Closed campgrounds, Sunday closures of National Park System units, and 900 permanent positions that will go unfilled are just some of the latest details of how the National Park Service is responding to the ongoing federal budget sequestration.
* At Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota, officials said the 64-site Elk Mountain Campground would remain closed. That move eliminates the need for two summer employees to maintain the campground and interpretive rangers to present evening campfire programs, park officials said.
"The sequestration has forced us to make some tough decisions that will impact visitors to Wind Cave National Park," said Superintendent Vidal Davila. "People will have fewer opportunities to tour Wind Cave, the park's primary resource, as a result of less staff."
The 5 percent budget cut also will lead to a reduction in invasive plant control at the park, maintenance of fences and building repairs, science and research activities, natural resource monitoring, and wildlife management programs.
* In Alabama, Park Service officials said the sequestration forces them to close the Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site, Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site, and the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail on Sundays until further notice.
* At Voyageurs National Park in Minnesota, the cuts could lead to delays in snow plowing this spring on the Rainy Lake Ice Road, the Kab-Ash Ice Road, and the entrance to the Rainy Lake Visitor Center as park officials look to reduce fuel consumption and overtime pay.
Park officials say that when snowfall occurs before or after regular park operating hours, snow removal will be delayed until personnel report for normal duty hours. If significant snowfall occurs during weekends the Rainy Lake Visitor Center may be closed.
* At Badlands National Park in South Dakota, the 5 percent budget cut equates to a 24 percent reduction in seasonal hires for positions that support interpretive talks and walks, school programs, custodial services, road, fence and building repair and maintenance, science and research activities, natural resource monitoring, and search and rescue operations.
"The seasonal workforce is the heart of the park," said Superintendent Eric Brunnemann. "This sort of loss cuts deeply into our ability to serve the public, something we are dedicated to doing every day."
* Across the entire park system, 900 permanent positions that currently are vacant will not be filled, Park Service Director Jon Jarvis said Friday in a memo to the entire agency.
"In an organization with 15,000 permanent employees, 900 vacant jobs have a profound effect. Every activity will be affected. Some impacts will be immediate, others will accumulate over time," Director Jarvis said. "Fewer law enforcement rangers and USPP officers mean lower levels of protection and longer response times. Fewer maintenance personnel mean that parks may have to close facilities completely when breakdowns occur – and that the $12 billion maintenance backlog will continue to grow."
The memo did not, however, mention how many vacant positions the Park Service has been carrying in recent months.
Director Jarvis said the agency, system-wide, would see seasonal hirings drop by more than 1,000 employees, would furlough some staff in the U.S. Park Police, and would ban all non-essential travel.
"'Essential' travel includes only the following: travel that is critical for health and safety, and travel to attend training required to retain current, mission critical certifications – such as contracting warrants. International travel is cancelled," wrote the director.
Director Jarvis also noted that the most recent continuing resolution to fund the federal government expires March 27.
"We do not know how, or if, the debate on a new continuing resolution will impact the remainder of FY13 or the FY14 budget negotiations. For now, please assume that we will operate for the remainder of the year at the 95 percent spending level envisioned in your sequestration plans," he wrote.
Comments
The NPS has a choice, hire less or pay its employees less.
My belief is, and has been, that there is much waste in the government, from the $500 toilet seat to not turning the lights out when you leave the room and this budget cut was a long time in the making.
Sad to see it hit the park service, an area that I favor, but it had to happen, it just doesn't need to happen with a political slant, like closing the White House tours.
It is the American way to improvise or make due and if someone in management is creative we won't need to see the parks closed on Sunday or some closed altogether.
Here is a link to what seems to be a well balanced article about political pressures imposed upon the superintendent of Yellowstone. Once more, I note that all the pressures seem to stem from that good old root cause of $$$$$$$$$$ and a chorus of cut, cut, cut, cut --- but don't cut anything that will affect ME:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/yellowstone-gets-real-about-budget-cuts/2013/03/10/fdc3e5f4-868f-11e2-9d71-f0feafdd1394_story.html?hpid=z3
There was no "$500 toilet seat", ...jus'sayin' :-]
Ahh, but there was a $70,000 privy!
/2008/06/ribbon-cutting-planned-70-000-bio-toilet-mount-rainier-national-park
The Washington Post article on the "sequester" in Yellowstone was excellent. These are real people being hurt both in the public and private sector. It is unfortunate that the cuts did not start in Congress ( perhaps that is where the furlough's should start), and the so called waste of tax payer dollars did not start with the oil company subsides, etc, before hardworking lower income people and small business people were asked to take the hit.
I and hundreds, maybe even thousands, of mountain bikers would be happy to serve on a volunteer bicycle trail patrol to monitor conditions in the NPS front country and backcountry as a substitute for any ranger FTEs that are lost to the sequester and cannot do this service.
The International Mountain Bicycling Association already has a National Bike Patrol:
http://www.imba.com/nmbp
So does the East Bay Regional Park District in California. This was the original bicycle trail patrol in the United States. It was featured in Smithsonian magazine many years ago. I've been a volunteer patroller for 20 years and we do a huge amount of observing and reporting work and provide a large multiplier effect for the paid staff. I've done everything from search and rescue to responding to crime scenes to evacuating fire zones to checking on motor vehicles within park boundaries. We do this work day and night:
http://www.parkpatrol.org/
Of course the NPS would have to grit its teeth and overcome the predictable objections from PEER, NPCA, CPSR, etc., etc., about "wheeled locusts." :-) They'd probably offer to do the work themselves, but our experience with our hiking patrol is that the distances are too long for the hikers to be very effective.
My guess is the NPS will adopt some kind of aerial drone technology. (There's talk about the Forest Service doing this in the South San Juan Wilderness in southern Colorado. This huge Wilderness was down to a single ranger in 2011.) But a drone can't explain to a camper not to cut boughs, nor can it pick up litter. These are the kind of things we do.
I agree with Ron Mackie that the Washington Post article was good. One problem is that the sequester happened quickly—most people thought Congress and the President would reach a deal to avoid it—and it takes time for any institution, public or private, to make adjustments to budget losses. Even the bicycle patrol idea I mention above could not be implemented overnight; it would probably take a year.