Once posted on popular trails on Cadillac Mountain and along Great Meadow, large Acadia signs on climate change are now stored out of sight, crowded behind a corrugated metal building, next to a roll of chain link fencing, a beat up canoe and a couple of portable toilets.

Once part of Acadia’s public policy effort to educate visitors about the impact of climate change on the park’s summits and shoreline, the signs are a casualty of the Trump administration’s view that the climate crisis is “the greatest con job.”

Under order by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, the National Park Service at Acadia National Park in mid-September removed 10 cedar-framed tripod signs, each typically with three separate informational panels on it.  Most of the panels on the signs focused on the effects of climate change, but one panel on a tripod sign that had been on Cadillac celebrated Wabanaki history.

The removals came just before President Donald Trump called the climate emergency “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world ” during a speech to the UN General Assembly on Sept. 23.

Todd Martin, northeast senior program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association, said the Department of Interior sent a letter to Acadia staff, indicating the Acadia signs on climate change were not in compliance with an executive order by Trump on March 27, called “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” Interior ordered the park to remove the Acadia signs on climate change, Martin told us.

Burgum issued his own executive order on May 20 with rules to implement the provisions of Trump’s order on federal lands managed by the Department of Interior.

A couple of reporters in early October found the climate change signs stacked behind a little-known building at Acadia, along with portable toilets, canoes and old equipment. The reporters visited the site on a hunch with no knowledge or tip that the signs were actually behind the building.

Climate change exhibit at Nature Center survives purge – so far

In contrast to the sign removal, the park’s most extensive exhibit on the effects of climate change – located at the seasonally-open Nature Center – was left untouched during the administration’s purge on Acadia signs on climate change.

The secretary’s order did not affect the Acadia climate change exhibit, which has filled the walls at the Sieur de Monts Nature Center since it was installed in 2016 as part of the Acadia Centennial celebration. The Nature Center closed for the year on Oct. 1 during the federal government shutdown.

Burgum’s order also required a process to allow for public participation in getting parks to comply with his order. He said park managers needed to post signs with QR codes linking to an NPS website to allow people to comment “on any signs or other information that are negative about either past or living Americans or that fail to emphasize the beauty, grandeur and abundance of landscapes and other natural features.”

Burgum also said the signs with QR codes should allow for public feedback on “any areas of the park that need repair and any services that need improvement.” Burgum’s order said the signs with QR codes shall be posted throughout the park “in as many locations … as necessary and appropriate to ensure public awareness to allow for public input as to the state of the property, its management and its compliance with this Order.”

During numerous visits to Acadia over the months following Burgum’s order, we did not see any signs to involve the public in implementing his order.  Nor did we find any stories or notices in Maine media about inviting public comment on Burgum’s order prior to removal of the signs.

In the past, the NPS at Acadia has issued releases seeking public comment about certain projects, but it did not provide any such notice to allow the public to participate on whether to comply with Burgum’s order.

Lawmaker not aware of any public input on sign removal

State Rep. Gary Friedmann, a Bar Harbor Democrat, said in an email that he was not aware of any public input into Burgum’s decision. He said he had not heard about the QR code allowing for public comment on whether Acadia was in compliance with Burgum’s May 20 order.

Friedmann wrote that in his opinion there was no rational reason for the removal of the Wabanaki sign, which said Cadillac was “a significant place” and called “White Mountain of the First Light” by the Native Americans. The Wabanaki sign was only two paragraphs and did not mention climate change.

Friedmann and 10 other state representatives from Maine wrote a letter to Burgum on Oct. 3, urging immediate restoration of the Acadia signs on climate change and the Wabanaki.  “There should be nothing controversial about these signs,” the letter said. “Their removal from the park is unfortunately another example of this administration’s attempt to stifle science and whitewash our country’s history.”

Friedmann said this week that Burgum has not responded to the letter about the Acadia signs on climate change.

Interior official says no more “lies of the delusional Green New Scam”

The National Park Service in Washington and the Department of Interior did not respond to our many emailed requests for comment.

