Margaret Everson, the current acting director of the National Park Service, told her regional directors that staffing shortages in parks are not an excuse for limiting access/DOI
Editor's note: This corrects that staffing issues were not behind the closures of Yellowstone's campgrounds.
A shortage of rangers due to the coronavirus pandemic should not be an excuse for limiting access in the National Park System, the National Park Service's latest acting director has told the agency's regional directors.
"Within the sideboards of guidance, outdoor spaces should be accessible, including outdoor areas such as picnic areas, parking lots, overlooks, open-air areas in forts and gardens, and campgrounds should be fully accessible," Margaret Everson, on the job for less than three weeks, told the regional directors in an email Wednesday.
"Staffing limitations should not be a constraining factor in providing access to outdoor spaces," wrote Everson, who also serves Interior Secretary David Bernhardt as his legal counsel.
Everson, who replaced David Vela at the helm of the National Park Service on August 14, told the staff she has been working with the agency on Covid-19 issues for several months.
"Through your leadership, and consistent with NPS recovery plans, we have done a great job returning facilities to an open operating posture," she wrote. "However, we must continue to be diligent both in communicating the operational posture of a park to the public on our websites and through utilizing reporting tools developed in coordination with the department. Additionally, I want to emphasize the importance of ensuring that the operational status of parks in your region align with the appropriate guidance as set forth in our recovery plans."
If a park can't keep open access due to a shortage of staffing, wrote Everson, "parks should be elevating the situation to the regional director's attention so that the region can work with (Washington headquarters) to pursue alternative hiring strategies, or to pursue other potential sources to support park operations."
The email did not indicate what "other potential sources to support park operations" might be, though there have been efforts to see private concessionaires run all national park campgrounds.
Everson's directive was condemned Friday by Phil Francis, chair of the Coalition to Protect America's National Parks.
“This directive from Acting Director Everson demonstrates her complete lack of understanding regarding how parks operate and what National Park Service employees actually do," said Francis. "Her comment should disqualify her from serving as the acting director, as it demonstrates her lack of experience and support for NPS staff and the protection of park resources.
"Her suggestion that all outdoor facilities, including campgrounds and picnic areas, should be open despite staff shortages suggests she thinks these facilities run themselves. They do not," he went on. "NPS employees are required to empty the trash, clean the restrooms, take water samples for public health, handle campground issues, respond to medical emergencies, and so much more. To suggest that all these facilities remain open despite staff shortages due to the COVID-19 pandemic is a further insult to the dedicated managers and employees of these national parks and puts their health at further risk.”
How much access in the park system has been closed due to staffing shortages and how much to Covid-19 concerns is hard to determine without contacting each of the 419 units.
Eight of the 12 campgrounds at Yellowstone National Park have been closed so far this summer, though due largely to concerns over Covid-19, not to staffing issues, Superintendent Cam Sholly said Friday. Two of the eight -- Tower and Fishing Bridge -- are closed all year due to construction projects, and some if not all of the others should open by month's end, he added.
"The remaining campgrounds were likely going to open last month, but we decided to wait. Not because of staffing, but because we did have several visitor positives in campgrounds last month and it was prudent," the superintendent said.
The four campgrounds that have been open since June -- Grant Village, Madison, Bridge Bay, and Canyon, all of which are operated by Xanterra Travel Collections -- "represent nearly 70 percent of the campsites in the park," he said Friday in an email.
Elsewhere in the park system, Acadia National Park's four campgrounds are closed, and at Glacier National Park key destinations on the eastern side of the park -- the Many Glacier and Two Medicine areas with their campgrounds, lodges, and picnic areas, for instance -- have been closed due to the Blackfeet Nation's closure of their reservation lands to most travelers. Tours of cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde National Park also have been idled this year due to Covid-19.
Additionally, a random check of park websites Thursday night found:
- At Great Smoky Mountains National Park, individual campsites at Abrams Creek, Balsam Mountain, Big Creek, Cataloochee, and Cosby, group campgrounds at Big Creek, Cades Cove, Cataloochee, Cosby, Deep Creek, Elkmont, and Smokemont, and horse camps at Big Creek, Cataloochee, Round Bottom, and Tow String all are closed;
- At Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks the South Fork, Cold Springs, Atwell Mill, Dorst, Azalea, Crystal Springs, Sentinel, Sheep Creek, Moraine, and Canyon View campgrounds all are closed;
- At Zion National Park the Lava Point Campground is closed, as are the group sites at the Watchmen and South campgrounds;
- No overnight camping is being allowed on the islands of Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, and;
- The North Rim Campground at Grand Canyon National Park is closed.
How Everson's directive might impact day users wanting to stop at a picnic ground along the Tioga Road in Yosemite National Park, where travelers currently need a reservation to enter the park, was not immediately known.
Comments
Yes, that's the ticket! Oh, thank you, thank you, Cotton Mather Forever, for showing us the way forward. We don't need to see the absurdity, abnormality, corruption, cruelty, and incompetence of the current administration as all doom and gloom. We need to put on a happy face and see ignoring rules, regulations, and laws as the door to an exciting new exploration of the magic of GOP governance. We may have thought that we had seen enough over the past few years; but, thanks to you, we now know the best is yet to come.
