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
Sounds like Everson is doing a terrific job of sticking her head in the sand! Typical la la la BS from this administration that wants to make everyone believe everything is just fine without providing any real solutions.
Park Superintendents are charged with providing safe environments for visitors and employees. If they felt they had suffiient human resources to safely open campgrounds and other areas they would. Everson and her handlers should be able to figure out there are critical staff shortages without appearing to put the blame on park leadership for having to keep areas closed. Stabbing employees in the back for doing their jobs safely is no way for Everson to engender support from her staff or the public. Shame on her!
This just keeps getting better and better. NPT and a number of other news sites have carried story after story of how, in the absence of properly trained NPS supervision, the parks and other NPS units suffer damage and unsafe and illegal activities take place. We saw the damage early on at Joshua Tree and more recently with motorcycle vandalism at Grand Teton and arson at Glacier and Yosemite. We saw unsafe and illegal behaviors and their costs to the resources and taxpayers early on with that Marshall Miller episode at Zion and more recently in Yellowstone. And, those are just the ones that come to mind immediately.
The NPS has historically, in the past and during "normal" times, been very selective in seeking well educated recruits even for the lowest level staff openings. The NPS, again in the past and during "normal" times, exposed them, through rigorous field assignments, to the challenges of park management and culled them through long developmental experiences within the agency before selecting a few of them for promotion into the critical park superintendent positions that gave the agency eyes and ears on the ground in the field. In the past and during "normal" times, these critical park superintendents, with their extensive and intensive knowledge of "their" parks, and their judgement born of years or even generations of experience was how the NPS could best assess the situation, on the ground, in the individual NPS units and whether those situations constituted safe and controllable operating conditions for the public. Yes, this system failed from time to time; not all superintendents were trained to handle all situations; some were vulnerable to the seduction of bad influences; but, for the first century of the NPS from 1916 to 2916, it worked well.
But, this is not the past; these are clearly not "normal" times; and, in these increasingly "abnormal" times in America, there is now a pattern and practice of increasingly "abnormal" decisions being made all across our federal government. Much of "abnormality' has been right there in the Department of the Interior (DOI), the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and the NPS. There is litigation pending or under development against recent actions to undermine the National Environmental Policy Act (NPA), against similar actions to erode the Endangered Species Act (ESA), and against the revolving door of midnight ousters and sleazy promotions that have been taking place throughout the DOI, leaving rightwing operatives in "acting" positions even as high as the NPS Director's position. Margaret, the rightwing lawyer who has no field management experience in the parks and has only been accumulating NPS experience since last Friday, has been involved in more than one of these issues. But, she isn't the only example. As I posted previously, let's not forget Daniel Smith, who the now disgraced former Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke made "acting" NPS Director despite a freshly inked IG report citing Smith's record of undue and corrupt interference. Sound familiar? Then, David Vela got to be "acting" NPS Director for a little while, during which Zinke's successor, Secretary Bernhardt, keyed up Edward Keable, another of his rightwing personal legal counselors with no substantive park management time or experience, to take the helm as superintendent at Grand Canyon just as a legal battle over foreign real estate developers with republican connections started heating up at Tusayan south of that park. Now, in the increasingly "abnormal" times that the current administration and the republicans that back it have given us, we have a new "abnormality" on our hands. We have Margaret, the rightwing lawyer who has no field management experience in the parks and has only been accumulating NPS experience since last Friday, but has now decided that she is qualified to accept the position of new "acting" NPS Director.
Remember my comments about how the NPS, during "normal" times, was very selective in seeking well educated recruits even for the lowest level staff openings, then exposed them and rigorously culled them through years of field experiences in the parks and within the agency before selecting a few for the critical park superintendent positions that gave the agency eyes and ears on the ground? Remember my mention of how the NPS used park superintendents to assess situations, on the ground and in the individual NPS units to determine whether those situations constituted safe and controllable operating conditions for the public? Well, Margaret, the rightwing lawyer who has no field management experience in the parks and has only been accumulating NPS experience since last Friday, didn't get that memo and now seems eager, after trudging through a full week of time in service in the agency, to start second guessing and intimidating park superintendents into doing what the current administration wants for political purposes rather than what the park superintendents might think is best in their parks.
