The National Park Service has removed signs at Acadia National Park in Maine that make reference to climate change amid the Trump administration’s wider effort to remove information that it says undermines “the remarkable achievements of the United States.” A sign has also been removed from at least one additional park that referred to slavery, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and conflicts with Native Americans.
The removals come after President Donald Trump issued an executive order in March seeking to remove “improper partisan ideology” from federal institutions, including the Smithsonian museums, that he says was perpetuated by the Biden administration. Park Service officials have broadly interpreted the order to apply to information on racism, sexism, Indigenous persecution, gay rights and climate change.
That sweeping effort has also led the Park Service to order the removal of information related to slavery, including an iconic photo of a formerly enslaved man displaying the scars on his back, which was first reported by The Washington Post. A person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, subsequently confirmed that the photo was ordered removed from the Fort Pulaski National Monument in Georgia.
Park Service spokesperson Rachel Pawlitz said in a statement earlier this week that all interpretive signage was under review.
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“Interpretive materials that disproportionately emphasize negative aspects of U.S. history or historical figures, without acknowledging broader context or national progress, can unintentionally distort understanding rather than enrich it,” she said.
Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) said that signs removed from Acadia – which sits on an island famous for Cadillac Mountain, where the rising sun first hits the United States each day – referenced climate change’s role in extreme weather that has caused millions of dollars in damage to the park. Those impacts include sea-level rise, storm surge and extreme rains, she said.
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Signage suggesting visitors take a shuttle bus to minimize their carbon footprint was also taken down, according to Pingree.
“This is an outrageous assault on our free speech and ability to educate each other,” Pingree said.
“It’s just bonkers to me that the federal government is imposing these kinds of restraints, that we’re taking away valuable information from our citizens who visit this park, and that we are trying to dumb everyone down and pretend real weather events don’t happen by not letting you read a simple sign,” she said.
At least seven pages related to climate change on the Park Service website were no longer accessible as of Wednesday, though internet archives indicate the administration may have taken down some of the pages months ago. Those include pages on how the Park Service monitors climate change as well as information on how global warming relates to individual parks.
The text on one page began with the statement, “Human activities are changing the Earth’s climate.” Another discussed climate change’s impact along the Louisiana coast at Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve. A page about the Lowell National Historical Park in Massachusetts included information about the site’s importance in the Industrial Revolution, noting that it kicked off changes to the global climate and that “burning of fossil fuels has been especially detrimental.”
“Thanks to President Donald Trump, Interior is ensuring that the American people are no longer being fed the lies of the delusional Green New Scam,” Aubrie Spady, deputy press secretary at the Interior Department, said in a statement.
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“The content was taken down at the beginning of the year because this administration believes in only administering facts based on real science to the American public, not brainless fearmongering rhetoric used to steal taxpayer dollars,” she added, in reference to the webpages.
Separately, a display at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge in New York City was taken down for making reference to historical events like slavery, Japanese internment camps and conflicts with Native Americans in describing the park system, according to two people familiar with the matter and photos reviewed by The Post.
“Some very new parks preserve not just lands or buildings but our nation’s ideas and ideals. They remind us of things we hope to live up to – like women’s rights and liberty – and things we hope never to repeat – like slavery, massacres of Indians, or holding Japanese Americans in wartime camps,” the display said, prior to its removal.
Congressional Democrats have fiercely criticized Trump’s policy.
“Right now, the Trump administration is trying to censor the history told in our national parks and historic sites,” Rep. Jared Huffman (D-California) told the House subcommittee on Federal Lands on Thursday.
Huffman questioned Mike Caldwell, associate director for park planning, facilities and lands, who said to his knowledge Interior had not ordered anyone to remove content about slavery, adding that policy was being implemented by a separate team.
Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wisconsin) said that the Biden administration was also guilty of trying to sanitize history.
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“I would be careful on the other side in regards to talking about erasing history after watching the four years of the Biden administration and with statues and monuments that could be deemed controversial that were removed, but that is history,” Tiffany said. “It is controversial at times and we should not whitewash it. But what we saw in the previous four years to the Trump administration was an erasing of history.”
However, President Joe Biden did not institute a wide effort to remove statues. Actions to take down statues of Confederate figures were generally undertaken by state and local governments and private institutions. In New York City, the American Museum of Natural History removed a controversial statue of President Theodore Roosevelt that depicted him with Black and Indigenous people.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American Cabinet secretary, removed the word “squaw” from the names of hundreds of federal properties during the Biden administration. And in 2015, President Barack Obama changed the name of North America’s highest peak from Mount McKinley to the Indigenous name Denali, a decision that Trump reversed this year.