I’ve been traveling the last two weeks and now am catching up, so if you sent me an email last week, I am only now getting to them. I visited too many National Forests to mention, and three National Parks- Redwood, Lassen and Death Valley. First of all, a major shout-out and thank you to all the employees, partners, contractors and concessionaires who are keeping things running at the Parks, BLM and National Forests! Other than writing on the bathroom wall (or paper on the bathroom wall) we have no other way of thanking you!
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If you recall, anytime there’s a shutdown, there’s a whole “shut down the parks” media campaign like this in High Country News. Perhaps it’s not a story so much as an op-ed.. but sometimes, increasingly, it’s not really clear. But after reading many of these, I find some key clues. Headline: “Interior is failing to conserve national parks.” Perhaps it would be more accurate to say “Former Park Service Director Thinks Parks Should Be Closed.”
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s decision to keep the national parks open without adequate staffing during the government shutdown shows the failure of his responsibility to conserve them unimpaired, for future generations.
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And now the parks are being left wide-open to vandalism as well. The current Interior Secretary has demonstrated a failure to “conserve for future generations” and proven that the Interior Department is no longer worthy of the public’s trust that their national parks will be protected.
As I always say, why is it that Parks seem uniquely targeted by vandals who apparently don’t target open lands like BLM and FS?
Starting with what I know to be true.. that many people are out in National Forests (with guns, during hunting season) regularly and do not vandalize and trash. Are these different people? What is it about (some) Parks that inclines people to trash and vandalize them? We hear about Joshua Tree and Yosemite a great deal.. is that because of reporters’ convenience, or is it proximity to large population centers? Who is actually doing the vandalizing, and what do law enforcement folks know about it?
Also public health and safety are prioritized for workers to stay on, plus some facilities are run by concessionaires, contracts or grants.
At every Park I visited, there was no apparent “resource damage” or trash or whatever. The Visitor Centers were closed, but the National Park App with info and audio tours worked (although the audio didn’t work for me, perhaps an Aged Person with Technology problem). When, as at Lassen, the gift shop partner folks had maps, I can’t see that my visit would have been any different except for visitor centers and the fact that a road hadn’t been fixed in Death Valley apparently due to the shutdown, an important road that led to many of the sites.
As to visitor centers, in Colorado,
DENVER – Governor Polis, Colorado Department of Natural Resources (DNR), and the Colorado Tourism Office (CTO), a division of the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade (OEDIT), announced today that the State of Colorado is providing funds to keep two visitors centers open at Rocky Mountain National Park while the federal government remains shut down.
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Sadly, I expect shutdowns to continue unless Congress votes to forego their own pay during government shutdowns. Seems only fair, but unlikely to pass.
Wouldn’t it be great if some foundation would fund a strikeforce of observers and mappers to visit National Parks and see what is happening, and interview law enforcement and other folks who are working? Then we might know more and be able to design better for the next shutdown. Social scientists could also be funded by externals to do this. Or maybe our economist think tank friends like Headwaters or PERC? Why do foundations seem to spend so much on promulgating their point of view rather than studying how to make things work better?
I just got back from a trip to southern Utah and spent 2 days in Bryce and an afternoon in the eastern part of Zion (never went in the main canyon) and everything was just fine at those parks. At Bryce every service that required the government to spend money was still operating (visitor center, horseback tours), but they weren’t allowed to collect any money for admission or annual passes. Go figure. Restrooms were clean and well stocked with TP both at the parks and BLM land I visited in the Kanab and and Saint George Field Offices, as well as the Dixie National Forest. It almost seemed like public lands in Utah were better maintained when the government was shutdown than when it’s open!