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On March 1, hundreds of people gathered in Gardiner, Montana, at the northern entrance to Yellowstone National Park. The crowdwhich included residents from across the state and current and former public lands employeeswas part of a nationwide protest against the layoffs of federal workers. Roughly 5% of National Park Service workers have been caught up in the sweeping layoffs carried out by Donald Trumps administration and Elon Musks Department of Government Efficiency. This isnt counting the hundreds of others who are taking the fork in the road offer to resign from their positions. The staffing crisis facing national parks is felt not only within the federal workforce itself but also in gateway towns like Gardiner, where the economy depends heavily on Yellowstone. There, under the Roosevelt Archnamed for President Theodore Roosevelt, who laid its cornerstone and is known for preserving over 230 million acres of public landprotesters shouted chants like Public lands in public hands! and Hey, ho, Trump and Musk have got to go. Organizers talked about what public lands mean to the local economy. The crowd even harmonized to Woody Guthries This Land Is Your Land. The chaos and uncertainties that have come with Trumps executive actions reach all corners of the country and, as with the case of cutting funding to USAID, around the world. But Gardiner, perhaps like no other place, can be seen as an epicenter of loss following Trumps decisions. Shutting down federal funding through the Park Service could cripple the town. Gardiner was established shortly after the park opened in 1872 to foster a symbiotic relationship that continues today. Yellowstone and Gardiner are inextricable. The western part of the towns public high school is technically inside the park, with local businesses, the Gardiner community library, and the chamber of commerce building all abutting the park boundary. Gardiner is a company town and Yellowstone is the mill, said Richard Parks, who serves as the chair of the Gardiner Resort Area District. If somebody starts screwing with the mill, we have no choice but to be concerned. In 2023, Yellowstone hosted 4.5 million visitors, contributing an estimated $828 million and 8,560 jobs to surrounding townships like Gardiner. Industries like rafting, horseback riding, guiding, and hospitality services are all booming subeconomies that depend on tourism to the park. Yellowstones foot traffic also provides bedrock funding to town infrastructure and community development through its resort taxa 3% charge on reservations during peak season, which has helped raise public dollars for things like updated water and sewer systems, bear-proof trash cans, and new fire engines. The full extent to which federal firings, hiring freezes, and funding cuts will ripple throughout communities like Gardiner is still unclear, Parks said. We cant gauge the magnitude yet. With more than 60% of the area surrounding Gardiner controlled by federal land management agencies, deficits to entities like the National Park Service, or NPS, and U.S. Forest Service are felt acutely by the community. To Parks, the biggest question is whether Gardiner will have the traffic it needs to sustain itself this peak season. Removing hands, and expertise, from the entities that support and manage the park could degrade the experience for visitors, while news of the struggles could be enough to keep some travelers away entirely. Its like playing Whac-a-Mole, said Parks. The uncertainty is a massive problem because you just dont know what kind of disaster to prepare for. For Parks and other community members, the memory of 2022s devastating flood stokes worst-case scenario fears for what life could be like without the driving economic force of the park. The flood washed out 3 miles of road from Gardiner into the parks interior, severing the community from the park and barring public access for the entirety of peak season. The slew of cancellations from the parks usual large volume of visitors caused cascading damages to locals who had already invested in the season. A study conducted after the flood found that communities like Gardiner whose park access was cut off lost 75% of their income on average. The findings, corroborated by a survey of townspeople, indicated that the flood exceeded the economic losses from the COVID-19 shutdown two years prior, resulting in a net loss of $156 million. Cara McGary, a local wildlife guide who has been in Gardiner for over 10 years, said the flood significantly impacted her business. Now she is trepidatious about the money she has invested in permits and bookings for the upcoming season. In Gardiner, everyone in some way is directly or indirectly dependent on the NPS, said McGary. I need federal workers on federal lands for my business to function. McGary also underscored trickle-down effects that occur when the community is cut off from the park, like during the 2022 flood and another partial closure in 2018 and 2019 due to the 35-day government shutdown. Lack of access meant a lack of attendance to basic public lands infrastructure, leading to what McGary called a shituation, evoking scenes of overflowing pit toilets and trashed campgrounds. When that happened, volunteers throughout the community pitched in to maintain the integrity of the park that is their bread and butter. Having a love for this place, whether that is working the land as a producer, ranger, hunter, visitor, or hikerits a value you cant put money on, said McGary. This place is held together by people who give a damn and everyone plays a critical role. Disasters like that 500-year flood wont be so few and far between in the future, according to a Greater Yellowstone Climate Assessment led by researchers at Montana State University, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the University of Wyoming. The assessment was a first of its kind focusing on climate change impacts on the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Cathy Whitlock, a co-author of the report, emphasized the ways in which climate change and its impacts will influence Yellowstone in years to come. She highlighted the increasing likelihood of high-profile disasters, but also the more gradual changes that could disrupt the ecosystem balance. In Yellowstone, projected changes are largely driven by rising temperatures and the reduction in snowpack, she said. Current trends including