Rob Wallace, Interior's assistant secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks, said Thursday that national parks will reopen "incrementally." As an example, Great Smoky Mountains National Park announced a limited opening May 9/NPS file

National parks that have been closed due to the coronavirus pandemic will reopen incrementally based on local conditions, the Interior Department's assistant secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks told National Parks Traveler during an exclusive interview Thursday.

"As we start to think about unwinding and providing more access to parks, it’s probably going to be an incremental process," Rob Wallace said. "It’s going to be focused on visitor safety, on employee safety, on community safety, and it will probably be some kind of rolling gradual access based on where in the country you are or where the superintendents are or where David (Vela) directs his team to look first.

"We tried to close with a methodical process, we want to open the same way to ensure safety and provide access," he added during a short conference call with the Traveler that was joined by Vela, the National Park Service's deputy director acting with the authority of the director.

The question of when parks would reopen has been asked almost since the day they were closed due to the pandemic. The quickly spreading disease has upended park staffing for the busy summer months, concessionaire operating plans, and the economies of gateway towns and businesses focused on the outdoors. The demands to see parks reopen tomorrow (if not yesterday) is not lost on the Interior and Park Service leadership teams, said Wallace

"You think about the giants in the park movement, whether it’s John Muir, or Ansel Adams, or Stephen Mather, or Teddy Roosevelt. They all came to that place by understanding how powerful it was to be outdoors. How restorative it was, how it healed, how it inspired, how it created pure recreational joy," the assistant secretary said. "And at a time when the public probably needs parks more than any time in (the park system's) history, a lot of them are not accessible. David’s got a challenge ahead of him that we know he’s going to meet with great skill and we’ll get it done safely.”

Vela said that while Wallace and Interior Secretary David Bernhardt's staff have been working with his leadership team to develop a reopening process, he added that local input into that decision-making is important.

"At the end of the day, it was truly about, and it remains, the health and safety of our visitors, employees and volunteers," he said of the discussions with state and local officials that led to the closing of parks. “As we look at making our parks now more accessible, we will follow those same tenets. Because those interests and priorities have not changed; the health and safety of our visitors, employees, volunteers and partner communities.”

Vela said there are concerns about reopening parks too quickly, just as there were concerns about some not closing quickly enough. 

"You take a large park near here (D.C.) where counties were actually closing trail access, in this case into Shenandoah.  And despite that, folks were going around the county barriers trying to access Shenandoah. That’s an example," he said. "And then you had the Appalachian Trail going through parks, and folks were bringing what they had, literally, into those communities.

"And so there was really an outcry of folks to say, 'We cannot absorb a Covid incident in our facilities because we’re rural, we don’t have staff, let alone try to treat our own employees and our visitors that come to enjoy the parks.' That was a very important dynamic that superintendents had to consider as well.”

As the conversation with Wallace and Vela came to a close, coincidentally, Great Smoky Mountains National Park staff announced that it would begin to reopen some areas of that park beginning May 9. Park managers will examine each facility function and service provided to ensure those operations comply with current public health guidance, and will be regularly monitored, a park release said. 

“We recognize this closure has been extremely difficult for our local residents, as well as park visitors from across the country, who seek the park as a special place for healing, exercise, recreation, and inspiration,” said Superintendent Cassius Cash. “We are approaching this phased reopening with that in mind, as we balance our responsibility to protect park resources and the health and safety of everyone.”

Elsewhere in the park system, Glen Canyon National Recreation Area officials issued a reminder Thursday that only boats stored within 20 miles of Page, Arizona, are being allowed on Lake Powell, and only for day use. They added, though, that away from the reservoir, visitors have "continued access to the majority of the 1.25 million acres that comprise the park. Many opportunities remain available to enjoy, including hiking opportunities, shoreline fishing, beach access, human powered water recreation, and recreation on the Colorado River corridor." 

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