Mark Rose said the Trump Yosemite plan would turn over Park Service land inside Yosemite to a private developer for an access road. The National Parks Conservation Association responded this week after news first reported by NOTUS. Rose said the proposal would be unlawful and would add pressure to a park already dealing with overcrowding.
He said, “The Trump administration’s attempts to dismantle America’s conservation legacy are now taking aim at Yosemite with this secretive, backroom deal that would turn over Park Service land to a private developer.” He also said, “This is an attack on the American people that own this national park.”
Mark Rose on Yosemite
Rose, the Senior Sierra Nevada Program Manager for the National Parks Conservation Association, said the National Park Service should prioritize conservation instead of helping bulldoze land, cut down trees, threaten Yosemite’s wildlife and increase wildfire risks. He added, “A massive commercial development that can only be accessed from inside the park’s gates will further exacerbate the chaos we’ve seen in Yosemite this year.”
The group said the issue sits inside a larger strain on Yosemite, where years of run-away lodging overdevelopment outside the park have fed an overcrowding crisis. The park no longer has this year’s vehicle reservation system, leaving the access question tied to a plan that would send traffic in from inside the gates.
Park Service land in Yosemite
Rose also said, “It would also be unlawful, and a court previously rejected a road development proposal.” That history gives the current plan a legal problem before any ground is moved, because the dispute is not only about land use but about whether a road proposal can proceed at all.
NPCA said it has more than 1.9 million members and supporters and has existed since 1919. The organization’s response places the Yosemite proposal in a long-running conservation fight, with the immediate question now centered on what specific land inside Yosemite is being targeted and what form the deal takes.
