US night-sky agency threatened by Trump administration funding cuts
The Trump administration appears poised to cut the US Natural Sounds and Night Skies Division (NSNSD), a little-known office that works to rein in noise and light pollution in national parks, a task that is seen as a vital environmental endeavor.
Advocates say the division's work is quiet but important – many plants and animals rely on the darkness, and light pollution is contributing to firefly and other insect die-offs. The office led efforts to reduce light pollution at the Grand Canyon and snowmobile noise that drowned out sounds emanating from the Old Faithful geyser, among other initiatives.
'They're a small but mighty program,' said Kristen Brengel, vice-president of government affairs for the National Park Conservation Association, which advocates for the national park system.
'When you think about it, the national parks are a full sensory experience … and there are scientists behind the scenes who are making sure that you have that world-class experience,' Brengel added.
The office is an example of what would be lost if the Trump administration is successful in implementing deep cuts to the US National Park Service, shifting its focus from enhancing and preserving parks to simply managing visitors. The agency's stewardship budget, which funds the NSNSD's office of about 10 employees, is facing a proposed reduction from about $375m to $185m, and advocates say the office is almost certainly threatened.
The National Park Service's Fort Collins, Colorado, office, out of which the NSNSD operates, was initially targeted by Elon Musk's 'department of government efficiency' for closure. Court battles have tied up the Trump administration's reduction-in-force (RIF) proposals, for now putting its National Park Service plans on hold.
'Our concern is that this little-known division will be decimated amid the cuts because its work is underappreciated,' said Ruskin Hartley, CEO of DarkSky International, which shares data with the NSNSD and has a similar mission.
The NSNSD and the National Park Service did not respond to requests for comment.
The NSNSD was established in 2000 with an aim to 'protect, maintain, and restore acoustical and dark night sky environments' throughout the park system. In practice, that's meant a combination of improving lighting in public parks, preserving darkness for wildlife, performing research and promoting dark sky tourism, which is booming, Hartley said.
Light pollution is increasing globally at about 10% annually, and around 60% of all known species are nocturnal and rely on the darkness, DarkSky estimates. Light pollution is particularly hard on migratory birds that rely on the moon and stars to navigate, and are drawn to bright light sources, and the light can also disrupt plants' photosynthesis process.
The NSNSD in recent decades helped lead projects that aimed to improve lighting at many of the nation's 430 parks, seashores and sites. It retrofitted 5,000 lights in the Grand Canyon national park with lower-watt LEDs that reduced spillage into the sky, and which turned the area into a certified dark sky park.
It also adjusted the lighting at the Mt Rushmore national park to reduce spillover, and improved lighting at the Gateway Arch in St Louis. The latter's lights are now turned off during periods of heavy bird traffic in migratory season.
Sign up to This Week in Trumpland
A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration
after newsletter promotion
The NSNSD also aims to ensure people can see the stars. For its purposes and those of DarkSky International, the definition of a 'dark sky' is anywhere in which one can view the Milky Way, Hartley said. About 83% of the US population lives in an area where they cannot.
'You want to have lighting that protects and respects the natural darkness in those parks,' Hartley said. The NSNSD has also 'pioneered' ways to measure, assess, and track changes in natural darkness over time, and it publishes papers on night sky quality, Hartley said.
The NSNSD's sounds department helped resolve a 2013 controversy over snowmobiles at Yellowstone. Dozens of extremely loud two-stroke snowmobiles that would gather daily at the Old Faithful geyser were drowning out its sounds, scaring bison and generally degrading the experience, Brengel said.
Employees from the NSNSD measured the noise, determined the level at which natural sounds could be heard and wildlife would be less scared. It helped develop rules that required quieter four-stroke snowmobile engines, and limited their numbers to 10 at a time. The effort was seen as a happy compromise, Brengel said.
'They figure out ways to maximize natural sounds while still getting people out in the parks,' Brengel said. 'It's an innovative program that ensures the visitor experience stays intact.'
