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Cuts To Grand Teton National Park's Staff Will Delay Emergency Response, Close Some Facilities

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Budget cuts will translate into longer emergency response time by Grand Teton National Park rangers, and some closed facilities, this summer. Photo by QT Luong via www.terragalleria.com/parks.

Climbers, backcountry travelers, and even front-country campers at Grand Teton National Park will face longer response times if they get in trouble this year as a result of federal budget cuts, according to the park superintendent.

Rangers that patrol the Tetons, Jackson Lake, and the Snake River will be stretched a bit thin by the budget sequestration, potentially leaving visitors to fend for themselves for a while if they are hurt or lost.

“We’re trying to minimize the impacts on visitor services these cuts would have. However, there is no way to take this reduction without reducing the amount of services we provide," Superintendent Mary Gibson Scott said Monday during a telephone call with reporters.

All park visitors could notice a reduction in services, as the need to trim $700,000 from Grand Teton's budget is leading to reduced seasonal ranger staffing, closed visitor centers, and closure of some areas of the park, she said.

“We know there will be delays in responding to search and rescue, as well as medical emergencies and law enforcement," the superintendent said. "Our responsibilities I take very seriously on both employee and visitor safety. We are trying to maintain those functions to the degree we can. I just think that we will have delays in pulling together if there’s a major search and rescue, being able to pull all the resources we need.”

Grand Teton averages 70-75 search-and-rescue incidents a year, ranging from aiding visitors who twist an ankle and looking for lost children to rescuing climbers from the mountains.

Across the National Park System park managers are cutting here and there to bring their budgets in line with the across-the-board cuts agreed upon by the Congress and the White House. Parks such as Yellowstone and Acadia are pushing their spring opening dates back a month, some campgrounds will remain closed in places like the Blue Ridge Parkway and Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and backcountry toilets might not get pumped out.

Multiplying the problems created by the sequestration is the fact that those cuts are heaped on a general budget shrinkage, Superintendent Gibson pointed out.

“These cuts come on top of a flat budget for the past four fiscal years, and when adjusted for inflation our budget has actually declined by approximiately 8 percent over that time period. That number is prior to sequestration taking effect," she said.

A bit more than half of the $700,000, some $372,000, in cuts are being made by reducing the ranks of seasonal rangers by 26. While the park hires approximately 180 seasonal rangers each year, only about 90 of those are paid for through Grand Teton's base operating budget. The other 90 are funded through grants targeted at specific projects, such as removing invasive plants or maintaining trails.

"We depend on our seasonals to operate the parks during the summer, staffing the visitor centers, road patrol, managing wildlife jams, firefighting, search-and-rescue and emergency response, and custodial, such as cleaning restrooms," the superintendent explained.

As a result of fewer seasonal rangers, hours of the Craig Thomas Discovery and Visitor Center at Moose, the Colter Bay Visitor Center, and the Jenny Lake Visitor Center will most likely be reduced this year, she said. However, the Laurance S. Rockefeller Preserve Center and the Flagg Ranch Information Station will be closed entirely, as will the Jenny Lake Ranger Station.

"We will also not be able to provide ranger-led interpretive or education programs as we have in the past. We will provide limited programs at visitor centers ... although we will not provide the typical array of programs, such as the campfire talks and the majority of ranger-led walks," said Superintendent Gibson.

Areas that will be closed include the Spalding Bay, Two Ocean Lake, and Schwabacher's Landing areas, as the park lacks the staff to maintain the restrooms and trash at those sites, she said. Eight dispersed-site campgrounds along the Grassy Lake Road in the John D. Rockefeller Parkway also will not open this summer, the superintendent added.

While the park is delaying its snow removal operations on the Teton Park Road by about two weeks, until April 1, snowfall was not great this past winter and the park staff should be able to open the road on schedule on May 1, she said. "Other roads will be allowed to naturally melt out this spring. These include Moose-Wilson, Antelope Flats, Signal Mountain Summit, and Death Canyon," the superintendent added.

"This has not been an easy exercise for any park manager. To try and figure out, in the middle of March, how you'll run a park in full summer operations (with reduced staff and funding)," Superintendent Gibson said. "We’ve had to actually withdraw offers to seasonals that were already made, as we realized what cuts we would have to make when we got our numbers and what the percentages were."