warming, less snow, more rain, earlier snowmelt, and drier summers are expected to continue. According to Whitlock, every resource management decision for Yellowstone should consider the potential effects of climate change. The parks vegetation, lakes, streams, fish, and wildlife are all vulnerable. The ecosystem will continue to experience climate change no matter who is in the White House. But our ability to monitor, adapt, and plan for environmental consequences will beat risk without sustained funding, Whitlock said. On March 20, Mike Tranel, deputy superintendent for Yellowstone, gave an updated forecast for the season to the Gardiner Chamber of Commerce. He highlighted concerns over staffing, with layoffs resulting in a shortage of equipment operators, and people taking severance package offers leading to delays in hiring seasonal positions like entrance station workers. Those are key people, said Tranel. The positions pay for themselves. Although he did not specify, he also noted that the federal workforce reduction would likely cause effects behind the scenes, especially pertaining to scientific work on species like bears and wolves. Tranel said that the park was getting its full complement of seasonal workers, howeveran exception to the current federal hiring freezeand that the NPS remains confident it can pull off the upcoming peak season.We will do our best with the circumstances for the 4.75 million visitors, Tranel said. Tourism to Yellowstone typically starts in March for the north entrance and ramps up by mid-April, when the west entrance road into the park opens. So far, Gardiner is experiencing a worrisome start, according to Chester Evitt, the owner of Mama Bears Armory, a local gunsmith and outdoor gear shop. Evitt said he has had only a handful of customers since January, forcing him to use his disability checks from his time as a combat veteran to pay the shop rent. Evitt said that he and his family voted for Trump, but if he could take his vote back now he would. Ive been alive for 11 presidents and I havent seen one that has been as destructive as this one, said Evitt. These cuts are affecting our little town more than the 500-year flood. Evitt said that he tried to go to the local bank to get a loan to help him make it to May, but when he arrived, there were several other business owners there for the same reason. The bank told all of them that it couldnt offer any monetary assistance until things were more certain. Back at the Roosevelt Arch, three weeks after the first protest, a committed band of locals again gathered to make their voices heardthis time braving sheets of wet snow and 30 mph winds. Richard Midgette, one of the protest organizers, was recently hired back as an IT specialist for Yellowstone after being let go as part of the probationary firings. But he remains frustrated and fearful, as NPS employees anticipate further payroll cuts. Meanwhile, as Gardiner begins to wake up this spring, locals say they are open and ready for the season. The community is working diligently to navigate the chaos handed down to them from afar the best way they know howcontinuing to serve in the best interest of the park whose vitality is so closely tied to their own. Its not about the money, its about the communitys psyche, said Evitt. Were hoping that despite the odds, we can survive. Emily Senkosky, Grist This article originally appeared in Grist, a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Sign up for its newsletter here.
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E-Commerce
QVC’s bringing its always-on home shopping network to a TikTok livestream near you. The company announced Wednesday that it would host nonstop shopping livestreams on the app, the first of their kind on TikTok in the U.S. and part of a strategic agreement with the video-sharing platform, which is itself facing a critical moment. Its once-delayed ban is looming. But broadcast TV shopping needs to pivot to survive, and QVC sees TikTok as one of the best avenues to do that. “QVC and HSN hosts have mastered live shopping moments for decades and we’re thrilled to bring this entertaining shopping experience to TikTok’s community,” TikTok Shop’s head of U.S. operations Nico Le Bourgeois said in a statement. QVC Group, which runs the home shopping channels QVC and HSN, launched on TikTok Shop in 2024, but 24/7 live social shopping experiences represent a deeper push onto the app just days before it could go offline. TikTok could again be banned in the U.S. on Saturday if it doesn’t find a new American owner. QVC Group says on television it reaches more than 200 million homes, but with live TV viewing in decline, it’s had to invest in other platforms to reach a new generation of shoppers. The company has its own QVC+ and HSN+ streaming services as well as accounts on social networking sites like TikTok, where it has nearly half a million followers. QVC says more than 74,000 creators on TikTok have featured their items in shoppable videos or livestreams since last August. In some sense, TikTok and QVC’s UX are completely synergistic. The partnership retrofits the live, long-form linear tv format that made QVC famous in a context that’s familiar with young people today: an endless feed of people hawking goods. (TikTok videos are a less bite-sized as it is: uploaded videos can be up to 60 minutes long.) The company claims that bringing its approach to sales on social at this scale will revolutionize the space. Citing its expertise putting on “large-scale, high-volume, live social shopping,” QVC Group president and CEO David Rawlinson II said in a statement the company will bring to the endeavor its lineup of celebrities, hosts, brands, and products. “Our agreement will be a catalyst to transform shopping and discovery, not only for QVC Group and TikTok Shop, but also for social shopping at large,” he said. But first, they have to break-even. QVC Group ended Q4 with an almost $1.3 billion operating loss, and ended its year with an 8% drop in total revenue. Social media companies have worked to grow their shopping capabilities, but social shopping hasn’t taken hold in the U.S. to the extent that it has in other countries. Social commerce accounted for nearly 30% of all e-commerce in China last year, compared to less than 6% in the U.S., according to data from eMarketer. If QVC can successfully translate its experience selling products on TV to a smaller screen, though, that figure could grow.