The fight over reduction-in-force proposals in court is important to the NSNSD's survival, Brengel said, but her group is also alerting members of Congress to what the park service cuts would mean. Should the cuts go through, the park service would become a 'visitors' service agency', Brengel added, and would be unable to protect cultural and natural resources, as is statutorily mandated. 'We would sue,' Brengel said.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Mahmoud Khalil arrives in NJ after being granted release... and vows to continue fight 'even if they kill me'
Columbia University graduate student and Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil has landed in New Jersey, telling reporters that he will continue to fight for his country 'even if they kill me.' Khalil, 30, arrived at Newark Liberty International Airport on Saturday to an eruption of cheers after he was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement for over 100 days. New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez greeted him at the airport and stood by his side as he spoke to the press. Khalil defiantly spoke, telling reporters: 'If they threaten me with detention, even if they would kill me, I would still speak up for Palestine.' 'I just want to go back and continue the work I was already doing, advocating for Palestinian rights, a speech that should actually be celebrated rather than punished.' Khalil, a lawful resident of the US, was granted release and freed on bail by a New Jersey federal judge on Friday. The green card holder was taken into custody on March 8, 2025, as the Trump administration cracked down on pro-Palestine demonstrations on college campuses. Khalil was one of the primary organizers of protests that took over Columbia as the Israel - Hamas conflict was ignited. In the ruling Friday, Judge Michael E. Farbiaz said that none of the Trump administration's allegations against Khalil justified his continued detention, and sided with Khalil's argument that he was locked up as an unlawful retaliation for his activism. In his ruling on Friday, Farbiarz said: 'There is at least something to the underlying claim that there is an effort to use the immigration charge here to punish Mr. Khalil - And of course that would be unconstitutional.' Khalil has not been charged with a crime, but the judge's order to free him comes as the Trump White House continues efforts to deport him back to Algeria, where he is a citizen. When he was detained earlier this year, Khalil's case gained national attention as he was the first pro-Palestinian protester to be arrested by the Trump administration in its crackdown on college campuses. Several protests he organized and led at Columbia turned violent, with one seeing 112 students arrested when they stormed a campus building and occupied it as NYPD officers tried to shut their demonstration down. His arrest sparked protests across the country as critics accused the Trump administration of unlawfully arresting a legal resident without charging him with a crime in violation of his free speech. He was detained under the Cold War–era Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which states that non-US citizens can be deported if they are antagonistic against US foreign policy. Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused Khalil of spreading anti-Semitism, and White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said he was 'siding with terrorists.' But in the three months that Khalil has been detained, the Justice Department hasn't disclosed any substantive connection between Khalil and Hamas, which attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, and killed around 1,200 civilians. In their successful filing to free Khalil this week, the graduate student's attorneys argued that he was not spreading anti-Semitism when he campaigned for Palestine in its war with Israel. They cited past quotes from him such as comments he made to CNN during a campus protest, where he said that 'the liberation of the Palestinian people and the Jewish people are intertwined and go hand by hand, and you cannot achieve one without the other.' Judge Farbiarz had previously ruled that the foreign policy law was not enough to justify Khalil's detention, and his ruling on Friday shot down further allegations from the Trump administration that Khalil made paperwork errors when applying for citizenship last year. A number of other pro-Palestine protestors have been arrested and freed in the time that Khalil was detained.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Mahmoud Khalil reunites with family after more than 100 days in Ice detention
Mahmoud Khalil – the Palestinian rights activist, Columbia University graduate and legal permanent resident of the US who had been held by federal immigration authorities for more than three months – has been reunited with his wife and infant son. Khalil, the most high-profile student to be targeted by the Trump administration for speaking out against Israel's war on Gaza, arrived in New Jersey on Saturday at about 1pm – two hours later than expected after his flight was first rerouted to Philadelphia. Khalil greeted reporters and cheering supporters as he emerged from security at Newark airport accompanied by his wife, Dr Noor Abdalla, and son in a stroller, as well as his legal team and the New York Democratic representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 'If they threaten me with detention, even if they would kill me, I would still speak up for Palestine,' he said at a brief press conference after landing. 