UPDATE | Filters Have Been Installed To Handle National Park Public Communications

Editor's note: This updates with additional comment from the Interior Department.

A filtering system has been put in place across the National Park System to manage communications with the public, one that has raised concerns over the quality of interpretative messaging by park staff. Interior Department staff, though, say the public can trust information from the National Park Service.

An email sent out to National Park Service public communications staff across the park system this week states that all content for websites and social media "must be completed by a DOI-Office of Communications staff person unless it is urgently life/health/safety related."

"If you have a non-life/health/safety related content update, please HOLD on that update for a brief time," the email continued. "We have established an NPS Digital Content Management & Governance Tiger Team."

That team, according to the email, was to be ready Friday to review park "digital content needs." The team also will identify and train park personnel "to post life/health/safety alerts and operational updates."

A park employee who reached out to the Traveler voiced a concern that this process "will impact the timeliness and accuracy of information shared with the public, as well as impact interpretation through websites and social media."

When asked about the policy, Interior Department staff said the department's public affairs staff "exists to manage official communications on behalf of the department and its bureaus, including media engagement, public messaging and externally facing digital content. That role helps ensure information is accurate, timely consistent with department priorities, and coordinated across platforms so the public receives clear and reliable information."

"Public affairs employees are not being asked to personally approve or clear every social media post or web update. Rather, the department has clarified that managing official public-facing content is a public affairs function, consistent with long-standing federal practice," an Interior spokesperson said. "This is about establishing clear lines of responsibility, not restricting speech or adding new layers of approval. The goal is effective communication, not control."

What remains to be seen is whether Interior's public affairs staff alters interpretive information on park websites to adhere with the Trump administration's desire that "interpretive materials ... ensure accuracy, honesty, and alignment with shared national values."

That approach has seen the Park Service forced to remove interpretive materials that pertain to the nation's slave history, climate-change science, and treatment of and relations with Native American cultures.

Just this week Park Service staff at Death Valley National Park was directed to remove displays and interpretive materials tied to the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe, which considers the park's landscape part of its homeland.

“We have displays in there and language that’s been in there for about 15 years, that’s having to be removed,” Mandi Campbell, the tribal historic preservation officer, told the Nevada Current. “One of the displays says ‘we are still here’ and they highlighted that they do not want that there.”

Cindy Davis, the tribe's environmental director, told the newspaper that, "The narrative of the display is basically our truth and how we see the truth. It’s just that they don’t accept our wording. So in that sense, we do feel a little oppressed. This is our homeland. We should be able to tell our truth instead of them always putting us in the shadows all the time."

Interior staff, however, said Friday afternoon that content review is intended to focus "on accuracy, completeness and clarity, not the removal of history. These reviews are intended to ensure the full history of America is presented, including difficult and complex subjects and other foundational chapters of our national story. Nothing in Secretary’s Order 3431 directs parks to erase or minimize these topics."

"... The public can continue to trust that information on National Park Service websites reflects a commitment to telling the full and accurate story of the places we steward," the staff said in an email.

Secretarial Order 3431 from Interior Secretary Doug Burgum directed that Interior staff "review public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties within the Department of the Interior’s (Department) jurisdiction and to restore Federal sites dedicated to history, including parks and museums, to solemn and uplifting public monuments that remind Americans of our extraordinary heritage, consistent progress toward becoming a more perfect Union, and unmatched record of advancing liberty, prosperity, and human flourishing."

That order is believed to have been behind the Park Service's removal of interpretive panels at the President's House at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia that address George Washington's ownership of slaves, the reported removal of interpretive materials addressing slavery at Fort Pulaski National Monument in Georgia, and placards explaining climate change at Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park in South Carolina and Glacier National Park in Montana.