My shadow at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.
Update: Resistance Rangers are calling for a protest on Saturday 3/1 at noon or at your convenience. Find a park near you, make a sign, hand out flyers, share on social media.
You have to see the Grand Canyon in person. Photography and film—even IMAX—don’t convey the grandness. Around 5 million people visited the Grand Canyon last year, generating about $1 billion in economic activity. One of my stupid pleasures in life is counting how many different state license plates I see while driving near the park, and it’s always more than I expect. Another used to be checking the nationalities of the seasonal workers in national park dining rooms. Turns out, seeing such a wonder is worth a lot to the world.
But visiting parks this year will likely be much less fun s#itty, as toilets will once again be closed or clogged. Seasonal positions for serving food, making beds and picking up trash during busy months were originally on the chopping block, but the maladministration appears to have backtracked. But even if they hire, many positions will go unfilled due to the uncertainty, delays and chaos already caused.
The permanent loss of staff will do much more long term damage to the parks than previous temporary shutdowns. We already live in a dangerous time, when folks drop dead hiking from unprecedented heat, gigafires burn over 1 million acres at a time, invasive species replace endemic flora & fauna, and vandalism ruins sacred native sites. Many of the permanent staff, who work on these problems at Grand Canyon and elsewhere, have been fired. So, all those problems and many more will get worse. Understand, fatalities will rise needlessly in our national parks this year.
Arizona and Nevada both benefit from Grand Canyon tourism, by bike, bus, car, foot, helicopter, mule, plane, raft and train. Phoenix is a 3.5 hour drive, and Vegas is 4.5 hours to the south rim. That’s a lot of flights, hotels, meals, entertainment and rental cars potentially canceled.
But everyone knows about the famous national parks. What folks fail to appreciate is that the national park service is also responsible for staffing hundreds of other parks across the country. Here’s my list of 25 parks directly affected by the NPS cuts in Arizona alone.
- Canyon de Chelly NM,
- Casa Grande Ruins NM,
- Chiricahua NM,
- Coronado N Mem,
- Fort Bowie NHS,
- Grand Canyon NP,
- Hubbell Trading Post NHS,
- Montezuma Castle NM,
- Navajo NM,
- Organ Pipe Cactus NM,
- Petrified Forest NP,
- Pipe Spring NM,
- Saguaro NP,
- Sunset Crater Volcano NM,
- Tonto NM,
- Tumacácori NHP,
- Tuzigoot NM,
- Walnut Canyon NM,
- Wupatki NM,
- Santa Cruz Valley and
- Yuma Crossing NHAs,
- Butterfield Overland,
- de Anza and
- the Old Spanish NHTs.
- Arizona NST too.
Folks spend years planning trips to places like these, buying RVs, hiking boots, hats and passes. And our country has invested for years in preserving these places, so our children can learn Biology, Ecology, Geology, History, and Native American Culture first hand, while vacationing with their families or on special trips with their schools and community groups.
At #10 above, a young ranger engaged her campers under the evening sky and challenged us to think about the climate crisis, the threatened species living there with us, and what we should do. Many promising young rangers move quickly from park to park, before they find more permanent positions. Sadly, many of these are the jobs that were recently eliminated: the cost, incalculable.
Did you know that Pennsylvania has 19 national park units, with over 7 million visitors bringing in over $600 million yearly? Georgia brings in almost as much money from its 11 national park units. Michigan earns over $400 million, and Wisconsin earns almost $100 million from its parks. But that’s all dwarfed by North Carolina, which brings in almost $4 billion dollars in national parks tourism from its 10 national park units from the Great Smoky Mountains to the Outer Banks.
But firing folks who keep bears away from campsites, prevent invasive species from ruining fishing holes, put out campfires, maintain roads, pick up trash, pump out toilets, stop idiots from breaking arches, and protect native cultural artifacts, reduces the quality of our national park experiences, often permanently. Often full-time employees will make a few smart decisions to save millions of dollars of long-term damage, so eliminating them is both short-sighted and counterproductive. Understaffed parks often lack the staff to collect fees for admission, parking and campgrounds, further reducing the effectiveness of “cuts”.
Many of these parks are in small towns in remote places, where tourism is a huge part of their local economy. Local hotels and restaurants play up the park themes, knowing that happy tourists pay and tip more. But if parks are closed on certain days, or have reduced hours, or their campgrounds or park restaurants or stores are closed, or if tours are canceled, or if toilets overflow, then visitors will cancel their reservations. And that small restaurant on the long drive there will have to lay off staff and might go out of business.
This is February, when national parks visitation is very low, but from Memorial Day through Labor Day, visits normally soar. Already, enough damage has been done to delay upcoming reservations, reduce service and change trip plans. The economic consequences of firing permanent NPS staff, when there was already a staffing shortage, will become more obvious as the year rolls on, and the downstream effects on local businesses, unemployment and lost tax revenue will continue after that.
America has 63 national parks, but don’t underestimate the full scope of the NPS. There are 370 other national parks units, plus well over 100 affiliated parks, national heritage areas, and both historic and scenic trails co-managed by the National Park Service. They protect rivers, waterways, lakes and wetlands. They protect forests, wilderness, geologic features, and national monuments. They preserve our most important history and many cultural sites, from the Old North Bridge to the Golden Gate, from the massacre at Sand Creek to the 1913 Massacre, from the Giant Sequoias to the Statue of Liberty.
The NPS employs over 20,000, including historians, scientific researchers, Native American experts, preservationists, educators, planners, partnership coordinators, ecologists, wildlife experts, curators, rangers, battlefield interpreters, facilities managers & workers, IT, map makers, grave tenders, and folks who serve food and clean toilets. 1,000 were recently fired, undeservedly, without sufficient justification. This avoidable NPS crisis is growing from a temporary national disgrace to a long-lasting national tragedy, diminishing America greatly.
