Yellowstone National Park's annual budget is the largest in the National Park System, according to park staff, and while that's not too surprising, when you look at its stagnation over the past decade vs. the rapid climb in visitation to more than 4 million in 2019, you have to wonder how the park's staff manages at times.
Back in 2010 the park's base operations budget was $35 million; a decade later, it had grown by just $2 million, to $37 million. Additional revenues, from federal highway funds, charitable contributions, concession fees, visitor entrance fees, and reimbursements, brought Yellowstone's fiscal 2020 budget to $77 million.
Though $77 million is a sizeable amount to spend in one year, the National Park Service staff at the park has a lot to attend to, according to its just-released State of The Park report:
- Millions are being spent to upgrade employee housing, which since the 1960s has placed many employees in trailers. Last year the park signed a $20 million contract to upgrade that housing with modular units. To accomplish all the work, the park is budgeting $83 million.
- $22 million has been received by the park to rehabilitate facilities tied to historic Fort Yellowstone. That will be one of the largest historic preservation projects in the park system this year, according to Yellowstone staff.
- Yellowstone’s water and wastewater teams produced nearly 400 million gallons of clean water and treated over 400 million gallons of wastewater in 2019-2020 in 14 different systems throughout the park. It has been estimated that those water and wasterwater systems need an investment of $221 million to keep them operating properly.
- Yellowstone has one of the largest vehicle fleets in the NPS, with more than 1,000 vehicles, including snowmobiles, snow groomers, snowplows, dump trucks, ambulances, and firetrucks,
- Information Technology and Telecommunications Services maintains a complex data and voice communication network that connects interior locations to headquarters. The network supports 800 computers, 1,265 phone lines, 60 servers, 200 network routers and switches, and 100 terabytes of storage located on several servers throughout the park.
- During 2020, in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, park staff cleaned and sanitized 600 sinks and toilets on a daily basis.
- 35,000 lights are to be replaced with energy-efficient LED fixtures.
- During 2020 park staff and contract employees removed 326,000 nonnative lake trout from Yellowstone Lake. In addition, in 2019 and 2020 72,790 native fish fingerlings, fry and eggs were placed in park waters.
- Nearly 15,000 acres in the park were surveyed for invasive vegetation. More than 7,500 boats hauled into the park by visitors in 2019 and 2020 were checked for invasive aquatic species, such as quagga mussels.
- Park staff attended to 4.6 million visitors in visitor centers in 2019.
- Yellowstone’s digital platforms saw substantial increases in use in 2020. Visits to Yellowstone’s homepage exceeded 3 million, making it the most-visited park site in the entire National Park System. In 2020, web traffic increased 41 percent to nearly 8.5 million users. Over 1.2 million users visited the virtual tours web page, a 16,366 percent increase compared to 2019, and downloads of the NPS Yellowstone App increased by 40 percent.
- In 2019 and 2020 there were a combined 50,000 calls for help -- calls for emergency medical help, structural fires, law enforcement, and search and rescue responses -- and 98 search and rescue missions.
- Backcountry rangers patrolled 28,000 miles in 2019 and 2020.
- The park has an asset inventory valued at $3.8 billion, and deferred maintenance needs of more than $700 million. Among the projects needing to be done, the Yellowstone River Bridge replacement is estimated to cost $78 million, the Norris-to-Golden Gate road improvement is expected to cost $89 million, and $7 million is expected to be spent on both boardwalks and trails rehabilitation and backcountry patrol cabin rehabilitation.
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Great report. Nice to see all of this laid out in a coherent way.
Kurt, maybe I missed something, but where is the report?
The photo suggests something more. This post is just a pile of facts and figures, mostly focused on Yellowstone as a summer tourist city, rather than on the state of the natural and cultural resources that current YNP leadership is supposed to be managing for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations.
As this list of outputs shows, this park gets a TON of resources. Are they using those resouces wisely to achieve the outcomes that citizens expect? Can't tell from this list of bullets.
The report has not yet been posted on the park's website. And you're correct, there's a lot of information in the report on infrastructure, workforce, natural resources and then some. We'll be approaching some of these sections in more detail in the weeks and months ahead.
Housing, wifi, vehicles - was this written for a certain hospitality industry magnate turned politician perhaps?
No mention here at all of wildlife, climate change, or tribes. Hopefully priorities changing soon!
Yes, there is something missing from this report. Yes, when you look at all the sources of its funding, a lot of money comes into Yellowstone National Park (YNP) each year ...partly because it generates far more than ten times that amount in annual regional economic activity. Yes, the base operations budget it gets from the National Park Service (NPS) grew by six percent, far less than one percent annually, over the past decade and it still relies on other federal funding, charitable contributions, and concession and entrance fees for more than half of its annual budget. But, no, you really can't tell much, at least from this list of bullets, about the state of the natural and cultural resources that current YNP leadership is supposed to be managing for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations. Maybe there's a more extensive report someplace that provides an even more impressively sugarcoated picture; but, this article doesn't reference it and I doubt it would really cover the gritty truths worrying many of us.
Back before the rightwing-inspired takeover and merger of the old Yellowstone Association with this new Yellowstone Forever gang, folks associated with the old Yellowstone Association and the Yellowstone Institute that it founded would work with NPS experts and print up state of the park studies that spoke honestly about the state of the natural and cultural resources. Back in the 1990s, the Greater Yellowstone Coalition joined in to publish an environmental profile. This was the kind of information that was coming out of the scientific community associated with the Yellowstone Institute in those days and, in the last years of the old Yellowstone Association prior to the rightwing takeover, these documents were integrated into what became the annual Yellowstone Resouces and Issues Handbook that was used as a textbook for the spring orientation sessions for incoming NPS, nonprofit, and concessions personnel. Although often "toned down" to reflect waves of national and regional political skewing, these publications provided that state of the natural and cultural resources information that would provide the foundation for focused conservation action, which is why they may not even still be published today.
But, at the risk of being repetitive and tiring to the usual republican trolls who stalk the web desparately trying to rewrite the criminally disloyal history of their beliefs and political party, I would offer that anyone truly interested in what is being done to impact the state of the natural and cultural resources around Yellowstone needs to look closely at what is being done as a result of the rightwing takeover of Montana. The buying of the 2020 state election in Montana by outside money flowing through and around Gianforte, Daines, Downing, and others has set off a wholescale rightwing juggernaut to loosen hunting, trapping, and wildlife protection laws to the detriment of Yellowstone wildlife, including wolf and bison conservation. Ignore it at the peril of Yellowstone itself and remember that I warned you.
Thanks for the preview Kurt. How are you all drawing those conclusions without seeing the report? Maybe you should wait and see before you do the typical jump to conclusions. If there isn't anything on conservation and climate change and resources then open up justifably. There is a good team in that park. You owe them better than negative speculation and conjecture.
Marcus, I have the report. I'm curious, what conclusions did I jump to?
The Resources and Issues Handbook is still updated and published annually. This year's edition should becoming out shortly. The park's Vital Signs report was last updated in 2019. It is generally updated every several years.