni Center in Grand Forks.
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