Dire distress flag signal — will environmental publicity stunt be heeded?

It was appropriate that Yosemite, among the first of the US National Parks, was chosen for this act of resistance against the Trump regime and the chainsaw wielding billionaire Elon Musk.

The US national park system is enormously popular and is among the few areas left in American society that enjoys broad support across the political divide. The Parks, together with other lands within federal and state protected reserves, are also home to critically important forests, wetlands and habitats for endangered species.

The abrupt firing of a thousand workers, including rangers and volunteers, places the Parks in dire peril at a time when their conservation is needed in response to the climate and biodiversity crisis.

One of the Park employees involved in the protest told CCN that “we’re bringing attention to what’s happening to the parks, which are every American’s properties. It’s super important we take care of them, and we’re losing people here, and it’s not sustainable if we want to keep the parks open".

It is, of course, just one aspect of the assault on nature from MAGA republicans and their anarcho-capitalist ideologues. Their contempt for public services is driven by a conviction that all taxes are theft, all public spending is squander and that the profit motive for private gain is the only path to human progress.

Thus we have seen that the attack on the National Park Service is only the tip of the iceberg:

• public lands are to be opened to fossil fuel exploitation, more than one million square kilometers of forests are to be felled for timber
• terms such as ‘pollution’ and ‘climate justice’ are to be censored from federal communications
• internationally respected scientific bodies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are to be defunded and undermined.
• Even existing electric car charging points at federal buildings are to be switched off.

“They just hate the idea that someone might do something that doesn't damage the planet” veteran environmental campaigner, Bill McKibben, wrote on Bluesky.

Alas, as we watch in horror from this side of the Atlantic at the puerile vandalism of Trump and his demented cronies, we should not feel that things are going much better at home. A similar attack is underway in Europe. Both the Commission and Parliament in Brussels are now markedly more right wing in their leanings and top of their agenda is dismantling as much of the Green Deal as they can.

In some European regions, wolf packs have become a real danger especially for livestock.

Today, we are proposing a change of EU law that will help local authorities to actively manage wolf populations while protecting both biodiversity and our rural livelihoods.

— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) March 7, 2025

Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, who hailed the Green Deal as Europe’s ‘moon shot’ only six years ago, seems happy to lead the dismemberment. She has so far been successful in reducing protections for wolves across the continent, in flagrant contradiction of all the facts. She falsely claimed that “wolf packs have become a real danger especially for livestock” despite the fact that EU funds are helping to reduce livestock attacks and promote co-existence with predators in member states.

In the name of competitiveness, it also seems that recently-passed laws forcing companies to report their environmental impacts, will be scrapped or watered down. It comes as extremist politicians have environmental NGOs and the EU’s environmental funding programme, known as LIFE, in their sights. Untrue claims have been spread that NGOs have been paid by the Commission to lobby in favour of the Green Deal or to “defame farmers”.

And it’s not just at EU level. Recent months have seen unprecedented pressure on France’s environmental enforcement authority, the Office Français de la Biodiversité (OFB), including the ransacking of offices and threats from farming unions to burn out their cars should they enter farmland. France’s new prime minister, François Bayrou, joined the attack in January, prompting the staff of the OFB to go on strike.

This echoes calls in Ireland in recent years for An Taisce, an NGO, to be defunded, and its status as a statutory consultee in the planning process revoked, due to its staunch defence of the public’s right to clean water, and attacks by many politicians on the Environmental Protection Agency and its data showing how water quality is deteriorating due to farming practices.

In the US, the ‘ Alt National Park Service’ has emerged as leading the resistance to Trump & Musk online, amassing millions of followers on Facebook, Bluesky and other platforms.

In Europe, however, the response to the roll-back of the Green Deal has been muted. Perhaps the political leadership on this side of the Atlantic are less unhinged at this moment, but it doesn’t mean they don’t want the same outcome.