National Parks Remain Open As Compromise Prevents Government Shutdown

By Kurt Repanshek

An 11th-hour compromise Saturday averted a shutdown of the federal government for at least 45 days, allowing the National Park System to remain open through one of the most popular tourist seasons of the year.

With the agreement, reached by the House on Saturday afternoon, approved by the Senate that evening, and sent to President Biden for his signature, the Congress bought time to try to come to terms on government funding for Fiscal 2024, which opens October 1. As a result, the National Park System will remain open at least through mid-November, allowing for Fat Bear Week to run at Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska, enabling leaf-peepers to flock to the hardwood forests of Great Smoky Mountains, Shenandoah, and Acadia national parks to marvel at fall's vibrant coat of leaves, and allowing tens of thousands of sky gazers to flock to the National Park System from Oregon through Texas to catch the annular solar eclipse on October 14.

Just in case an agreement on the Continuing Resolution wasn't reached, officials in Utah and Arizona were prepared to keep national parks in their states open with state funding, and Colorado officials were working to do the same.

The congressional machinations marked the second time in five years, and the third time in the past decade, that the U.S. government was poised to shut down because of an impasse in the House of Representatives over how to fund the government. If a deal hadn't been struck, the Biden administration was ready to close the National Park System as much as possible. Not all park system sites can be completely locked down — the National Mall in Washington is one example, and many parks in the West have roads or highways that run through them — and determined members of the public can always find access points. Knowing that, Interior officials on Friday encouraged the public "not to visit sites during the period of lapse in appropriations out of consideration for protection of natural and cultural resources, as well as visitor safety."

On Friday, while recording the Traveler's latest podcast [coming Sunday] on how government shutdowns impact the National Park System, John Garder from the National Parks Conservation Association said closure of the park system comes with big costs.

"One is the economic cost to surrounding communities, when people change their vacation plans, when people are just confused by the situation and don't go to parks and don't spend money in those gateway communities," said Garder, NPCA's senior director for budget and appropriations. "There is a serious impact to to those businesses. The Park Service found that after the October 2013 shutdown there was a decline of 8 million visits during that month of October, and over $400 million in lost revenue. And looking at visitor spending and visitation in October 2022, we're projecting that there could be as many as a million visitors each day in October not visiting our parks. And that threatens as much as $70 million in visitor spending" each day of the month.

What remains to be seen is whether the two chambers of Congress can come to agreement in the coming six weeks on funding the government for Fiscal 2024. Where things currently stand, according to Garder, is the prospect of a lean budget, at best, for the National Park Service.

The appropriations measure crafted by the House appropriations committee "as it currently stands, seeks to cut 12.5 percent from the Park Service budget, which is extraordinarily damaging," he said. "It would mean the loss of hundreds if not as many as 1,000 Park Service personnel who could not be out in the field. It would mean superintendents would not be able to hire the level of seasonal rangers that they need to accommodate increasing numbers of visitors, likely lead to closed facilities or reduced hours, and other cuts to operations that would be felt deeply, on both the resource protection side as well as the visitor services side."

Bob Krumenaker, who retired in June from the National Park Service after more than four decades wearing the uniform, most recently as superintendent of Big Bend National Park, said the agency had been hopeful of having funding to provide employee raises to make up for the inflationary economy of recent years. Now, however, that probably won't be possible, he said on the podcast.

Beyond that loss, since 60-85 percent of a park's budget covers personnel costs, any decrease in funding often results in not filling job vacancies, construction projects being impacted, possibly less monitoring of environmental conditions, and some facilities might be selectively closed, said Krumenaker.

Looking ahead, NPCA looks "forward to getting a final budget bill that will not cut park funding, and working with our supporters to get the message out to Congress and the administration that our parks need love and care and support and funding and hoping for better times ahead," said Garder.