Denali National Park is in Damage Control Mode

Here's the latest dispatch.

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American Flags Belong at National Parks

When government agencies stray from their mission, stupidity results. This is fully apparent under Secretary Deb Haaland’s tenure at Department of Interior thus far.

I frequently discuss this straying from mission, due to the Biden administration’s “all-of-government” approach to advance DEI/ESG nationwide and specifically at DOI/DOE/EPA/FWS/NPS, on District of Conservation. In this instance, the National Park Service, an agency under the DOI umbrella, rightly deserves our scrutiny.

Denali National Park and Preserve Superintendent Brooke Merrell reportedly was offended by federal highway workers displaying 3’ by 5’ American flags on their trucks, arguing the gesture “doesn’t fit the park experience.” This story first broke in the Alaska Watchman, who describes the incident as follows:

According to the contractor, Denali National Park Superintendent Brooke Merrell contacted the man overseeing the federal highways project, claiming there had been complaints about the U.S. flags, and notifying him that bridge workers must stop flying the stars and strips from their vehicles because it detracts from the “park experience.”

“The trucks are flying these American flags, about a foot atop the trucks, about three-foot by four-foot flags, and they said they don’t want this,” the contractor explained. “They’re saying it isn’t conducive and it doesn’t fit the park experience.”

If you’re not convinced that Merrell is a willing participant and foot soldier in this deviation from mission statement, this will assuredly convince you. As I noted in my Townhall VIP Column today:

In a 2022 interview with Anchorage Daily News, Merrell expressed support for DEI and the climate crisis narrative. 

“…I think just looking at what we’ve been able to accomplish with effort in terms of seeing an equitable number of women in leadership roles, we know we can achieve the same results with other areas of diversity and inclusion in the National Park Service,” she said of advancing DEI in the NPS.

Here’s the exchange on climate change: 

ADN: Climate change is impacting Alaska in so many different ways. I’m wondering what more specific climate change impacts you’re seeing play out in Denali, and what your plans are for some of those more specifically.

Merrell: So, we’re seeing what everyone in Alaska is seeing — that the permafrost melt and increased temperatures and increased rainfall are creating a lot of movement in the ground, and so we’ve got sinkholes and landslides at an increasing rate.

Some of the foundations of buildings are starting to move. And so a lot of it is going to be just adjusting how we build, how we improve our infrastructure, the methods that we use for a foundation of a building or where we decide to site buildings.

Another aspect is that it’s going to be more expensive to respond to these more catastrophic climate change movements on the ground. And we’re going to have to figure out how we do that and and how and whether we can maintain all of our facilities in the park.

Senator Dan Sullivan (R-AK) elevated the story and demanded answers from Merrell:

After four days of non-responses, Denali NPS released this statement on their social media platforms yesterday, May 26th:

Credit: Facebook.com/DenaliNationalPark

“Reports that a National Park Service (NPS) official ordered the removal of an American flag from a Denali bridge construction worker’s vehicle at Denali National Park are false. At no time did an NPS official seek to ban the American flag from the project site or associated vehicles. The NPS neither administers the bridge project contract, nor has the authority to enforce terms or policies related to the contract or contractors performing the work. The American flag can be seen at various locations within Denali National Park – at park facilities and campsites, on public and private vehicles, and at employee residences – and we welcome its display this Memorial Day weekend and every day.” - Denali National Park and Preserve

As Alaska Watchman reported:

As we first reported, the worker said the flag controversy originated from Denali Park Superintendent Brooke Merrell, who he said contacted the on-site Federal Highway Administration official overseeing the bridge project. The crewman said Merrell told the federal official that there had been “complaints” about the American flags, that they were detracting from visitors’ “park experience,” and that they should be removed from the trucks.

Before publishing the story, the Watchman reached out to Denali National Park’s media contact on May 22 to get their side of the story. We were told that Superintendent Merrell was not around, and that it was not likely she would respond to our questions before the end of the day on May 22.

After failing to receive any answers to our questions, we finally published the story on May 23, around 4 p.m., with a note that we had not received a response from park officials.

…

For four days following the publication of our initial article, the National Park Service failed to respond to our questions. We specifically wanted to know whether Park Superintendent Merrell had asked for American flags to be removed from the construction vehicles, and if so, why?

…

It was not until May 26, the day a peaceful truck convoy protest from Fairbanks arrived in the park with flags flying, that the National Park Service issued a one-paragraph statement on its website, claiming the following:

“Reports that a National Park Service (NPS) official ordered the removal of an American flag from a Denali bridge construction worker’s vehicle at Denali National Park are false. At no time did an NPS official seek to ban the American flag from the project site or associated vehicles. The NPS neither administers the bridge project contract, nor has the authority to enforce terms or policies related to the contract or contractors performing the work. The American flag can be seen at various locations within Denali National Park – at park facilities and campsites, on public and private vehicles, and at employee residences – and we welcome its display this Memorial Day weekend and every day.”

While this carefully worded statement seems intended to discredit our reporting, it fails to answer any of the key questions surrounding the controversy, while contradicting the actual construction worker’s direct experience on the ground, and diverting the issue away from the construction vehicles by focusing on other flags posted at park facilities.

The publication added:

But then the crewman reiterated that the Federal Highway Administration official told the Granite Construction project manager that Park Superintendent Merrell wanted the flags removed from all construction trucks that were driving through the park, whenever they were outside of the confined construction area.

“He told the Granite Project Manager to convey to the hands that they have to take down their flags when they are driving on the park road,” the crewman said. “The [Granite] foreman, he then told the hands who have flags that they can’t have them.”

So, the NPS statement claiming that no park officials sought to “ban the American flag from the project site or associated vehicles” is true but misleading, for it does not answer the question of whether park officials sought to have flags removed from trucks driving OUTSIDE the limited boundaries of the work site. This is the crucial point.

During the follow-up interview with the crewman, he said he spoke directly to the Federal Highway Administration official, who confirmed that Superintendent Merrell was the person who complained about the flags – claiming they were “not conducive to the park experience.”

Denali is definitely in damage control mode. Yikes. I’ll keep you posted on this developing story.

What do you think about this story? Tell me below in the comments section.

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—Gabriella

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