A group of government employees have taken to Twitter to protest the Trump administration. The "Alternative National Parks Service" said it would oppose climate change denial from the White House.
Image: Getty Images/D. Calvert
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A few employees of the US' National Parks Service have reportedly taken their "resistance" to the White House's gag order for government agencies to President Donald Trump's own stomping ground - Twitter. According to multiple news outlets, the @AltNatParkSer account is being run by an anonymous group of agency employees who seek to counter the "science denial coming from Trump's administration."
The controversial decision to temporarily halt tweets from the National Parks Service (NPS) came after the agency retweeted a post from New York Times reporter Binyamin Appelbaum pointing out how far fewer people attended Trump's inauguration than showed up for Barack Obama's in 2009.
Officials from the president's social media team then told the NPS to stop tweeting and cancel all tweets already prepared and scheduled for future release until new official social media guidelines could be released. The agency has since updated its Twitter account to say "we regret the mistaken RTs from yesterday" and claimed it was hacked.
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer than reiterated this statement later on Wednesday, saying the tweet had been removed by the agency on its own for violating NPS policy.
Trump then moved to silence the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), not only requesting a social media blackout and putting a temporary ban on the organization handing out any contracts or grants, but also ordering it to remove the climate change page from its website. However, a source inside the agency later told the press that it plans to resist the demand.
The president then continued his crackdown by muzzling the Department of Agriculture's scientific arm, the Agricultural Research Service (ARS). According to a department-wide email published by Buzzfeed News: "Starting immediately and until further notice, ARS will not release any public-facing documents. This includes, but is not limited to, news releases, photos, fact sheets, news feeds and social media content."
The ARS is responsible for, among other things, conceiving scientific solutions to an array of agricultural issues such as the dwindling number of honeybees.
Rogue rangers
It was then that some NPS workers decided to defy the president and set up an "Alternative Parks Service" account - likely a nod to Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway calling Press Secretary Sean Spicer's false statements about the inauguration audience "alternative facts."
Although Twitter shows that the account has been registered since May 2015, the oldest tweet still on the @AltNatParkSer page was just 23 hours old. In those hours, however, the group of workers who say they are running the account on their free time have already been prolific. Tweeting links to pages about climate science and how Trump's proposed policies could harm the wildlife in America's national parks, the account now has hundreds of thousands more followers than the official National Parks Service account.
A similar account for the Badlands National Parks service in South Dakota has also cropped up, with entries such as: "Fun Fact: In the Cretaceous Period, BadlandsNP was covered by a shallow sea. Our New Prez' climate policies will RESTORE them to that state!"
The account also added a series of tweets about Trump's proposed registry for Muslim immigrants, comparing it to the historical atrocity of Japanese internment during World War II. It further encouraged other gagged agencies, like the CIA, to set up alternative Twitter accounts "if it's this easy."
Environmental reactions to Trump victory
Trump has made no secret of the fact that he does not believe in climate change, and that global warming is a hoax. Read what environmentalists and climate fighters are saying about his election victory.
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Gray zone
"Trump must choose whether he will be a President remembered for putting America and the world on a path to climate disaster, or for listening to the American public and keeping us on a path to climate progress. Trump better choose wisely, otherwise - we can guarantee him the hardest fight of his life every step of the way.” - Michael Brune, Executive Director, The Sierra Club
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Dry reality
"Today is a bad day for international climate policy. That a climate change denier can be elected as the most powerful man in the world will make efforts to reduce emissions and secure adequate funding for adaptation measures all the more difficult... The international community needs reliable partners for ambitious climate policies." - Sabine Minninger, climate advisor for Brot für die Welt
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Out of control
"The Paris Agreement was signed and ratified not by a President, but by the United States itself. As a matter of international law, and as a matter of human survival, the nations of the world can, must, and will hold the United States to its climate commitments." - Jean Su from California-based Center for Biological Diversity
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Green solutions
"We know that yesterday's elections are undoubtedly going to affect the tone of the negotiations, but we know the task we have in front of us remains the same: that we must continue to keep our aim and our focus on the long-term that the countries set for themselves in the Paris Agreement." - Mariana Panuncio-Feldman, World Wildlife Fund's (WWF) Senior Director of International Climate Cooperation
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Slow death
"For communities in the global south, the U.S. citizens' choice to elect Donald Trump seems like a death sentence. We are suffering the effects of climate change after years of inaction by rich countries... and with an unhinged climate change denier in the White House, the relatively small progress made is under threat." - Wilfred D'Costa, Asian Peoples' Movement on Debt and Development
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Opening the floodgates
"President-elect Donald Trump's stance on global warming is well known. Ironically, he contributed to the popularity of our recent 'Turn down the heat'-report series for the World Bank by attacking it on Twitter. Yet apart from this, science cannot expect any positive climate action from him." - Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
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Washed up?
"It's clear that Donald Trump is about to be one of the most powerful people in the world, but even he does not have the power to change the laws of physics... Climate change has become a geopolitical issue of the top order and no country can be perceived as not doing its fair share on climate without serious consequences for its standing in the world." - Alden Meyer, Union of Concerned Scientists
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A burning issue
"As a young woman and first-time voter I will not tolerate Trump's denialism of the action needed for climate justice. Our country must undergo a systemic change and just transition away from fossil fuels towards renewable energy within my lifetime. The next four years are critical for getting on the right pathway." - Becky Chung, the youth network SustainUS.
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Time to be clean
"The fact of climate change is not changed by what happened last night. At this very historic moment, it is important to remind ourselves that we were in the wilderness before and progress was possible. Leaders across the world will expect the US to honor its commitment and they won't wait in the race to the renewable energy future." - Li Shuo, Greenpeace China
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Shrinking opportunities
“Donald Trump is the newly elected President of the United States. As of today, the Paris Agreement is an even stronger signal against denying reality and for global cooperation to solve the pressing problems of the world... You cannot ignore the facts." - Christoph Bals, Policy Director of Germanwatch
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Powerful force
“Trump will try and slam the brakes on climate action, which means we need to throw all of our weight on the accelerator... We need the rest of the world to charge ahead and look beyond the White House to partner with civil society, businesses, and local governments who are still committed to climate action... Our work becomes much harder now, but it’s not impossible.” - 350.org
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Growing concern
"Africa is already burning. The election of Trump is a disaster for our continent. The United States, if it follows through on its new President's rash words about withdrawing from the international climate regime, will become a pariah state in global efforts for climate action." - Geoffrey Kamese from Friends of the Earth Africa
