The National Park Service, for reasons ranging from staff shortages and changes in leadership to sheer complexity, has extended dozens of concessions contracts across the National Park System for one year.
"The National Park Service may extend a concession contract for a variety of reasons. In some cases, a park will be planning actions, e.g. a construction project that will affect the visitor service associated with the concession operation. In these cases, we may delay the prospectus process until the action in question is complete," Tom Crosson, the Park Service's chief spokesman, said in an email. "In other cases, park or regional staffing may be insufficient to execute prospectus actions in a timely manner. A pending change in park leadership may be another reason to delay release of a prospectus. In other cases, a park may have multiple contracts expiring at the same time. Depending on the complexity of the contracts, we may choose to extend certain contracts in order to ensure a smooth contract award and transition process. In all cases, our goal is to minimize contract extensions when possible."
Among the extensions:
- Commerical river trip outfitters at Canyonlands National Park in Utah
- Bush pilots at Denali National Park and Preserve in Alaska
- Concessions at Fire Island National Seashore in New York
- Friends groups that operate across the National Park System
- Outfitters at Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve in Alaska
- A golf course concession at the National Mall and Memorial Parks in Washington, D.C.
- Boating concessions at Lake Mead National Recreation Area in Nevada and Glen Canyon National Recreation Area in Utah
Specific concessions operators affected by the extensions can be found here and here.
Comments
This is just another example of the shortage of qualified staff and lack of resources needed to manage our parks. Our great system of National Parks is slowly being degraded by the lack of people and funding to manage and care for what we have. We can only hope that with the change of administrations next January that these issues will be addressed.
Harry--You're kidding, right?
The budgets are a disgrace. So is the practice of too often hiring and promoting on political bases rather than most-highly qualified.