Garbage at Emigrant Campground in Death Valley National Park/NPS

Editor's note: This updates with details from Death Valley National Park on the adverse impacts created by the partial government shutdown.

A coyote that got a taste for human food from garbage strewn about Death Valley National Park during the partial government shutdown had to be put down by rangers after it repeatedly stopped traffic, while other coyotes and and two bobcats were seen approaching visitors in the park. Human visitors left other waste behind: an estimated half-ton of human waste on the landscape.

"People tried to do the right thing by leaving trash next to full dumpsters, but wind and animals dispersed it. The park’s resources, visitors, and wildlife all paid the price," Death Valley Superintendent Mike Reynolds said Friday. "We think their behavior was changed by the food scraps they got from trash.”

The coyote that stopped traffic apparently faked an injury to beg for food, the park reported. Rangers killed the animal because it would stop traffic in the middle of a blind curve, creating a dangerous situation, and because of concerns that the animal would become more brazen in going after food.

“We tried hazing it,” said Reynolds, “But it learned to identify NPS vehicles. I hated authorizing this, but was the only way to keep the public safe.”

The news from Death Valley came as status assessments, cleanup, and a rush to hire seasonal staff for the spring and summer were topping the to-do list for National Park Service managers and employees who returned to work this week after a 35-day shutdown for many. So far the worst of the physical damage and vandalism to the park system seems confined to Joshua Tree and Death Valley national parks.

Not only did Death Valley develop wildlife issues, but human waste became somewhat widespread, according to the superintendent.

Park staff had left the vault toilets accessible until they became too unsanitary, but once they were closed that didn't stop visitors from going to the bathroom. According to Reynolds, park staff cleaned up at least 1,665 clumps of toilet paper and 429 piles of human feces. “And that’s an incomplete figure,” he added. “We only counted in a few areas. We estimate there was at least half a ton of human waste deposited outside restrooms.”

Elsewhere in the National Park System, staff didn't encounter as many problems with visitors while their parks were staffed with small handfuls of rangers.

"We were lucky to have the amazing support of our non-profit partners and other cooperators, so not a ton of impact," Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park spokeswoman Jessica Ferracane told the Traveler on Friday. "High number of citations for entering closed areas, and drone use. Had some excessive illegal parking in the beginning but for the most part, it was great to be partially open for visitors during the busiest travel season of the year."

In Wyoming at Yellowstone National Park, where concessionaires and outfitters for the most part saw that visitors behaved, Superintendent Cam Sholly said his staff was ramping up the seasonal hiring effort.

"We're doing everything possible to organize our hiring needs and working with our Human Resources team to get things moving," he said in an email. "We're hopeful, and will do everything possible, to get these critical positions hired and on-boarded on time and in the locations where we need them most. Right now, we believe our spring opening will not be impacted, but some of that depends on the amount of snow we get between now and then."

Still, the long-term impact of the shutdown remains to be fully exposed. How many millions of dollars in fee revenues were lost due to the shutdown, how much money reserved for projects to enhance the visitor experience was diverted to daily maintenance and emergency staffing, and the extent of vandalism and resource damage is just beginning to come into focus.

National Parks Conservation Association staff had built a document to track known impacts across the National Park System, and it's believed the National Park Service has developed a similar internal document.

For instance, at Joshua Tree, which garnered national attention when Traveler reported that at least two Joshua trees had been downed by visitors, NPCA said park staff had  "documented about 100 illegal campsites, some well off the pavement and apparently reached via OHV tresspass." (Editor's note: Joshua Tree National Park officials said February 1 that one of the two trees had actually been cut down prior to the shutdown).

"At least one of those illegal campsites was in a highly culturally sensitive area, and NPS staff are trying to determine whether artifacts in the area that seem to be missing were stolen during the shutdown (as opposed to being hidden by wind-driven sand or something similar)," NPCA noted.

Joshua Tree also lost out on an estimated $1 million in fee revenues, and spent another $200,000-$300,000 of fee revenues banked for other projects, to reopen the park and staff it, the park advocacy group said. At Death Valley, where there were reports of illegal camping and off-road driving, one report said some off-road vehicles had driven through an historic site. 

Elsewhere in the park system:

* There were reports of illegal ATV driving at Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area in Pennsylvania and New Jersey;

* Monitoring studies and research work were halted or impacted at Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, Yellowstone, and Isle Royale National Park in Michigan;

* Staff at Crater Lake National Park in Oregon had to clear roadways, repair leaks, open restrooms and other facilities, and check fire alarm systems;

* Rocky Mountain National Park staff in Colorado reported that "the park did experience illegal activity during the shutdown, including people driving around locked gates through meadows..."

Seasonal hiring was among the top issues Park Service staff were tackling this week. Job applications normally need to be received by the agency by the end of January, and then time is needed for Human Resource staff to evaluate and score the applications, and distribute them to parks for personnel selection. What remains to be seen is not just how quickly the paperwork can be done, but whether some seasonals from past years decided to apply for jobs outside the Park Service.

In short, the partial shutdown is having a "cascading effect" on Park Service efforts to get caught back up, said John Garder, NPCA's senior director for budget and appropriations.

Requiring the Park Service to keep the park system open, for the most part, during the shutdown went against protocols the agency had developed for operations during such events. Karen McKinlay-Jones, a 35-year-veteran who retired as the chief law enforcement ranger for Death Valley National Park on December 31, 10 days into the shutdown, said her park's contingency plan called for closing all campgrounds and telling visitors they would have to leave the park. Instead, park staff were told to keep the campgrounds open but close the restrooms, she told NPCA.

“We argued and argued and said, you cannot keep a campground open and close the restrooms. You just can’t do it,” said McKinlay-Jones. “We started having damage and we started having human waste issues. Everything that we told them would happen started happening.”

The way Interior Department officials kept the parks open, in part by allowing the use of Federal Land Recreation Enhancement Act funds to be used for daily maintenance and cleaning, is being challenged by NPCA and Democracy Forward. Using FLREA revenues in this fashion undermines the intent of the program, and sets a precedent for how those dollars are spent. As FLREA was envisioned and set up, the revenues from entrance fees and other approved programs were to go to enhance the visitor experience. That could be through better facilities, more interpretive programs, or restored habitat.

NPCA and Democracy Forward claim that a handful of laws have been broken by Interior's effort to keep the parks open during the ongoing budget stalemate:

* The Antideficiency Act, which specifies that federal agencies are barred from obligating funds in the absence of an appropriation by Congress except in rare circumstances in which such obligation is necessary to prevent an imminent threat to human life or property;

* The National Environmental Policy Act, which requires an environmental impact statement for “major federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the human environment”;

* The Endangered Species Act, requiring that DOI ensure its actions are “not likely to jeopardize the continued existence of any endangered species or threatened species or result in the destruction or adverse modification of habitat of such species;”

The organizations asked the Interior Department's Office of Inspector General to look into the matter and determine the legality of the actions.