Re: National Parks

1

They supposedly backed off on some of the park cuts after stories like this one came out. It's not clear yet if they did anything other than lie about that, though.


Posted by: fake accent | Link to this comment | 02-26-25 9:42 AM
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I know they're National parks, but I wonder if state intervention would make sense. If California hired a bunch of people and sent them over there, would the NPS staff there object at this point?


Posted by: Nathan J. Williams | Link to this comment | 02-26-25 9:54 AM
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Several random thoughts about it...

1. Selfishly, I'm glad I got to go to Yosemite 5+ years ago and at least see the essentials.

2. It's in a blue state, so of course, Republicans don't care. The best-known national parks in a red state are probably Yellowstone and Big Bend, and those states are likewise unlikely to flip in the Electoral College or Congress. I'm kind of curious about how parks in purple states are doing. What's the most important one, Gettysburg? A historic/battle thing is very different from a nature preserve.

3. Since it is in a blue state, I wonder what California can/would do. Contra 2, anything as positive as seamlessly providing more staff to the NPS probably can't happen, but they could probably do some stuff to reduce the harm. Can they close the roads leading to it? Make certain bad conduct against state law? Probably not, but you never know. This could get adversarial.

4. If it meant that the park was shutting down for the duration, I wouldn't even mind too much. Obviously it would suck for the people who were trying to visit right now and the local businesses that depend on them, but it would be harmless compared to lots of other things going on right now and might even do some good, giving nature a respite. Of course, that's not what'll happen; reduced staffing just means the same number of guests with less oversight, which means more people figuratively and literally shitting on the walls.

5. I briefly enjoy the thought of bears eating the wall-shitters until I humorlessly remember that bears who do that get killed later. I can at least enjoy the thought of more people like that falling into the hot springs at Yellowstone.

6. The big picture is even worse. There's a good chance that this kind of damage is irreversible. Sorry to end on a sad note...


Posted by: Cyrus | Link to this comment | 02-26-25 10:23 AM
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4

Pennsylvania has a regular national forest with no history hardly at all.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 02-26-25 10:27 AM
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I wouldn't get too focused on Yosemite and blue state/red state parochialism, it looks like the cuts are across the country. A more recent story. But it might turn out that, say, southern Civil War battlefield parks get extra staff wearing gray uniforms.


Posted by: fake accent | Link to this comment | 02-26-25 10:31 AM
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The workforce structure of the land management agencies makes the impacts of these firings particularly severe, especially if they also included seasonal workers. States don't have any kind of jurisdiction within the parks so there's not much they can do to mitigate it, unfortunately.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 02-26-25 10:36 AM
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7

Great Smokey is half in North Carolina. Shenandoah is in Virginia. That's a lot of real estate in two purple states.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 02-26-25 10:39 AM
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8

Last year I spent two days in Monongahela National Forest (West Virginia) and never saw a federal employee. Or a bathroom.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 02-26-25 10:40 AM
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9

Not that I was expecting one. I was in a wilderness area.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 02-26-25 10:46 AM
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10

There are hundreds of NPS units; every state has at least one. The impacts of this go well beyond the handful of big-name parks, though they are particularly severe there.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 02-26-25 10:48 AM
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11

In the kinds of political systems the American Right prefers, the interior ministry is often where you find the secret police.


Posted by: fake accent | Link to this comment | 02-26-25 10:55 AM
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"wall-shitters"?


Posted by: Barry Freed | Link to this comment | 02-26-25 11:01 AM
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13

5 of course


Posted by: Barry Freed | Link to this comment | 02-26-25 11:02 AM
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14

The long term game is to sell off the parks to billionaires, yeah?

Acadia National Park is in that congressional district in Maine that gave its electoral vote to Trump.


Posted by: Spike | Link to this comment | 02-26-25 11:27 AM
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Forest Service, not Park Service, but here's a person whose position was funded by the state, not the feds, and still got fired.

https://bsky.app/profile/murray.senate.gov/post/3liuhxyoimc2d


Posted by: md 20/400 | Link to this comment | 02-26-25 11:53 AM
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14. And Acadia will just revert to the Rockefeller family!


Posted by: md 20/400 | Link to this comment | 02-26-25 11:55 AM
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6: The freedom trail is an historic park. The visitors center in Faneuil Hall is operated by the Park Service, but there's a lot of private property. I supposed that if you got stabbed standing on the red line and fell over on the sidewalk, the Commonwealth could prosecute the battery.


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 02-26-25 11:57 AM
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6: "States don't have any kind of jurisdiction within the parks"

I mean, States have as much jurisdiction as the Federal government will stop them from taking. I am thinking that states should be doing things that under normal circumstances would be hugely problematic, like literally sending in their own staff.


Posted by: Nathan J. Williams | Link to this comment | 02-26-25 12:28 PM
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I agree. Observing the old norms is just time and effort wasted.


Posted by: Megan | Link to this comment | 02-26-25 12:42 PM
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No state park system has enough excess capacity to take over operations of a major national park, even if it were legal, which it isn't. There's a vast difference in scale between these systems, even in a state like California. What they could do is close all the roads going on, but that's sure going to piss of a lot of people.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 02-26-25 1:10 PM
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21

Texas ran its own border patrol missions with the Texas National Guard while Biden was president. It's maybe not the best example.


Posted by: fake accent | Link to this comment | 02-26-25 1:43 PM
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22

The unfortunate truth is that when the federal government does something it's usually because states have tried and failed to do it themselves.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 02-26-25 1:48 PM
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National Parks are actually a bit of an exception to that; the federal government came up with the concept first and the states copied it. There it's really more of a capacity issue.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 02-26-25 1:49 PM
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24

That's Adirondack Park erasure!


Posted by: Unfoggetarian: "Pause endlessly, then go in" (9) | Link to this comment | 02-26-25 1:53 PM
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25

There are three sides to that.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 02-26-25 1:53 PM
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Okay, there were a few forerunners.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 02-26-25 1:54 PM
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27

I don't know the details but during some government shutdowns Utah paid for the parks to have staff to stay open. Having five national parks means that a lot of money is in tourism.


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 02-27-25 10:09 AM
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Interesting! Apparently the federal government gives states the option of funding parks some other way during (formal) shutdowns.


Posted by: fake accent | Link to this comment | 02-27-25 10:51 AM
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