Trump administration faces backlash over Yosemite park giveaway

An investigation published on Friday by NOTUS, a news outlet, said the government had spent over a year quietly working to transfer a roughly 400-metre (0.25-mile) strip of the park to a company linked through a web of other entities to Nevada-based Kingsbarn Realty Capital.

It is the latest move by the Trump administration to roll back conservation protections of public lands. In July, the president slashed two Utah national monuments by more than 90 per cent, and this month his administration moved to end a rule barring logging and road-building in national forests.

A Kingsbarn-controlled limited liability company bought a 33-hectare (83-acre) plot just outside the park in 2024, and Kingsbarn CEO Jeff Pori wanted to build a road connecting the property to one of Yosemite’s thoroughfares – giving the land “exceptionally rare private access”, NOTUS said, citing people familiar with the discussions.

In exchange, the National Park Service would receive land of equal value in another part of California that has yet to be determined.