A government shutdown would have wide-ranging impacts, from the Centers for Disease Control’s ability to respond to a brutal flu season to Federal Emergency Management Agency’s ongoing recovery efforts for recent natural disasters. The Trump administration, though, is zeroed in on preventing one terrible outcome of a government shutdown: conspicuously closed national parks.
Closing national parks is highly visible and screws up people’s vacations—and as the White House tries to avoid blame for a shutdown, those are scary prospects. So:
The department “will still allow limited access wherever possible” to national parks, refuges and other public lands, Swift added, including on roads that have been cleared of snow. “Wilderness type restrooms . . . will remain open,” too, she wrote. But “services that require staffing and maintenance such as campgrounds, full service restrooms, and concessions will not be operating.”
So you can go into the park, you just can’t use a “full service restroom” or visitors center or concession—unless, under certain circumstances, that concession is operated by a private company. There are … problems with this approach. Park staff do some rather important things to keep visitors safe from the parks and the parks safe from visitors.
John Garder, senior director of budget and appropriations for the National Parks Conservation Association, called the prospect “as frightening as it is bewildering, and it raises important policy and legal questions.”
“Even if there were a law enforcement presence, the safety and integrity of park resources would be at risk, not to mention the safety of visitors and the quality of their experience, if park personnel weren’t there to ensure proper management and oversight,” Garder said.
Sure, people could be at risk, to say nothing of using “wilderness type restrooms.” But what really matters here is that the nation does not see images of barriers at park entrances and blame Donald Trump for it.