I don't know what's best in each of the NPS units; but, I do have some concerns. If Margaret, the rightwing lawyer who has no field management experience in the parks and has only been accumulating NPS experience since last Friday, is going to be managing the units personally and the superintendents no longer have authority to make calls over what they consider safe or controllable operating conditions, will Margaret, the rightwing lawyer who has no field management experience in the parks and has only been accumulating NPS experience since last Friday, take responsibility and be held personally accountable for the results? If so, held accountable in what way? Will it be like Roger Stone or Mike Flynn or will it be like what is probably going to be done with Steve Bannon? They say that knowledge is power. Knowledge of presidential wrongdoing seems to put folks in very powerful positions nowadays.
According to the article, Margaret, the rightwing lawyer who has no field management experience in the parks and has only been accumulating NPS experience since last Friday, has decreed that staffing limitations are not a constraining factor in determining the operational status of an NPS unit and, furthermore, that staffing shortages need to be immediately elevated to HQ so that apparently she can pursue alternative hiring strategies or other potential sources of staff. What does that even mean?
Will Margaret, the rightwing lawyer who has no field management experience in the parks and has only been accumulating NPS experience since last Friday, be loosening federal or NPS hiring standards, bringing in temp workers, or maybe contacting Attorney General Barr to deploy some of the reinforcements with no agency identification on their uniforms or gear, many of which were from the Border Patrol, that he deployed to NPS areas at Lafayette Square in DC for the president's photo op? If needed, will those troops also be deployed to force the Blackfeet Nation to open their reservation lands to travel through to Glacier?
All seriousness aside, I wish I could say I was just kidding about the downright outrageous absurdity of this situation; but, I can't. This situation and the individuals involved are ridiculous; Secretary Bernhardt's actions to force Vela out early, this close to a national election and an almost certain subsequent changing of administrations, was ridiculous; the fact that Margaret, the rightwing lawyer who has no field management experience in the parks and has only been accumulating NPS experience since last Friday, thought it was appropriate to step into a job for which she is truly not qualified, especially this close to a change in administrations, is ridiculous; and it all only proves, once again, how ridiculously corrupt and incompetent this administration has been from the very start.
But, as I've said before, 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. No, 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. 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.
This is what happens when you put inexperienced people in charge of something they know nothing about.
This is crazy, and it looks like we have a new rubber stamp acting director. Facilities should be open only when the local managers feel they can be responsibly and safely operated, not just because the politcals want everything opened up. Does this Acting Director also want to keep areas open even if law enforcement staffing continues to be cut (despite empty promises such as the "No Net Loss" nonsense), which are making some areas unsafe? Give me a break. I've had it with this Administration's practice of governing agencies with acting directors, who are easier to manipulate than real Directors who have at least some accountability through Senate confirmation. Our National Parks deserve better.
Honestly this whole thing makes me more sad than anything else. I have run visitor centers my entire life. What a missed opportunity NPS. At a time when everybody and their brother -- literally -- is loving nature, and many experiencing it for the first time.
Maybe the Regional Directors and Superintendents can use this as an opportunity to break with traditional and sometimes stale models of park operations.
Rather than retreat into the old standard playbook that has been around for generations perhaps we can look forward and try some new things. I think that is what Horace Albright meant when he challenged the NPS to not just become another government bureau.
Politicals come and go The mission stays the same but how we execute the mission can always be refreshed.
I don't know if I'm following you. So Visitors Centers should open and crammed with visitors? Indoor evening programs should be held regardless of the pandemic. Seasonal Interpreters should be crammed 2-3 to a housing unit to meet the demand, which was already typical during my career. I could see walks being held with a limited group size where appropriate. It is not like parks are turning visitors away. For instance, Glacier NP, mostly due to the east side being closed to honor the Blackfeet Tribes wishes, is seeing a 17% increase last month over the previous all time record last year. Did I read you statement incorrectly? What do you think we should be happening in the parks this summer?
At a certain point if you don't have the capacity to monitor and help direct visitors, there is a documented tendency for greater impacts, some long lasting, on Park resources...
Many of us have seen this before and due to all the complications of this time in history, I would opine this is not the time to attempt any radical change in management regimens...
Unfortunately, this particular politically motivated pick for Director is coming at the worst possible time, as it is evident that any experience she may have to apply toward appropriate management of our Heritage Resouces will be subsumed by her desire to serve her Republican masters...