June 12, 2025 Seward Folly Staff

A group of 45 local protesters gathered quietly at the Exit Glacier parking lot in Seward on Friday, June 6, hoping for a chance to meet with Secretary of Interior Doug Burgum. The group wanted to have a discussion about the recent turmoil at the park regarding recent dramatic cuts to personnel. The first demonstrators arrived at 10 a.m., with others filtering in throughout the morning.

Apparently due to directives to not share his travel agenda, no one knew exactly when — or even if — Burgum would appear. Initial reports earlier in the week suggested he would arrive by plane at 1:30 p.m., but those plans shifted, and by Friday, organizers only knew to expect a car at some point. The several hours of waiting weren’t in vain for the participants. Park visitors stopped and chatted and were mostly supportive of their efforts in getting the word out about the chaos KFNP and other entities have been subjected to. 

By midday, the atmosphere shifted. Orange traffic cones appeared, local police arrived, and a growing number of National Park Service vehicles lined the area, signaling that something was about to happen. Shortly after 1 p.m., Secretary Burgum arrived, accompanied by a visible security detail. Protesters, holding signs and waving flags, greeted him as he made his way into the visitor center, bypassing the group without stopping to address them.

The mood among the demonstrators remained civil. Burgum’s group entered the visitor center as the protesters waited outside. As the group exited, Marc Swanson, the protester group’s de facto leader, and a former park employee himself, trailed Burgum alongside the protesters after the secretary declined to engage. Swanson began loudly delivering a prepared speech as the group hiked together up the glacier overlook trail. At one point, Swanson asked Burgum if he was listening; the secretary responded with a thumbs-up but continued walking without a glance backward.

Swanson’s speech focused on the turmoil within Kenai Fjords National Park following recent layoffs tied to the “Fork in the Road” restructuring. He cited the early retirement of the park superintendent — who remains on the payroll while residing in Maine — and pointed out that 40% of the regional office staff had been cut. Locally, Kenai Fjords has lost a quarter of its workforce, now operating with just 24 employees to serve the more than 400,000 visitors the park sees each year. Swanson and park employees said these staffing losses threaten both park operations and the local economy, which relies heavily on tourists.

The Folly has reached out to KFNP employees for comment on this information but has had little success. Part of the problem comes from the Hatch Act, which limits the park employees’ ability to be politically involved at work, but the current administration has severely limited them from speaking out at all, even to a local newspaper, with a very real risk of losing their jobs. 

Christina Kriedeman, who recently retired from KFNP and joined the protests, reflected on the changes she’s seen: “In the past, we could do our jobs. Priorities shifted with each administration, but there wasn’t this sense of ‘you can’t do this.’ Now, it feels like they just want to tear everything down.”

She also commented on the chilling effect of not being able to speak out: “The fear thing is weird.”

Kriedeman suspects this atmosphere is intended to push people to quit. She added that there’s a widespread lack of understanding about what federal agencies actually do, and said that’s not just the public’s fault — scientists and other federal workers need to do a better job explaining their work.

As the hike up to the glacier progressed, Swanson’s speech described a lack of administrative support in the system that even included missing paychecks that would have to be paid months later. The loss of experienced staff, he added, jeopardized the institutional knowledge needed to maintain visitor services, which affects Seward’s economic vitality.

Despite the tension in the protest, both sides kept the exchange respectful. The protesters understood that democracy depends on civil discourse. But it wasn’t lost to the group that the exchange was one-sided, which left many of them frustrated.

Dave Doughty, a protester, said “I’ve never seen a public official completely ignore the public in such an obvious way.”  

In a small, out-of-the-way town, it’s rare to get a chance to engage, if only one-sided, directly with the Secretary of the Interior about how government decisions actually affect people living there. 

By the end of the visit, protesters hoped Burgum would leave Seward with an appreciation of its beauty, and its importance to Seward’s economic wellbeing. They also hoped he had a clearer understanding of the challenges and frustrations facing Kenai Fjords National Park, especially problems originating from possibly haphazard decisions made in Washington D.C.

But the protesters weren’t sure if he understood all this. After all, the only conversations they had were with the security detail, which, ironically, they described as pretty friendly.