Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s decision to keep the national parks open without adequate staffing during the government shutdown shows the failure of his responsibility to conserve them unimpaired, for future generations. The National Park Service Organic Act statutory language states: “The Secretary shall administer the park(s)…to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.” The operative words here are “the Secretary shall conserve the parks, …by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”
In 1995, during the Clinton administration, Destry Jarvis served as assistant director of the National Park Service. Congress failed to pass an appropriation, and Republican House Majority Leader Newt Gingrich forced a federal government shutdown over disputes involving health care, the debt ceiling and the total budget proposal. Within the Department of Interior, Secretary Bruce Babbitt, Assistant Secretary George Frampton, Park Service Director Roger Kennedy and Destry Jarvis unanimously agreed that, during the shutdown, the national parks would have to be closed, with a few rare exceptions. They determined that the statutory mandate to “conserve…unimpaired” surpasses the statutory purpose of “enjoyment” when park staff could be at work to protect both park wildlife and visitors along with other resources.
In 2013, Jon Jarvis was the director of the agency, and when Congress again failed to pass an appropriation, he looked to these same mandates. With his three decades of experience in the field, he knew that if the parks remained open, without the rangers as onsite stewards, he would be violating the law and putting resources and visitors at risk. The only option was to close the parks so that when the shutdown was over, the agency’s resources would remain “unimpaired.” Jon Jarvis’s decision was politically unpopular, however, and the parks’ closure generated thousands of media reports, fueled by gateway community concerns, canceled vacations and disappointed visitors. He was called before Congress and grilled for five hours on his decision, accused of closing the parks for political points. But he held his ground, saying that his decision was not influenced by politics, but was consistent with his agency’s mandate to protect park resources for future generations.
In 1995 and again in 2013, when the shutdowns ended and the parks reopened, the resources were unimpaired and available for the enjoyment of visitors. But that will not be the case this time since the parks have been left open throughout the shutdown. This is not mere hypothesis; the last time Congress shut down the government, in 2018-2019, Interior Secretary David Bernhart also left the parks open and without staffing. During that time, visitors defaced ancient petroglyphs at Big Bend National Park in Texas, cut down Joshua trees at California’s Joshua Tree National Park, and drove vehicles off-road on sensitive soils at Death Valley. Some of this damage is irreparable. Visitor enjoyment was equally impacted, and now people are once again reporting overflowing or locked toilets and the explosion of “toilet paper blooms” around the buildings. This serves neither conservation nor public enjoyment.
The Interior Secretary has a complex responsibility that includes overseeing resource extraction, such as oil and gas, public lands, as well as recreation, historic preservation of important cultural sites, and conservation of the nation’s parks, refuges and wilderness areas. Historically, the pendulum swings back and forth between resource extraction and resource conservation. But in our combined 90 years of professional work on national parks, we have never seen such a direct assault on the mission, public servants and resources of the National Park Service. Assault after assault on the agency will have a cumulative impact: the firing of employees, threats of retribution, closure of park support offices, budget proposals that would cut the entire operation by one-third, and the clearly stated goal of transferring over hundreds of small parks to the states. And now the parks are being left wide-open to vandalism as well. The current Interior Secretary has demonstrated a failure to “conserve for future generations” and proven that the Interior Department is no longer worthy of the public’s trust that their national parks will be protected.
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