Most National Park Service Advisory Panel members resign

Amid issues with the Trump administration, nine of 12 members of the National Park System Advisory Board have resigned, with members saying the Department of the Interior has ignored them in the first year of President Donald Trump's term.

In a Monday letter of resignation to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, departing board chairman and former Alaska Gov. Tony Knowles wrote that over the last year, members of the federally established panel "stood by waiting for the chance to meet and continue the partnership between the NPSAB and the DOI as prescribed by law.

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"We understand the complexity of transition but our requests to engage have been ignored and the matters on which we wanted to brief the new Department team are clearly not part of its agenda," the letter states.

The letter, signed by Knowles and eight other board members, leaves the government without a complete board to designate national historic or natural landmarks, The Washington Post reports.

The terms of all of the members who quit were due to end in May.

"The department showed no interest in learning about or continuing to use the forward-thinking agenda of science, the effect of climate change, protections of the ecosystems, education," Knowles told Alaska Public Media. "And it has rescinded NPS regulations of resource stewardship concerning those very things: biodiversity loss, pollution and climate change."

In May of last year, the Post notes, Zinke suspended all outside advisory committees while his staff reviewed their work. Interior Department spokeswoman Heather Swift told the Post earlier this month that "boards have restarted," though which of the more than 200 under review have restarted were not specified and some do remain frozen, the Post reports.

"If they don't want to meet with us, fine. That's their prerogative," Knowles said. "But we wanted to make a statement as a board as we left what our concerns are, because we don't think [the new policies] reflect the vast number of public that support the national park system."

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