Tensions are rising inside the National Park Service, the agency that runs America’s icons of the natural world like Yellowstone, Yosemite, Glacier, and Big Bend. This week, the former Chief of the United States Park Police weighed in with an editorial on the web site New West in which she says she was fired and humiliated two years ago for warning that the parks were not up to the challenge of ensuring post-9/11 safety.

The former employee, Teresa Chambers, who also has a web site that details her plight as a whistleblower, contributed the column after reading a series on New West about a rewriting of the rulebook on how to govern and manage the national parks, and the back-room deals and “climate of fear” that supposedly now permeate the agency. According to Todd Wilkinson, who wrote two stories on the Park Service, the changes represent a watering down of the mission to preserve the parks’ ecosystems and natural treasures, in favor of economic development.

Photo credit: National Park Service