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E-Commerce
As of this year, EV chargers now outnumber gas pumps in the state of California. The state has an estimated 178,000 shared chargers for electric carsnot counting another 700,000 private chargers that are installed in single-family homes, according to the California Energy Commission. Thats compared to roughly 120,000 gas pumps across the state. The number of EV chargers nearly doubled since 2023, though part of the increase came from identifying charging stations that hadnt previously been counted. The official stats include both public chargers and those that are shared at workplaces or in apartment buildings. Its still only a fraction of the number of chargers that are coming. By the most recent estimate, California will need around 1 million public and shared private chargers by 2030, enough to support the estimated 7 million light-duty electric vehicles that may be on the road by then. By 2035, when a rule requiring new vehicles to be electric will go into effectthe state could need more than 2 million shared EV chargers. (That’s assuming the rule survives Trump’s attempts to kill it.) For drivers who own a house with a garage, charging overnight at home can easily cover most needs. Still, those drivers obviously need access to public chargers for longer trips. And around 45% of Californians are renters who dont have garages of their own. New building codes require new apartment buildings to make parking spaces EV ready, and also apply to existing parking spaces when older buildings are renovated or expanded. Renters also have the right to install chargers themselves when they have a designated parking space. The rules also require a certain number of parking spaces at motels and retail and commercial parking lots to be EV ready. “Retrofitting the existing stock of multifamily dwellings with chargers is a substantial challenge,” says Esther Conrad, a research manager at Stanford University who has studied the rollout of EV chargers. Charging EVs takes substantially longer than filling up with gas, which is the main reason so why more charging ports are needed than gas pumpsboth in order to prevent bottlenecks at charging stations and because chargers are used in different places, from parking lots to street parking in cities. But as charging tech and vehicles improve, the total number of chargers that are needed is likely to shrink from current estimates, says Harrison Reilly, a spokesperson for the California Energy Commission. (In China, tech is already much farther ahead, with some new cars capable of charging in roughly as quickly as it takes to pump gas.) The state will publish a new estimate of charging needs later this year. For the moment, Reilly says, there are enough chargers to support the number of light-duty EVs that are on California roads. That’s a major milestone; with nearly 2 million electric cars and light-duty trucks, California also has more EVs than any other state. Last year, around 25% of all new car sales there were electric. Other states can learn from California’s policy. “First, states should be developing clear and ambitious EV targets, especially as the federal government pulls back on some of the targets for the transition,” says Jeff Prosserman, CEO and cofounder of Voltpost, a company that converts streetlights so they can double as curbside EV chargers. “They were leading the charge by looking to have as a mandate 100% of new car sales to be electric by 2035.” The state’s requirement for new apartment buildings to add EV chargers is critical. It has also provided important financial support, including grants to add chargers in disadvantaged neighborhoods, and has pushed to help streamline permitting so projects can be built faster. There are still obstacles as it moves forward. “One of the big challenges is the need for additional grid capacity to handle all of the charging,” says Conrad, though the state is trying to help address that. She says that even more funding is needed to add chargers in some locations where private developers might not otherwise build them. As the Trump administration tries to cancel promised support for EV chargers, it puts more financial pressure on the state. But the network is still quickly growing now. Voltpost, for example, is moving forward on a project to add curbside EV chargers in some neighborhoods in San Francisco. “It’s in no way impacted by federal policyit’s state and city-driven,” says Prosserman. “From what we’ve seen at Voltpost, progressive states like California are going to continue providing funding opportunities to meet their climate targets with or without support from the federal government,” he says.
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E-Commerce
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