'I just want to go back and continue the work I was already doing, advocating for Palestinian rights, a speech that should actually be celebrated rather than punished.' Khalil was released from a Louisiana immigration detention facility on Friday evening after a federal judge ruled that punishing someone over a civil immigration matter was unconstitutional and ordered his immediate release on bail. Khalil was sent to Jena, Louisiana, shortly after being seized by plainclothes US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents in the lobby of his university residence in front of his heavily pregnant wife, who is a US citizen, in early March. The 30-year-old, who has not been charged with a crime, was forced to miss the birth of his first child, Deen, by the Trump administration. Khalil had been permitted to see his wife and son briefly – and only once – earlier in June. In ordering Khalil's immediate release on Friday, federal judge Michael Farbiarz of Newark, New Jersey, found that the government had failed to provide evidence that the graduate was a flight risk or danger to the public. '[He] is not a danger to the community,' Farbiarz ruled. 'Period, full stop.' The judge also ruled that punishing someone over a civil immigration matter by detaining them was unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters outside the detention facility where an estimated 1,000 men are being held, Khalil said: 'Trump and his administration, they chose the wrong person for this. That doesn't mean there is a right person for this. There is no right person who should be detained for actually protesting a genocide.' 'No one is illegal – no human is illegal,' he said. 'Justice will prevail no matter what this administration may try.' The Trump administration immediately filed a notice of appeal, NBC reported. Khalil was ordered to surrender his passport and green card to Ice officials in Jena, Louisiana, as part of his conditional release. The order also limits Khalil's travel to a handful of US states, including New York and Michigan to visit family, for court hearings in Louisiana and New Jersey, and for lobbying in Washington DC. Khalil's detention was widely condemned as a dangerous escalation in the Trump administration's assault on speech, which is ostensibly protected by the first amendment to the US constitution. His detention was the first in a series of high-profile arrests of international students who had spoken out about Israel's siege of Gaza, its occupation of Palestinian territories and their university's financial ties to companies that profit from Israeli military strikes. Khalil's release marks the latest setback for the Trump administration, which had pledged to deport pro-Palestinian international students en masse, claiming without evidence that speaking out against the Israeli state amounts to antisemitism. Sign up to This Week in Trumpland A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration after newsletter promotion In Khalili's case, multiple Jewish students and faculty had submitted court documents in his support. Khalil was a lead negotiator between the Jewish-led, pro-Palestinian campus protests at Columbia in 2024. And during an appearance on CNN, he said, 'The liberation of the Palestinian people and the Jewish people are intertwined and go hand-by-hand, and you cannot achieve one without the other.' In addition to missing the birth of his son, Khalil was kept from his family's first Mother's Day and Father's Day, and his graduation from Columbia while held in custody from 8 March to 20 June. Trump's crackdown on free speech, pro-Palestinian activists and immigrants has triggered widespread protests and condemnation, as Ice agents ramp up operations to detain tens of thousands of people monthly for deportation while seeking – and in many instances succeeding – to avoid due process. Three other students detained on similar grounds to Khalil – Rümeysa Öztürk, Badar Khan Suri and Mohsen Mahdawi – were previously released while their immigration cases are pending. Others voluntarily left the country after deportation proceedings against them were opened. Another is in hiding as she fights her case. On Sunday, a rally to celebrate Khalil's release – and protest against the ongoing detention by thousands of other immigrants in the US and Palestinians held without trial in Israel – will be held at 5.30pm ET at the steps of the Cathedral of St John the Divine in upper Manhattan. Khalil is expected to address supporters, alongside his legal representatives. 'Mahmoud's release reignites our determination to continue fighting until all our prisoners are released – whether in Palestine or the United States, until we see the end of the genocide and the siege on Gaza, and until we enforce an arms embargo on the Israel,' said Miriam Osman of the Palestinian Youth Movement.
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
Columbia activist Mahmoud Khalil says Trump administration has failed
Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil has said the Trump administration failed to suppress pro-Palestinian voices, following his release from more than three months in immigration detention."My existence is a message" to the Trump administration, he told the BBC after returning to New Jersey from a detention centre in Louisiana. "All these attempts to suppress Pro-Palestinian voices have failed now."Mr Khalil was a prominent voice in the New York university's pro-Palestinian protests last year, and his 8 March arrest sparked demonstrations in New York and Washington US government wants to deport him, arguing his activism is detrimental to foreign policy interests.
