Why conservationists want Utah national parks to close during shutdown
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Arches National Park in May. Photo: Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Utah's national parks will stay open during the government shutdown — but with skeleton crews and reduced services.
Friction point: Conservationists and experts in park management say the Trump administration's approach risks irreparable damage to scenic wonders.
What they're saying: Leaving parks open during past shutdowns has left "habitats destroyed and visitor safety jeopardized," dozens of former park superintendents wrote in a letter last week to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.
- Past heads at Bryce Canyon and Capitol Reef national parks signed the letter, joining objections from the National Parks Conservation Association.
The intrigue: This shutdown poses bigger risks than past ones, the superintendents said, because the parks are already weakened by President Trump's intermittent hiring freezes and layoffs.
- The National Park Service did not immediately return Axios' request for comment.
Case in point: Before the shutdown, understaffed entry stations at Zion were projected to cost the park $2 million in lost gate fees this year, the New York Times reported in August.
- Now the Trump administration is telling park officials to use entry fees to fund park operations during the shutdown, per guidance released Tuesday.
- Between the lines: After a 35-day shutdown that started in December 2018, the Government Accountability Office ruled that such money-moving was illegal.
The latest: State officials have vowed to step in to provide enough "strategic state support" to keep the parks open, as they did during Trump's first term.
Yes, but: The federal government didn't repay about $1 million Utah spent to keep the parks open during a 16-day shutdown in October 2013 — and tourism losses still cost communities around the parks about $17 million.
- The state also wasn't repaid the $66,000 spent in 2018–2019, when the NPS kept some services in place.
Flashback: With minimal staffing that winter, parks descended into what one Yosemite visitor described as a "free-for-all."
- At Arches, unsupervised visitors damaged an entrance gate to break into the park, left feces outside a bathroom and cut trails into a permit-only area, PBS reported.
- During a shorter shutdown earlier in 2018, a poacher killed a pregnant elk at Zion amid "scaled-back security," the St. George Spectrum reported.
Zoom out: By the end of the shutdown in 2019, rangers found Joshua trees felled at the eponymous park, artifacts stolen from Civil War battlefields and trails left by off-road vehicles on meadows at Rocky Mountain National Park and fragile lake beds in Death Valley.