BOULDER, Colorado — The Trump administration’s bid to shrink federal agencies tasked with management of public lands could raise new risks for wildfires and public safety, a former top Interior Department official warned this week.
Tommy Beaudreau, who served as deputy secretary at Interior during the Biden administration, addressed recent federal staffing cuts and the potential impacts of President Donald Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda in remarks Tuesday night at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he headlined the 2025 Schultz Lecture in Energy.
“There’s not a lot of fat in the department. Anyone who’s gone to a park or a national wildlife refuge knows that they’re not staffed properly,” said Beaudreau, now a partner at the law firm WilmerHale. “There will be degradations, there’s no way there couldn’t be.”
Beaudreau also suggested that cuts at the Interior and Agriculture departments could create an economic crisis in communities reliant on public lands, pointing to Whitefish, Montana, which sits at the edge of Glacier National Park.
