As you prepare to pay your federal income tax again this year, take special note of how much less you’re getting from your government for your money now.
The National Park Service (NPS) is newly damaged and diminished. A few weeks ago, if you wanted to visit the iconic Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming, you could do so anytime. It was your right as an American to enjoy the site at any hour you wanted to see it, whether that was at sunrise, during a day hike, at sunset, or for stagazing. Devils Tower was open 24 hours a day.
Now, Devils Tower is only open 7am to 5pm. That means no camping anymore, either.
At California’s Yosemite National Park, which many consider to be the queen of American national parks, visitors are now reportedly taking their own lives in their hands when they go on hikes. Ranger Alex Wild was fired in February. “I am the only EMT at my park and the first responder for any emergency,” he stated in a social media post. “This is flat-out reckless.”
Yosemite has also suspended its reservation system, a crucial means of keeping summer overcrowding at a sane level.
Visitor centers and museums are shuttering outright. At Arizona’s Saguaro National Park, Arkansas’ Hot Springs National Park, California’s Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, Nevada’s Great Basin National Park, and many others, visitor centers may not be open at all during your visit.
At Theodore Roosevelt National Park, named for the president (and Mount Rushmore figure) who doubled the number of national parks in the system, the North Unit visitor center is henceforth closed on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.
Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks have discontinued ranger tours—every single one of them.
Tracking closures and rapid changes at national parks
We can’t track all the ongoing changes that are being announced daily by the United States’ beleaguered national parks. We tried to keep up with the shifting entry requirements of states and countries around the world during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the flood of details was so overwhelming the task couldn’t be done effectively.
A blog called The National Park Experience, maintained by journalist Bram Reusen, is attempting to assemble a running list of closures. We wish Reusen godspeed with this Sisyphean work, and he’s doing a good job so far. But the site is only covering units with “national park” status—the heavy hitters like Yosemite, Yellowstone, and Acadia. Reusen isn’t surveying the hundreds of smaller units that are just as important to American heritage, including national monuments and national historic sites.
As reported by Reusen, parks across the country are yanking vital visitor services.
At Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, for example, guided tours of the cave have been axed. You can now only walk through on your own, without a guide to monitor your safety and explain what you’re seeing—and even the hours for self-guided explorations have been slashed.
Reusen notes as well that one of the most popular hikes in the most colorful section of Utah’s Arches National Park, the Fiery Furnace, is now off-limits completely.
As helpful as Reusen’s list is, it’s incredibly difficult to gather all the necessary information.
Houston’s Chron reports that some park units haven’t communicated their new staffing situations to the public at all. The news site published video of a previously unheard-of traffic jam waiting to enter Big Bend National Park in remote southwest Texas, following the Trump administration’s dismissal of a huge chunk of the park’s staff without advance warning or preparation.
As proof of how spotty the communication can be, Big Bend’s official National Park Service website does not explicitly warn visitors about the line of traffic that has been documented on social media. The site does tell visitors the park has seen a 50% increase in visitors since 2016.
Some seasonal park staff positions may be filled for the summer, but there are now fewer permanent workers to train seasonal employees. “[Permanent park rangers] provide the expertise, the institutional knowledge to ensure that protecting other resources is ongoing and that the parks are able to stay up and running,” Cary Dupuy, Texas regional director for the National Parks Conservation Association, told Chron.
How to find what Trump cuts have closed at a national park unit
Because the press has only partial information and the parks themselves cannot be relied upon to report full details under the circumstances, gathering info about closures at a national park unit will require extra steps. Since parks announce new closures by the day, the most reliable way to obtain current information is to seek it from a variety of sources.
Here’s what we recommend:
- For major national parks, check the reported list of closures at The National Park Experience site.
- Also check the park’s official NPS.gov page, especially if the site you want to visit is a smaller unit such as a national historic site or national monument. As in Big Bend’s case, the official government site may still not paint a full picture of the hassles that guests are experiencing, but the park service’s web pages have at least been good at listing the current opening hours at various facilities. Ranger programs at many parks have been eliminated even if you see them mentioned elsewhere on the NPS site, so the best way to find out which of those programs still exist is to check the Alerts in Effect on the main page for the park as well as the calendar in each Plan Your Visit section.
- Since there are far fewer rangers on hand to warn visitors about critical issues such as road closures, landslides, off-limits trails, and new dangers, you need to obtain advance warning of those life-and-death changes another way. Check the NPS’s Active Alerts at the parks you intend to visit (and pray to the ghost of Teddy Roosevelt that the info is up-to-date). Not all of these alerts have to do with staff cuts—trails crumble, roads wash out—and this list will not include scheduling changes such as reduced visitor center hours.
- Check the local newspaper for the park site you want to visit, because local press tends to do a decent job of covering the impact of Trump’s cuts on a more granular level. This can be tough in the age of paywalls; you’re unlikely to buy a subscription for a publication in a destination you’re only going to visit on vacation. But some outlets offer a way to buy access to a single news story.
- Check social media for reports from fellow travelers at the park you want to visit. Obviously, this is the most problematic and potentially unreliable source of information, but social media was the first place the Big Bend vehicle backup was reported. And this may be the only way to learn about new failures.
Do these things while planning a national park visit
Make sure you have reservations booked for anything that requires them. That includes self-guided walking tours at parks like Carlsbad Caverns. Slashed hours put more crowd pressure on the fewer open slots that remain.
And because we’re seeing those deeply concerning reports that trained medical response personnel have been removed from the parks, it’s now imperative that you minimize your risk while exploring the outdoors. At some parks, there are no longer rangers to warn you about safety concerns on the trails. Worse, if you have a run-in with a rolled ankle or a rattlesnake, there may not be anyone on-site to help you quickly. If there’s no phone signal, you might not be able to get ahold of anyone at all.
If you’re going on a hike or overnight camping at a national park, carry a satellite phone in case of emergency. Take out medical evacuation insurance. Carry plenty of water and food because visitor centers may not be open. And bring a roll of toilet paper and a clothespin for your nose—rangers across the country are flatly warning that there may not be enough staff to maintain restrooms.
In America’s national parks, visitors must now be prepared as if there were no government at all.
Think of that as you write your income tax check.