Shutdown, staffing cuts taking a toll at National Park Service

The extended government shutdown has advocates for the national parks fearful for the future of what the National Park Service advertises as America’s “crown jewels,” as more layoffs are being threatened on top of the substantial staff reductions already made since the start of the Trump administration.

Concerns are mounting amid reports of damaged resources, reduced maintenance and visitor safety issues at the 63 national parks and 370 other units, including national memorials and historic sites, managed by the National Park Service.

More than 450 former NPS employees, including two past directors of the agency and more than 90 former park superintendents, last week urged Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to close all the national parks until the government reopens.

“Our parks don’t run by themselves,” they said in an Oct. 23 letter. “The dedicated staff of the National Park Service (NPS) keep them clean, safe, and functioning. And as these latest, and sadly predictable, incidents clearly demonstrate, our parks cannot operate without them.”

The letter mentioned an Oct. 12 wildfire at an unstaffed campground in Joshua Tree National Park in California, “illegal BASE jumping and squatters at Yosemite National Park,” and “less high-profile reports of bathrooms overflowing, trash that is not being picked up, and trails that are not being safely maintained or monitored, which add urgency to our ask.”

The National Park Service said in an Oct. 24 news release that three people were convicted of illegally jumping from cliffs near Yosemite’s North Dome and El Capitan in separate incidents before the shutdown began, “underscoring the park’s commitment to visitor safety, resource protection and the enforcement of federal law.”

But a spokesperson for the Interior Department said in an emailed statement that most parks will remain open during the shutdown that began Oct. 1.

“When national parks completely shut down, the impact on surrounding communities is swift and devastating,” the statement said. “We are committed to protecting park resources, ensuring public safety, and maintaining visitor access to the greatest extent practicable.”

‘Unacceptable and unfair’

The Interior Department shutdown plan released last month specified that parks with accessible areas that collect recreation fees can use balances to cover basic maintenance. The Trump administration did the same thing during the 2018-19 partial government shutdown, but the Government Accountability Office said it was a violation of a law known as the Antideficiency Act.

In statements with the letter to Burgum, leaders of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks and the Association of National Park Rangers accused the Interior secretary of failing to protect the park system.

“Leaving the parks open to be trashed or damaged, and then requiring employees to ‘fix’ it all when they go back to work is unacceptable and unfair,” said Bill Wade, executive director of the rangers association.

When the shutdown ends, there will be about 25% fewer NPS employees to do that work than there were when President Donald Trump took office nine months ago, according to records obtained by the National Parks Conservation Association, an advocacy group with nearly 2 million members.

More than 4,000 NPS employees have been lost to layoffs, buyouts and resignations, while a federal hiring freeze has kept those positions vacant, according to the NPCA. Cuts in seasonal staff added to operational problems at many park units this year, the group said.

Now about 9,000 remaining employees are on furlough, others are working without pay, and a government filing in a court case seeking to block layoffs of federal workers during the shutdown outlined plans for 272 more job cuts at the NPS.

The planned reductions in force, or RIFs, include staff in “regional offices, cultural preservation, resource protection and park construction, as well as the Park Service’s IT, HR and communications staff,” said Theresa Pierno, NPCA’s president and CEO.

“These court filings offer a glimpse of what’s ahead, with only a small portion of the planned layoffs disclosed so far,” Pierno said. “No matter the size, any additional cuts to the Park Service will be devastating.”

‘Irreparable damage’

The RIFs at NPS are part of a broader plan to eliminate more than 2,000 staff at the Interior Department, including at the U.S. Geological Survey, the Bureau of Land Management and DOI headquarters, the court filing showed. The government is currently prohibited from making further layoffs while the case brought by federal employee unions proceeds, with a hearing before Judge Susan Illston in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California scheduled for Tuesday.

Members of both parties say that preventing further damage to the national parks is one reason to end the shutdown, although this has not moved negotiations on Capitol Hill.

“The Park Service goes to great lengths to protect our resources, and the park police provide critical safety measures, measures for our visitors in our national parks,” House Interior-Environment Appropriations Chairman Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, said at an Oct. 22 news conference. “Under the Democrat shutdown, the lack of funding for staff and maintenance projects could cause irreparable damage to these national parks.”

House Natural Resources Chairman Bruce Westerman, R-Ark., said Congress should be working on reauthorization of the bipartisan 2020 law known as the Great American Outdoors Act, which included funding for the multibillion-dollar maintenance backlog on public lands. A field hearing planned for Oct. 23 was canceled because the House hasn’t been working since the shutdown began.

The impacts of reduced staffing and funding at NPS hit hardest on communities near national parks, where more than 330 million visitors last year spent as much as $80 million a day on average, according to the advocacy groups.

Burgum acknowledged the impact in remarks at an Oct. 24 conference sponsored by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, saying that was a reason for keeping the parks open during the shutdown.

“If you’re a small business in an entrance community of a national park in the fall season, the leaf season is when everybody comes, and now the park can’t be open with all the facilities, and people are canceling vacations,” he said. “I mean, the last time this happened, it’s like a half a billion dollar economic impact on small businesses, just for entrance communities in parks.”

A survey by the Pew Research Center released in August found that the National Park Service is the most popular federal agency, with 76% of Americans giving it a favorable rating, including 78% of Republicans and 79% of Democrats.

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(Kelly Livingston contributed to this report.)

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