This abandonment of legal norms, this normalization of the abnormal, and this process of making the illegal legal and abnormalties the standard practice are not just improper promotion and governance processes, not just pathways to corruption. They're an opportunity, a window onto a whole new abnormal world where reading and study are never required, crucial issues just disappear like some annoying virus, political appointees with no expertise and no background in the national parks can do as they please regardless of established processes, and management improvements occur like, well, like the president has told us, magic.
I'm with you, Cotton Mather Forever, and, like you, I want the Regional Directors and Superintendents, at least those who Secratary Bernhardt and Margaret, the rightwing lawyer who has no field management experience in the parks and has only been accumulating NPS experience since last Friday, have not yet ousted, to use these "abnormal times" as an opportunity to break stale models of park operations, stale old models that prioritize things like safe and controllable operating conditions for the public and fair employment processes. I agree with you. NPS personnel need the freedom to look beyond the old standard playbook that has been around for generations and try some new things. Roger Stone, Mike Flynn, Steve Bannon, and Jeffrey Epstein did. And, you can sure take it from me, Konstantin Kilimnik never let any stale model or standard playbook stop him from executing his mission. He always made sure that he was free to do anything he pleased.
By the way, Cotton Mather Forever, are you possibly related to Yellowstone Forever? I've seen a lot of folks and operations using that "Forever" term in their names over the past few years and there seems to be a common thread there. Is that like some secret team name to let folks who are "in-the-know" recognize kindred spirits?
Sounds to me like she wants to make sure she is aware of resource concerns and to use every tool at her disposal to assist. I don't know of anyone who hasn't had to make adjustments to standard operations due to Covid and the NPS should be no different. But lets not pass up a chance to bash the administration or to politicize the NPS system.
I guess the goal is to run the frontline staff into the ground and to destroy morale. Mission accomplished DOI. It is unfathomable how out of touch with reality these people are. What an absolute disgrace.
"The old stiff minds must give way. The old selfish minds must go. Obstructive reactionaries must move on. The young are at the gates."
Lavinia Dock, The Suffragist, 1917
Well if the government can't operate Yellowstone's campgrounds, why not let the main concessionaire Xanterra run them as they have their YNP campgrounds all summer. Maybe Xanterra should assume the operational duties of all campgrounds now and moving forwand.
Maybe they could also take over the US Postal Service. The GOP seems eager to privitize those operations too, although the Trump Administration's efforts in that area haven't seemed to go all that well. Abitrary and capricious "midnight" operational changes, kind of like the Friday night ousting of Vela and immediate appointment of Margaret, the rightwing lawyer who has no field management experience in the parks and has only been accumulating NPS experience for a week, and lots of very expensive and still operable postal sorting equipment quickly destroyed for no explainable reason. Some folks are saying it has all been baldfaced waste, fraud, and abuse.
The GOP is also very fond of private prisons or at least they were until some GOP judges were caught getting kickbacks from the private prison operators for sentencing defendants to usually long periods of incarceration ...in their prisons.
Then, there is Attorney General Barr, who is being investigated for potentially using private contract enforcement officers in unmarked uniforms, in my business we used to call those mercenaries, to clear folks from NPS park grounds in DC. But, I guess I've already mentioned the risk of that happening in my earlier comments on this topic. I suppose we've come full circle all over again.
However, in case somebody again accuses me of bashing poor Mr. Trum, Let me repeat that it isn't just Trump. Trump has already proven that he doesn't have the mental capacity to read, much less begin to understand what's happening here. The truth is that republicans, republican enablers, and republican appointees are the problem. If we get rid of Trump, but leave the Senate in republican hands, we won't have accomplished anything close to what is needed to solve this problem. We need to hold the House and take both the executive branch and the Senate. We need to vote this November or as soon as we can in our individual jurisdictions and we need to remember that our problem isn't just Trump; it's an entire corrupt political party, from Greg Gianforte and Steve Daines in the north, to Cory Gardner and Ken Buck in the middle, to Lindsey Graham and Ron DeSantis in the south. They're all, in one way or another, hellbent on using malice or ignorance or both to pillage and destroy this country, either deliberately or through a truly ridiculous level of bumbling, stumbling, drooling incompetence. So, remember to vote!
Xanterra can't house more staff to run the campgrounds any more than NPS can. What is limiting in Yellowstone, Yosemite, and other larger remote parks is lodging for more staff. Even in previous years, housing for summer staff in Yellowstone was booked so solid NPS scientists can't be accommodated to work on vegetation mapping. Additional staff housing was one of the priority projects for that park. Covid-19 precautions mean that neither NPS nor concessionaire staff can safely double and quadruple up in the same room, let alone sleep in large dorms or barracks, so neither are able to have as many staff as in previous years. Staffing levels are as high as safe housing can handle.
Perhaps it would be possible to put some trailers in campsites to house additional staff to keep the rest of the campground open, but I suspect neither NPS nor Xanterra is going to buy those trailers. Also, I doubt NPS wants to set the precident of taking up public campground sites to house federal and concessionaire staff. They have enough other issues to deal with this summer.