No backcountry permits for summer 2020 are being approved by Glacier National Park due to staff reductions related to coronavirus/NPS, Tim Rains file
An unexpected victim of the coronavirus pandemic has been backcountry permits for Glacier National Park in Montana this year, as the park has canceled all previous reservations for the coming summer months and is not taking any more reservations for the summer due to reduced numbers of seasonal rangers.
Park staff say the move was made because of current and anticipated staffing and operational limitations related to the COVID-19 outbreak. All advance reservation application fees will be fully refunded by May 31. The park will not accept or process advance reservations for backcountry camping for the remainder of 2020.
The park expects to resume issuing overnight backcountry camping permits when conditions allow.
Comments
From what I have been told, all the Protection Rangers and Wilderness Rangers will be working this summer, but starting later than usual. The problem is with the Backcountry Permit Visitor Service Assistants, who issue permits, there will be a lot less of these fee personnel. Hopefully everyone will stay safe in this year's season.
Why will there be less seasonal rangers? Lack of funds? Lack of willing rangers? Or just a decision not to hire rangers to "fight" COVID?
There will be a serious lack of Seasonal Rangers this summer, especially at non-urban parks-the primary reason is lack of housing-or more specifically the inability to use the normal shared housing due to lack of social distancing. Houses or tailers which normally house 3 or 4 rangers will house 1 or 2-Dorm style housing will not be used at all. This will severely limit the total number of seasonal rangers with priority going to Law Enforcement, Fire and vital Facility Management staff-
Oh, for crying out loud, Eric! You wander around this site pontificating about what's wrong with the liberal federal government and how you know how to fix it all based on your mystical knowledge of the Constitution and, then, it turns out you don't even know how the budget allocation, fee allocation, and work authorization processes ended up working? You don't even know who gets paid out of which pot and why? Now you're outraged when it was your party that insisted on putting the rules into place in the first place? Are you kidding?
Rump, what the heck are you whining about. "outraged'? I asked a simple question. Any one of those three reasons (and probably alot more) could be valid explainations. I'm just curious which one it was. Do you know?
Thank you Ranger1 for your explaination. So the answer is 3 - fighting COVID. i.e nothing to do with "budget allocation, fee allocation, and work authorization processes". Pity, seems that if you can build massive temp hospitals overnight that never get used, we could come up with some temp housing solutions for rangers.
No, wrong again! While the need to disperse housing will impact the deployment of seasonal rangers, parks can use fee monies for certain purposes and have to use budget appropriations for others. It was the GOP that insisted on these kinds of ridiculous and draconian rules before they would agree to the fees and, in many cases, different parks have been forced to creatively categorize functions, as well as the functions for which personnel are being hired, in order to get past these rules and keep their operations running. The late start to the season is going to impact the available fee monies and Glacier apparently tries to keep user permit personnel and operations properly charged to fee money accounts, which is why Montanahiker mentioned that "there will be a lot less of these fee personnel" available to run that operation. Do you get it now?
And, it gets worse. When an administration wants to screw with how budget appropriations are spent, which would be an improper defiance of Congress, or even how fee recoveries are spent, which represents a violation of good faith with the agency; then that administration can stall the issuance of the work authorizations allowing a specific office or site to spend those monies. In the case of a seasonal operation, stalling the issuance of work authorizations unitl too late in the season for the monies to be spent before the end of the fiscal year results in the monies going into "carryover" status, at which point they can be more easily reprogrammed into areas where the administration wants them spent rather than where Congress wanted them to go. No, I dealt with federal budgets for nearly 50 years and that kind of inappropriate unehtical mischief absolutely does not happen just as often in every administration. It is overwhelmingly a GOP behavior and I've watched the Trump Administration be the absolute worst offender. To whom should I have been complaining? Bill Barr?
It was the GOP that insisted on these kinds of ridiculous and draconian rules before they would agree to the fees
Pure fiction.
And the rest of your statement makes no sense either. 1) the budget allocation to the parks has not been reduced since the COVID breakout began- though obviously for the two months expenses has been. If anything there would be more money available not less. As to fees, yes they are down because the parks were closed, but then those fees are primarily (though not exclusively as you tried to argue in the past) earmarked for infrastructure and maintainance, not hiring seasonal back country rangers. I find Ranger1's explanation far more plausable and it comes without wild baseless accusations which makes it that much more credible as well.