Park bosses say they’re running visitor centers and even cleaning bathrooms as remaining staff try to keep sites open
Across the US’s fabled but overstretched national parks, unusual scenes are playing out this summer following budget cuts by Donald Trump’s administration. Archeologists are staffing ticket booths, ecologists are covering visitor centers and the superintendents of parks are even cleaning the toilets.
The National Park Service (NPS), responsible for maintaining cherished wildernesses and sites of cultural importance from Yellowstone to the Statue of Liberty, has lost a quarter of its permanent staff since Trump took office in January, with the administration seeking to gut the service’s budget by a third.
But the administration has also ordered parks to remain open and accessible to the public, meaning the NPS has had to scramble remaining staff into public-facing roles to maintain appearances to the crowds of visitors. This has meant much of the behind-the-scenes work to protect endangered species, battle invasive plants, fix crumbling infrastructure or plan for the future needs of the US’s trove of natural wonders has been jettisoned.
They kinda shouldnt keep them open tho. They should let things run into the ground, otherwise the people visiting wont know whats happening.
If they let things run into the ground, it’ll be used as an excuse to sell the land to private interests. It’s like, conservative anti government policy 101 to defund an institution you don’t like to then claim it’s ineffectual.
Additionally, covid showed us what happens when parks like joshua tree get closed, even temporarily. People took chainsaws to the trees to gain access to wherever they wanted to go. Having a presence in any form is a major deterrent. Also, fuck anyone who did this, obviously.
They could keep the staff there just not open it to visitors compared to Covid where no staff was there to enforce people damaging property
This. Close the park due to lack of staff, but keep everyone on to patrol and do trail maintenance.
I mean we joined an org that did local “citizens” patrols and maintained the place when they were closed, just less frequent? Found it on meetup. Like, twice a month at the local state park. I’m sure there was an org going by other times too, just I found what worked for us.
Unfortunately this is likely the idea. Keep them open, let the services at these parks become a “bad experience” for visitors, and change the public opinion on them from “we need these parks” to “sell them to corpos for pennies on the dollar”.
They care. They care about what they are doing and believe in it. Its a great feeling and I’m sure if you ever feel that you wont be so quick to dismiss them for not surrendering.
Especially because they care about it, they shouldnt allow it to slowly painfully die out like this. Keeping things barely running like this will not save them in the long run.
So give up and go home. How weak is that.