Park bosses say they’re running visitor centers and even cleaning bathrooms as remaining staff try to keep sites open
Across the US’s fabled but overstretched national parks, unusual scenes are playing out this summer following budget cuts by Donald Trump’s administration. Archeologists are staffing ticket booths, ecologists are covering visitor centers and the superintendents of parks are even cleaning the toilets.
The National Park Service (NPS), responsible for maintaining cherished wildernesses and sites of cultural importance from Yellowstone to the Statue of Liberty, has lost a quarter of its permanent staff since Trump took office in January, with the administration seeking to gut the service’s budget by a third.
But the administration has also ordered parks to remain open and accessible to the public, meaning the NPS has had to scramble remaining staff into public-facing roles to maintain appearances to the crowds of visitors. This has meant much of the behind-the-scenes work to protect endangered species, battle invasive plants, fix crumbling infrastructure or plan for the future needs of the US’s trove of natural wonders has been jettisoned.
I’m not sure they should be trying to survive. Perhaps they shouldn’t try their hardest to keep these magnificent parks running, they shouldn’t work unpaid overtime or find creative new revenue streams.
Maybe they should demonstrate what happens to all your nice stuff when you don’t maintain it. You lose it. And then you find out that it’s way more expensive to rebuild and restore things after you’ve let them deteriorate.
That’s the goal. Point out that no one’s using the parks, the facilities are in disrepair and an eyesore, and then sell them off, either literally or least by selling oil/mining/gas/timber leases.