"It's Bizarro Land" - New Interior Protocol Makes Parks Harder To Close, May Break Federal Laws

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This is the first year parks have remained open during a government shutdown, thanks to a Department of the Interior contingency plan. There’s a lot of mystery surrounding this new protocol—few know who signed the order in the first place or why it was implemented—but it’s reasonable to assume that the Interior didn’t want to close the parks and risk a PR fiasco like the Obama administration faced in 2013. Now, 20 days into the latest shutdown, the Trump administration is facing its own PR crisis, with reports of parks—minus most of their full-time staff—getting trashed by visitors and their poop.

The Interior’s solution to keep the park open during the partial government shutdown is to allocate entrance fee funds to pay the staff. (The House of Natural Resources is investigating whether this is even legal.) “Now, they’re using this money for basic operations like picking up trash, instead of deferred maintenance,” says the ranger. “We were never allowed to use fee money for basic operations. They’re basically dipping into money that may have projects that are already tied to it. If that money isn’t replaced, it won’t be there [in the future].”

The directive to allocate entrance funds to keep Joshua Tree open came as a surprise, says Seth Zaharias, co-owner of Joshua Tree climbing service Cliffhanger Guides, who’s been a local resident for 20 years and spearheaded volunteer clean-up efforts in the park during the shutdown. (When reached for comment, the NPS referred Outside to their press release.) And now, thanks to new protocol that requires a day’s notice, a press release, and DOI approval, it will be even harder to close national parks at all. “Any closure of anything now has to be cleared by the Department of the Interior,” the anonymous ranger says. “Before any closures can take place, 24 hours of notice needs to be given to the Department along with a draft of the press release, unless it’s a true emergency.”

He received a memo this week from one of his superiors that read: “Interviews should be avoided during the lapse in appropriations except in cases of safety, emergencies, etc.... Please continue providing information as appropriate in health and safety of parks... will distribute further guidance in the coming days for parks to update basic website alerts and social media updates as there are changes to park accessibility and available services. “While we know that parks are likely to be asked to speculate if and how this new policy will affect their day to day and long term operations, please do not speculate on these questions.”

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https://www.outsideonline.com/2381406/joshua-tree-remain-open