“Park roads, lookouts, trails, and open-air memorials will generally remain accessible to visitors,” begins a memo NPS Comptroller, exercising the delegated authority of the Director, Jessica Bowron just distributed internally. Should the government shut down at midnight, parks will remain open, with drastically reduced staffing.
Here’s the complete memo:
NPS Internal Memo:
Subject: NPS lapse plan update
RDs and ADs,
Thank you for the brief discussion this afternoon. As promised, while our lapse plan undergoes final prep to be posted, I am sharing components to help you and your parks and programs begin to prep. We are working on the FLREA, 3rd party, and donation templates to align with the approved lapse plan and will have those available this evening.
Visitor Services
Park roads, lookouts, trails, and open-air memorials will generally remain accessible to visitors.
Parks with accessible areas that collect fees under the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act (FLREA) will utilize available retained recreation fees balances to provide basic visitor services in a manner that maintains restrooms and sanitation, trash collection, road maintenance, campground operations, law enforcement and emergency operations, and staffing entrance gates as necessary to provide critical safety information.
Parks must develop daily cost estimates for all employees and services to be supported by recreation fees for review and approval. This may include costs that parks planned to fund out of appropriations that have lapsed. Where expected activities as described above are appropriate under FLREA at these parks, they may also be proposed for FLREA funding.
Parks with accessible areas that do not collect recreation fees or have insufficient balances must develop daily cost estimates for all employees and services to be supported by regional or national recreation fees for review and approval by the Director. This includes excepted activities where appropriate for FLREA.
In exceptional circumstances, NPS/Doi may consider whether parks that need to maintain some services as exempted at parks not otherwise able to operate under the guidelines set forth above.
Excepted staffing will be held to the minimum needed for the excepted activities outlined above. No visitor services will be provided. The NPS will not issue permits, conduct interpretive or educational programs, collect trash, operate or provide restrooms, maintain roads and walkways (including snow plowing and ice melting), or provide visitor information.As a general rule, if a facility or area is locked or secured during non-business hours (buildings, gated parking lots, etc.) it should be locked or secured for the duration of the shutdown.
Concession and CUA Operations, Partner Operations, and Leased Facilities
- Parks may allow concession operations that provided that non-expected or non-exempted NPS staffing is required for access. Park superintendents may not bring on additional NPS staff or authorize additional costs beyond those expected or FLREA-funded to facilitate these operations or provide for commercial, concession, or partner operations.
- NPS/DOI will make determinations, on a case-by-case basis using the criteria outlined in the approved lapse plan, whether commercial, concession, and/or partnership facility may remain open, or must be suspended for the duration of the lapse. This determination will be made in consultation with the Office of the Solicitor, and consistent with the following criteria may generally remain open and/or be continued:
- The concessioner, commercial use authorization (CUA) holder, or partner operates in an accessible area.
-The concessioner, CUA holder, or partner can operate during the lapse without requiring NPS resources in excess of those approved to support excepted activities or supported by FLREA.
- If over the course of the lapse, NPS expenditures or obligations go beyond the expected level or FLREA-supported services level become necessary to support commercial, concession or partner operations, the park superintendent must require a suspension in those operations, unless Miscellaneous Trust Funds are available, as discussed further below. Park superintendents may not bring on additional staff in excess of numbers approved to support excepted or FLREA-funded activities in order to provide for commercial, concession or partner operations, other than exempted staff funded by Miscellaneous Trust Funds.
Miscellaneous Trust Funds (Donations)
- At the superintendent’s discretion and with approval of the Director, parks may enter into arrangements with State, Local, or Tribal governments, cooperating associations, and/or other third parties, including concessioners and commercial use authorization holders, for donations to fund the full operation of an individual park unit or for specific services. This includes donation of funds for NPS personnel and donation of in-kind services for the third party to conduct the work.
- The NPS will not reimburse third parties (through payments, refunds, franchise fee relief, or any other consideration) who provide donations for such services. If NPS staff will be conducting the work using funds from a third party, funds must be transferred and deposited before the NPS may continue or resume providing services.
Other Exempt Funding
- For all other exempt (non-lapsing) funding, the Associate Director with oversight for programs may submit a spend plan to the Director for review and approval to continue activities. For DOI Wildland Fire Management, NPS will also follow DOI-wide guidance.
Jessica Bowron
NPS Comptroller, exercising the delegated authority of the Director
This is a developing story, I will update this post with updates and analysis. Stay tuned.
My initial takeaways:
This is very close to being a worst case scenario. Parks will remain open with only a skeleton crew of only “excepted” staff. Those include: law enforcement, border surveillance, fire suppression, and emergency response. No maintenance or operational staff will stay working for the duration of the shutdown.
Staffing levels will fall from about 15,000 today, to 3,000 or so tomorrow. That’s across 433 park sites and 85 million acres managed by NPS.
As during the 35-day shutdown that spanned December 2018 and January 2019, entrance fee accounts will be used to to fund some essential services. This remains legally dubious, and should the shutdown become protracted, will likely face legal challenge in the aftermath.
While those funds will go to, “restrooms and sanitation, trash collection, road maintenance, campground operations, law enforcement and emergency operations, and staffing entrance gates,” it’s currently unclear who will perform those services, since any non-emergency staff will be furloughed.
Donations = states paying to keep minimal park operations running out of their own budgets, which won’t be reimbursed. Utah has already said it plans to do this, citing the $3.1 billion in annual economic activity parks there bring to the state economy. Even in such cases, expect extremely minimal staffing.
If you want to be a part of the solution, stay away from national parks until the shutdown is over.
I sent the memo to Jon Jarvis, who ran the park service for the Obama administration, and who closed parks during the 16-day long shutdown in 2013.
“Ya can’t fix stupid,” Jarvis told me after reviewing the memo. “There will be resource impacts, just as there were last time, that includes off road driving in the desert parks, vandalism, break-ins to park facilities, trash, overflowing toilets etc.”
Separately, a park ranger currently with the service, confirms these details are essentially identical to NPS’ program during the 2018-2019 shutdown. “Seems like the same playbook from 2018-19,” they tell me.
The other concerning threads here are 1) Russel Vought’s threat to RIF any furloughed employees, 2) the administration’s stated intention to privatize national parks, and 3) ongoing attempts to slash the federal workforce.
“Most worrisome is that the administration will [use this to] show that the NPS does not ‘need’ all these staff, and the parks can just be left open, without staff into the future,” says Jarvis.
Top Photo: NPS
Upgrading to a paid subscription is an investment in the future of independent reporting on public lands and the outdoors. Doing so enables journalism like this to remain free, so that it can change the most minds possible. It also buys personal access to Wes, who will use his experience and his extensive network of subject matter experts to guide your gear purchases, help plan your trips, and save you money. You can read more about what Wes is doing on Substack at this link.
This is the kind of reporting that just got me fired from Outside Magazine. If you value real journalism around topics like national parks, please consider investing in its future by upgrading to a paid subscription. https://wessiler.substack.com/p/outside-just-fired-me-because-of
This is insane and self induced by the GOP. They have no shame. There is so much chaos going on right now on all levels and today "47" said things that no President has ever said before. We are not the enemy he and his Project 2025 are, everyone of them.