Across the nation’s beloved national parks this summer, skeleton crews — whittled down by the Trump administration’s reduction of the federal workforce — have struggled to keep trash from piling up, latrines from spilling over and injured hikers from perishing in the backcountry.
They’ve mostly succeeded, but it has been a struggle.
Now, as bickering politicians in Washington, D.C., threaten to shut the government down and furlough federal employees as soon as next week if a budget deal isn’t reached, 40 former stewards of the nation’s most remote and romantic landscapes have sent an “urgent appeal” to the White House.
If the government shuts down, close the national parks to prevent a free-for-all inside the gates.
Pointing to the strain the parks are already enduring since the new administration fired or bought out roughly 24% of the workforce, the retired superintendents — including those from Yosemite, Joshua Tree, and Sequoia and Kings Canyon — warned of chaos.
If the parks stay open with no employees to manage them, “these nascent issues from the summer season are sure to erupt,” the former superintendents wrote to Doug Burgum, secretary of the Department of the Interior, on Thursday. “Leaving parks even partially open to the public during a shutdown with minimal — or no — park staffing is reckless and puts both visitors and park resources at risk.”
Unlike many federal agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health, whose once obscure and mundane day-to-day operations have become flash points in the nation’s toxic and polarizing culture war, the national parks remain a beloved refuge: a place where Americans of all stripes can unplug, exhale and escape.
In 2024 the parks set an attendance record with over 331 million visitors; that’s nearly two and a half times the number of people (136 million) who attended professional football, baseball, basketball and hockey games combined.
It’s not hard to understand the appeal. Exhausted by the bickering on cable news and social media feeds? Go climb Half Dome in Yosemite, or stroll among the giant trees in Sequoia, or camp beneath the stars in Joshua Tree.
But if the parks stay open with nobody around to maintain them, that cleansing experience will turn nasty the moment a bathroom door opens, according to the retired superintendents.
In previous shutdowns stemming from budget disputes or the COVID-19 pandemic, facilities inside the parks deteriorated at an alarming rate.
Unauthorized visitors left human feces in rivers, painted graffiti on once pristine cliffs, harassed wild animals and left the toilets looking like “crime scenes,” according to a ranger who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution.
“It’s just scary how bad things can get when places are abandoned with nobody watching,” she said.
In an interview Thursday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said a government shutdown was still “avoidable” despite sharp divisions ahead of Wednesday’s deadline to pass a funding bill.
“I’m a big believer that there’s always a way out,” the South Dakota Republican said. “And I think there are off-ramps here, but I don’t think that the negotiating position, at least at the moment, that the Democrats are trying to exert here is going to get you there.”
Thune said Democrats are going to have to “dial back” their demands, which include immediately extending health insurance subsidies and reversing the healthcare policies in the massive tax bill that Republicans passed over the summer. Absent that, Thune said, “we’re probably plunging forward toward the shutdown.”
After a shutdown in late 2018 and early 2019, park rangers in Death Valley returned to find mounds of feces and what they jokingly called “toilet paper flowers” scattered across the desert floor.
At Joshua Tree, officials found about 24 miles of unauthorized new trails carved across the desert by off-road vehicles, along with some of the park’s namesake trees toppled.
In the absence of park staff, local climbers volunteered to keep the bathrooms clean and stocked with toilet paper, and gently tried to persuade rowdy visitors to put out illegal fires and pick up their trash.
Some complied right away, climber Rand Abbott told The Times in 2019, but “70% of the people I’m running into are extremely rude,” he said. “I had my life threatened two times. It’s crazy in there right now.”
People weren’t the only unruly guests moving in and making themselves at home.
At Point Reyes National Seashore, along the Marin County coast, officials had to close the road to popular Drakes Beach during the shutdown. The absence of humans created an ideal opportunity for about 100 elephant seals to set up a colony, taking over the beach, a parking lot and a visitor center.
The seals didn’t just poop everywhere, they threw a full-scale bacchanal. As far as the eye could see, enormous, blubbery beasts — males can reach 16 feet long and weigh up to 7,000 pounds — were rolling in the sand and mating in broad daylight.
Females, which can weigh up to a ton themselves, wound up giving birth to something like 40 new pups. When the park reopened, flustered officials had little recourse but to open a public viewing area at a safe distance and send employees — primly referred to as “docents” — to explain what was happening on the once serene seashore.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
