The National Park Service will begin cutting down more than 500 trees on Saturday at a public golf course in Washington, D.C., that President Trump is planning to replace with a “championship-level” course.
In a court filing on Friday, Kevin Griess, the superintendent of National Mall and Memorial Parks, said the agency planned to cull hundreds of the trees on the course as part of the clearing operation. The work, scheduled to begin on Saturday, will start at a heavily overgrown area that he said is known as “Trash Island” near the center of the course. He said such work would take place whether or not Mr. Trump moved forward with his plan for an elite golf course at the site.
“In total, the N.P.S. estimates that up to 529 trees that do not contribute to the historic landscape will be removed as part of this tree management and cultural landscape rehabilitation project,” Mr. Griess wrote. “No healthy trees that are contributing features of the historical golf course (such as healthy, historic cherry trees) will be removed as part of this project.”
Facing a federal lawsuit over the proposed golf course renovation, the Trump administration notified a federal judge about the tree-clearing operation because the court requested updates if the administration planned to “conduct any imminent, significant construction or destructive activities of an irretrievable character at East Potomac Golf Course.”
Mr. Griess said the work was being done now because the Park Service had received a “temporary work force support consisting of approximately 20 to 50 trained personnel capable of performing labor-intensive grounds maintenance activities” to remove the trees.
The D.C. Preservation League filed a federal lawsuit over Mr. Trump’s plans to overhaul the golf course. The Trump administration denied in court that any plans were underway to break ground on the new course by Sept. 1, as Mr. Trump had promised in a post on Truth Social in June. The judge, Ana Reyes, has warned that she would intervene if plans were set in motion without the administration notifying her.
Historic preservationists say the latest tree-clearing work on the course goes beyond merely chopping down dying or damaged trees, and should trigger a new round of public input and reviews under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act. The section requires that federal agencies take into account the effects of their actions on historic or cultural properties.
“The work is not routine maintenance, and therefore, for a designated property, they need to undertake Section 106,” Charles A. Birnbaum, president of the Cultural Landscape Foundation, said Saturday.
A top fund-raiser for Mr. Trump has been soliciting donors for the new golf course and a nearby National Garden of American Heroes that Mr. Trump is planning. The project will convert the existing 36-hole property into one that includes a larger 18-hole course that could host major tournaments.
Another of Mr. Trump’s major construction projects is already affecting the public golf course. Soil and debris from the East Wing demolition have been dumped on the site.
