As the government shutdown drags on for nearly three weeks, national parks remain open to the public, but are not collecting entrance fees, raising alarms about the long-term implications of funding operations with limited fee reserves.
The National Park Service has authorized parks to stay open using recreation fees collected at entrances or campgrounds before the shutdown began. That pool of money is being used to cover basic services like trash collection and restroom maintenance.
However, Emily Douce, deputy vice president for government affairs at the National Parks Conservation Association, said that’s not what those funds are for.
“They are for restoring campgrounds or restoring trails or doing deferred maintenance on facilities,” she said. “That was what they're intended for.”
Roughly a quarter of park units charge entrance fees under The Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act, totaling about $350 million in revenue each year. Units that collect fees keep about 80% of their revenue, with the rest distributed to sites that don’t collect fees.
Fee dollars paid by visitors have supported bear-resistant garbage cans at Rocky Mountain National Park, new concrete walkways at Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico, improvements to the popular Canyon Overlook Trail at Zion National Park and guided ranger hikes at Tonto National Monument in Arizona.
The National Park Service also used fee revenue to keep parks open for part of the last government shutdown, which began in Dec. 2018 and lasted for 35 days.
“We are taking this extraordinary step to ensure that parks are protected, and that visitors can continue to access parks with limited basic services,” said Daniel Smith, the deputy director at the time.
But the Government Accountability Office later found it was illegal to redirect fee dollars for this purpose.
Douce also worries that diverting these funds toward basic operations, while simultaneously not collecting new fees, could delay or jeopardize future projects and maintenance.
“It’s a double-edged sword,” she said.
Through public records, the NPCA found that the government spent $10 million in fee dollars to keep parks open for part of the last shutdown. The pace at which the pool is being depleted now is unclear, but the organization estimates that keeping the parks open could cost as much as $1 million a day.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Boise State Public Radio, Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Northern Colorado, KANW in New Mexico, Colorado Public Radio and KJZZ in Arizona as well as NPR, with support from affiliate newsrooms across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Eric and Wendy Schmidt.
