WASHINGTON — Nine out of 12 members of the national Park System Advisory Board resigned Monday evening, a Washington Post report states.

In a one-page letter to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, board chairman Tony Knowles, a former Alaska governor, tendered the collective resignation.

Knowles explained:

For the last year we have stood by waiting for the chance to meet and continue the partnership between the NPSAB and the DOI as prescribed by law. We understand the complexity of transition but our requests to engage have been ignored and the matters on which we wanted to brief the new Department team are clearly not part of its agenda. I wish the National Park System and Service well and will always be dedicated to their success. However, from all of the events of this past year I have a profound concern that the mission of stewardship, protection, and advancement of our National Parks has been set aside. I hope that future actions of the Department of Interior demonstrate that this is not the case.

“We resigned because we were deeply disappointed with the department and we were concerned,” Knowles told the New York Times, adding that Zinke “appears to have no interest in continuing the agenda of science, the effect of climate change, pursuing the protection of the ecosystem.”

The National Park System Advisory Board was established in 1935. In the past, it has advised Interior on how to address climate change, encourage younger visitors and more.

According to the Post, the board is required to meet twice a year but has not convened since Trump took office last January. Members, most of whom have worked together for seven years, were surprised to not be consulted on Interior’s recent decisions to increase visitor fees and reverse a ban on plastic water bottles in the park system.

Until Zinke names new advisory board members, the U.S. will not have the representatives needed to designate national historic or natural landmarks.