In a statement to the Washington Post, which reported first on the removal of the Acadia signs, Aubrie Spady, deputy press secretary at the Interior Department, said, “Thanks to President Donald Trump, Interior is ensuring that the American people are no longer being fed the lies of the delusional Green New Scam.”

She added that “this administration believes in only administering facts based on real science to the American public, not brainless fear mongering rhetoric used to steal taxpayer dollars.”

Acadia National Park, located mostly on Mount Desert Island, and the NPS for years have been attempting to educate the public about climate change. Now-retired Acadia resource specialist Charlie Jacobi told us a decade ago that climate change was probably the biggest environmental threat facing the park, partly because of rising sea levels and warming temperatures.

Unusual rain storms have extensively damaged Acadia National Park

The effects of climate change are a huge issue at Acadia.

The walkway at Thunder Hole, for example, has been repaired at least several times over the years after getting hit by storms. Global warming is causing a longer busy season at the park, stretching until the end of October and straining park staff. Twin rain storms in January of last year caused millions of dollars in destruction, uprooting trees, eroding the coast and damaging roads and bridges and hiking trails. A June rainstorm in 2021, which the NPS called one of the more exceptional weather events in park history, required the temporary closure and repair of 10 miles of carriage roads and trails like the Maple Spring Trail.

The Interior Secretary’s order was meant to implement a similar executive order by Trump in March called “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.”

The uprooting of the Acadia signs on climate change is drawing fire from some people.

Trump administration urged to restore Acadia climate change signs

Martin, the Northeast senior program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association, urged the Trump administration to rescind the executive order and stop censoring history and science at national parks.

“Erasing history is the opposite of what the National Park Service has stood for for more than a century,” Martin wrote in an email.  “…We have decades of scientific research indicating how climate change is impacting Acadia – more intense rainfall and coastal storms, less snow, longer droughts, and rising sea levels. These are scientific facts, not political statements. The Trump Administration is playing politics with our parks and we will not stand for it.”

Martin also said he did not believe there was any public input or comment before the Acadia signs were removed from the park in September. Martin told us he was unsure specifically why the Wabanaki sign was removed by park staff, but it was one of three panels on a tripod sign. The other two panels were climate focused and were likely flagged for removal, according to Martin.

The Acadia climate change signs include “Look Down,” which warns that intense rain and hotter temperatures make it harder for plants to grow back; “Acadia is Changing and So Are We,” which says a rapidly changing climate requires new approaches to restoration, and “Is there Refuge from a Changing Climate?” which says park staff and partners want to protect rare plants and subalpine species on mountain summits while managing for a transition to new plants that thrive in warmer settings.

Michael J. Good, owner of Downeast Nature Tours in Bar Harbor and founder of the Acadia Birding Festival, said the key to reversing climate change is to remove carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas emitted by power plants, transportation, manufacturing and other sources.

“Climate Change is changing our world in real time,” Good wrote in an email. “Science is documenting it every day.  This administration has a very narrow perspective that is not scientifically based and this is what most worries all of us working in the biological sciences.”

“The science and physics are well understood and documented,” Good wrote. “The culprit all points to burning hydrocarbons. That we have an American administration who is thwarting science is beyond disconcerting [to me] as a biologist.  I am seeing changes in the bird communities that I monitor daily and they are very real.”

We sent lengthy emails to skeptics or critics on the effects of climate change, explaining the controversy caused by the removal of climate change signs at one of America’s most visited national parks, but none got back to us. Those groups and individuals that did not respond included climatologist Judith Curry, Andrew Hudgson, communications director at the Institute of Public Affairs, The Cato Institute, the Heartland Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Might winds of political change lead Acadia’s signs to be restored?

The Acadia signs on climate change may be hidden, but they’re not destroyed. Might a new administration one day lead to the reappearance of these messages atop Cadillac and along the Great Meadow?

Jim Linnane contributed to this story.