Comments

They have little flexibility as the cuts were to be across the board.

Rick, could you document that? I understand that the cuts are across all departments (Obama turned down the suggestion he be given flexibility), but I was not aware that within a department (or in this case a park) that the cuts had to be equal across all programs. If that is truly the case it has to be one of the stupidest mandates ever derived.

As to others comments regarding local support for opening Yellowstone, why shouldn't that be the model? It is that local community that is benefiting from the economic benefits, why shouldn't they be expected to contribute?


ec--

This is what I know, a quote from the Director to all employees: As of March 1, sequestration has imposed an across-the-board five percent cut to our Fiscal Year 13 budget that we must now take in the remaining seven months of this fiscal year. I want you to know that the impacts of these cuts are real and will be felt by our visitors, our partners, our parks and programs, and each and every employee. We must now get ready to implement the sequestration plans that each park and program manager developed to respond to the cut. Implementation of the operational decisions laid out in your plan should begin immediately.

Rick


In response to a comment from ec yesterday expressing interest in seeing the actual operating budget for the NPS over the last ten years, I said I'd see what I could locate.

ec had previously posted a basic chart for some past years, but more details are needed to make sense of the raw numbers.

I doubt that anyone is holding his or her breath, but I've found that tracking down that information - not to mention trying to make any meaningful analysis of what little I do have- is simply a black hole for time and energy. I found the "NPS green books" for several years, but as best I can tell, those are requested figures, not the amounts actually approved.

Sorry.


Maybe I'm reading this wrong but if you go to the 2013 Green Book on page ONPS 112 it shows the requested base budgets for the parks in 2013 then gives the actual figures for 2011 and 2012. Then for some strange reason it gives 2010 in terms of full time equivalent employees.

http://www.nps.gov/aboutus/upload/FY13_NPS_Greenbook.pdf


Actually, Jim, I would like to to see the line by line budget for some of the individual parks we are talking about - i.e Teton. I want to see how (if) staffing was cut 25% and where the difference was spent.

I appreciate your efforts to track some of this info down, but suspect there are reasons it is not easily obtained.

For Rick - it would be nice to know exactly what "across the board" means. I don't think it means what you have assumed.


not what you are looking for but this report breaks down Seqouia and Kings FY 2002 budget down into broad categories on page 27.

http://www.potrerogroup.com/papers_downloads/Sequoia_Kings_Business.pdf


Lost,

This is the kind of think we need. Why can't we find something more recent than a decade ago? (open question - not one pointed at you)


First, thanks to everyone posting today. Good sensible discussion without the usual trying to trip someone up or parsing each word of another's comments and then trying to twist and twirl them. Today's posts are posts as they should be. Disagreement in some cases, but civil.

Now how can we get Congress to try a little of the same? One thing I do think is missing in almost all discussions anywhere these days, though, is any mention of the role Congress has played for so many years in creating the mess we now face. I believe I'm correct (in fact I know I am . . . ) in saying that there has been so much political meddling by Congress for so long that many -- if not all -- NPS superintendents are hamstrung by a myriad of laws, regulations, policies, agreements, appeasements and other things dropped from the sky by Congressional fiat that they may literally have no alternatives to choose from. (I'd be very interested in hearing what Rick Smith has to say about this. We can all respect his experience and opinions.)

So much park management is dictated by such things as environmental laws, safety regulations, water rights, highway funding and laws regulating highways, personnel laws and policies, and literally thousands upon thousands of other often conflicting, binding, and sometimes very necessary -- or completely useless -- constraints that have simply grown like Topsy down through years of too many Congresscritters who had too much time on their hands, who worship ridgid party ideologies, or who had too many special interests to please and contributors to keep happy that they have managed to tie our entire government into one huge Gordian knot.

Instead of attacking and maligning superintendents, why not look to what is most surely the real cause of it all. Congress. Is the most critical crisis only the debt, or does it go far beyond that? Perhaps the debt is only one symptom of a much more serious disease.

The big question, however, is what in the dickens can anyone do about it now?


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