National Park Peril

Ever since the 2019 government shutdown, the overall economy has been struggling, resulting in a reduced GDP. For example, national parks have been understaffed and lacking in manpower, and the Trump administration has kept national parks open to the public, worsening the situation. Nothing bad should happen, right?

It was not looking good for all national parks. National parks have been facing a severe shortage of workers, specifically 24% of the workforce, leading to complete chaos released upon the once-beloved refuge. 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.”

As stated, without enough rangers, there will not be enough order, and without order, there will no longer be a national park. Why, though? “Past shutdowns in which gates remained open with limited staff have hurt our parks,” former park superintendents had written in a letter to the Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum, and indeed, they were not wrong. In previous events, such as budget disputes or the COVID-19 pandemic, the park’s quality had deteriorated at an alarming rate; there was destruction everywhere, one more severe than the last. For example, public bathrooms now look like a “crime scene”, as rangers described; there were human feces left in the rivers, painted graffiti on once pristine cliffs, and harassed wild animals. There were even vehicles that illegally drove off the road, harming precious dry lake beds in Death Valley National Park, leaving scars that can take decades to heal. “It’s just scary how bad things can get when places are abandoned with nobody watching,” a ranger has said. Thankfully, in the absence of the workers, some kindhearted visitors had volunteered to at least keep the bathroom clean and kindly persuade other visitors to refrain from littering on the forest floor.

Humans are not the only ones causing havoc across parks. At Point Reyes National Seashore, along the Marin County coast, the park had to close the road to popular Drakes Beach during the shutdown. However, unexpectedly, closing parks didn’t seem to solve the issue, and instead, it attracted uninvited guests. Seeing the former bustling seashore with its visitors suddenly gone, about 100 elephant seals set up a colony on the beach, a parking lot, and a visitor center. The issue was no easy feat, though, as they had left their droppings all over the place. They were also reproducing at a concerning rate that would have required more than just a few men to clean.

The chaos that has unfolded has led to further chaos, causing 35 former park superintendents to write a letter to the Trump administration to convince them to shut down national parks and stop the damage that has already scarred them. All that people can do now is   wait, hoping for a proper solution to stop it all.