National Parks will remain partially open during the shutdown: what to know
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The Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota, circa 1960. Photo: Harold M. Lambert/Getty Image
America's national parks will remain partially open during the government shutdown, per the Department of Interior's contingency plan.
The big picture: "Park roads, lookouts, trails and open-air memorials will generally remain accessible to visitors," according to the department.
- Staff will be maintained to address "health and safety" for these sites, meaning restrooms will be open and trash will be collected.
Driving the news: The government shutdown began at midnight after Congress failed to authorize a short-term spending stopgap in time.
State of play: The contingency plan says that areas may close if visitor access becomes a "safety, health or resource protection issue."
Zoom out: The current plan for parks appears to address in part the concerns of park employees and advocates, who criticized the decision to leave parks open during the last shutdown in 2019, also under President Trump.
- Aside from 2019, the parks typically close during a government shutdown.
What they're saying: The National Parks Conservation Association urged the National Park Service on Tuesday to close its parks ahead of the shutdown.
- "A government shutdown would leave our parks understaffed and vulnerable, putting our most cherished places and millions of visitors at risk," the advocacy organization said in a press release.
40 former NPS superintendents this week also called for the government to close the parks in a letter issued to Doug Burgum, the interior secretary.
- "If sufficient staff aren't there, visitors shouldn't be either," the former employees wrote.
- "National parks don't run themselves. It is hard-working National Park Service employees that keep them safe, clean and accessible."
Zoom out: The NPS is already stretched thin.
- More than 750 U.S. national park workers have been fired amid the Trump administration's purge of federal employees, per an unofficial tally shared with Axios by a park ranger in March.
What happened to national parks during the 2019 shutdown
Flashback: In the last shutdown, in 2019, the government closed for 35 days, during which time the national parks remained open with a "skeleton crew" of workers, the NPCA described.
- The NPCA said that "the damage that occurred" then "took many parks months, some years, to recover from."
- The group also described much of the well-documented damage as "irreparable" —wrecked park infrastructure from illegal off-roading, stolen artifacts, vandalized prehistoric petroglyphs and chopped down trees.
Editor's note: This story has been updated with information from the Department of the Interior.
