National Park Service Wrapped Up In Trump Administration Twitter Fiasco
Impacting Travel Gabe Zaldivar January 26, 2017
The Donald Trump administration’s call for the National Park Service to curtail its tweets has had the exact opposite effect.
As CNN reported on Monday, “representatives from the new administration asked the Interior Department's digital team to temporarily stop using Twitter.”
The decision came after the NPS retweeted Binyamin Appelbaum’s inauguration comparison shot.
As Scientific American notes, the administration also had the EPA halt its own social media activity as well as “ordering it to remove a critical page on climate change from its website and put a freeze on awarding grants and contracts critical to our nation's environmental health.”
The Associated Press reports some of the above moves may have actually encouraged a bizarre and somewhat convoluted outpouring of tweets from various national park accounts. Badlands National Park now famously tweeted out a series of posts on the subject of climate change, tweets that have since been deleted.
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The AP notes, however, that other accounts have followed suit, centering on areas of climate change.
DYK redwood groves are #1 carbon sink / acre in nature? About 200 tons an acre. More redwoods would mean less #climatechange #climate pic.twitter.com/mHdpRmYEx0
— Redwood N&S Parks (@RedwoodNPS) January 25, 2017
2016 was the hottest year on record for the 3rd year in a row. Check out this @NASA & @NOAA report: https://t.co/rLJUC56xqi pic.twitter.com/AKhFzYw6l6
— Golden Gate NPS (@GoldenGateNPS) January 23, 2017
As the AP notes, Trump has been highly critical of the notion of climate change, making this last few days of tweets something many see as a direct answer against the administration’s policies.
However, Tom Crosson, the chief spokesman for the park service, tells the AP that there is no such gag order in place for NPS social media channels.
When it comes to the Badlands tweets that have since been deleted, the park had this to say: “The park was not told to remove the tweets but chose to do so when they realized that their account had been compromised,” citing a former employee actually posted the now removed tweets.
According to some who have seen the unfolding first days of the Trump administration pass, it may be a defiant stance from a park system that continues to witness climate change and its effects.
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