Washington (AP) -A group of former national park superintendents asks the Trump government to close the parks to visitors in the event of a government closure.
Previous shutdowns in which parks remained open, led to vandalism iconic symbols, destroyed habitat for wild animals and endangered visitors, 40 former superintendents said in a letter to Interior Minister Doug Burgum.
A shutdown could now be even worse, since the parks are already charged by a reduction in employees by 24% and grave budget cuts, the former parking officers announced in their letter on Thursday. A secretarial order from Burgum, which leads parks to open castle, prompted the parks to neglect the garbage collection and other routine maintenance work, said the ex-office.
The guideline in April was issued when Burgum criticized for personnel cuts across the country, since Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency had distributed federal expenditure on state expenditure. Burgum indicated national parks to “remain open and accessible” despite the work cuts, and said that his department and the national park service are “sure that all Americans have the opportunity to visit and enjoy the estimated places of our nation”.
Democratic governor Jared Polis from Colorado asked the federal officials to keep national parks open and occupied on Friday or to create a mechanism for the state to achieve this. Colorado and other states in which national parks are gigantic tourists is evident for lobbies to keep them open during the past shutdowns.
But the former superintendents said that poorly occupied parks were a danger to the public and the parks themselves.
“Leaving parks during a closure with minimal – or no – Park -staffing is ruthless for the public for the public and is at risk of both visitors and parking resources,” wrote the former officials.
“National parks do not lead themselves. They are employees of the hardworking National Park Service that keep them safe, clean and accessible,” they said. “If there are not enough employees, visitors shouldn’t be.”
Park employees manage everything from the routine maintenance of buildings and because of educational programs that teach visitors how they can safely deal with nature and tours, they said. Long -term projects and research are also in danger during a shutdown, they said.
“We do not leave museums without curators or airports without air traffic controls and we should not leave our national parks open without NPS employees,” said Emily Thompson, managing director of the coalition to protect the America National Parks, which contributed to organizing the letter.
If there is a shutdown from Wednesday, “security must come first,” she added.
In an explanation of The Associated Press, Polis said that he was ready to operate “limited” state money to keep Rocky Mountain National Park open. It receives around 75% of the more than 1.6 million visits annually in national parks in Colorado, said officials.
“I ask the administration to prioritize the operations of the national parks that love so many people and are a great economic driver for our rural communities, especially during the leaf peeping season,” said Polis.
The inner department and the National Park Service rejected a comment on Friday.
During a 35-day closure of the government in 2018 and 2019, many national parks remained open to President Donald Trump in the first term. With constrained staff, however, problems quickly appeared: visitors cut modern ground into a sensitive floor, wore open parking gates while nobody watched, and an off-roader even mowed a legendary Joshua tree in California.
During a closure of 2013, the parking service under the former President Barack Obama refused millions of visitors to his more than 400 parks, national monuments and other locations. The service estimated that the shutdown led to more than 500 million US dollars of lost visitor expenditure nationwide. This also led to economic damage to Gateway communities that border national parks and are heavily dependent on the visitors they draw.
In the hope of minimizing the economic damage, the officials in Utah achieved an agreement with the federal officials to donate 1.7 million US dollars in 2013 to keep his national parks open. Arizona, Colorado, New York, South Dakota and Tennessee also donated money to keep the parks and keep open. Several states have completed similar offers when switching off 2018-2019.
State money was not used to keep national parks open in Montana because they are a federal responsibility, said the spokesman for the Republican governor Greg Gianforte, Kaitlin Price.
A spokesman for the democratic governor Katie Hobbs in Arizona, Liliana Soto, said that the state under the Trump government could not afford to open its national parks to which the Grand Canyon belong.
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Brown reported Billings, Montana.
