At Yosemite, You’d Barely Know a Shutdown Was Happening. Why Advocates Say That Matters

Before they visited Yosemite National Park this week, Susan Bennett and Katie Cook had heard all sorts of stories about a kind of chaos permeating the park during the government shutdown. People squatting in others’ campgrounds. Hikers ascending Half Dome without a permit. Even illegal BASE jumping.

Standing outside the Yosemite Valley Lodge — one of the park’s two hotels, still fully operational during the shutdown — sisters-in-law Bennett and Cook, visiting from Monterey and North Lake Tahoe respectively, told me they’d even considered canceling their much-anticipated trip. “We didn’t want to be part of the problem,” Cook said.

But having heard from a friend that at least Yosemite’s bathrooms were open, the pair made the trek. And when they arrived in the park, they were far from disappointed.

In addition to the “gorgeous” fall foliage at its peak and flowing waterfalls surging due to recent storms, Bennett said they saw little sign of the chaotic scenes they had imagined.

“I knew there wouldn’t be anybody at the main gate, but we had a ranger at the campground, so it’s all good,” she said.

During the month-long government shutdown, Yosemite has remained open, but with a drastically reduced federal workforce. Only staff deemed “essential” are working in the park, and for the most part, they’re focused on law enforcement, search-and-rescue and maintenance.

As Bennett and Cook saw, no rangers are posted at entrances to collect fees, give out maps or help tourists plan their itineraries.

National Park Service staffers dedicated to research or conservation are currently furloughed, joining the 64% of national NPS staff who are not working during the shutdown.

And in the absence of so many federal workers, the majority of the “park staff” Yosemite tourists will encounter during the shutdown actually work for private businesses or organizations that were already present in the park before the shutdown — and have now assumed almost all visitor-facing duties.

But underneath the general air of normalcy, a crisis is looming, say a coalition of advocacy groups and former parks leaders who have repeatedly called to close the national parks at this time.

Seemingly small transgressions like the ones Yosemite staff and visitors report are going to have a cumulative effect, they warn.

“Our parks don’t run themselves,” wrote the coalition in a letter last week to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.

Business as usual?

At Alcatraz Island and Muir Woods National Monument, private companies and nonprofits that operate in the parks have outright donated money to keep their doors open during the shutdown, as permitted by the NPS shutdown contingency plan. 

This is happening at Yosemite, too. In an email to KQED, the National Park Service confirmed that the nonprofit Yosemite Conservancy, which has been keeping the park’s Welcome Center and The Depot at Mariposa Grove open, is “working with the [NPS] to establish short-term agreements with donations to help maintain operations during the lapse in appropriations.”

My own experience visiting Yosemite this week reflected what I was hearing from the tourists I met there —- that operations within the park during the shutdown seemed very much like business as usual.

To a casual observer, the only clue that anything might be different was those unstaffed entry gates, normally humming with activity, which drivers are now blowing right through, as they can no longer pick up park maps and expert ranger advice for their trip.

And the Yosemite Valley Welcome Center, which was initially closed at the start of the shutdown, has been reopened to the public. When I visited, the center was abuzz with tourists buying merchandise and lining up to get park information, just like any other day outside of a full federal shutdown — albeit with no rangers at their normal stations, leading to slightly longer lines than usual, according to one Conservancy staffer.

Yosemite’s crowds seemed a little larger than what I’d previously observed for this time of year, and parking at the base of El Capitan — where visitors can watch climbers scaling the iconic rock face —- was more scarce than usual.

But elsewhere, I saw several park rangers roaming on foot and in cars, all working without pay during the shutdown.

Maintenance staff could be seen at work, and there was even someone collecting campground fees and distributing maps at the Big Oak Flat entrance to the park.

And those bathrooms in Yosemite Valley — a notorious casualty of previous NPS shutdowns — were generally clean, with no sign of piled-up trash.

“This shutdown, compared to others, is much more smooth,” said William Fontana Sr., an Aramark employee who has been giving tours in the park for 40 years — and who attributed what he was seeing to the fact that law enforcement rangers and essential facilities staff are still working in Yosemite.

As a non-federal worker, Fontana Sr. usually works alongside NPS rangers in the park, supplementing their numbers and knowledge to show visitors around. But during the shutdown, it’s just him and his Aramark colleagues to guide tourists.

“I expected to have overcrowded conditions and an absolute zoo here, but it has not happened,” he said.

“The public seem to be very respectful in Yosemite, and understand that if they abuse the park, they could lose the opportunity to come during the shutdown.”

‘Protect the park’

Fontana Sr. said he had nonetheless seen “a little more” aggressive driving and witnessed BASE jumpers leap off El Capitan this month.

“I immediately called park dispatch, and I believe they were apprehended,” he said. “We all work together to protect the park.”

George Hargis, a volunteer for the advocacy group BASE Access, disputes the now-widespread claim that the extreme sport has been taking place more often in Yosemite during the shutdown, telling KQED by email, “I can very confidently state that the BASE jumping in the National Parks has not increased during the shut down,” and that “one or two jumps were posted online and that really began the narrative that BASE jumpers are taking advantage of the shutdown.”

U.S Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum has also pushed back against what he called “false claims” from “grifters” about conditions in Yosemite during the shutdown. Burgum claimed on social media that “Contrary to recent reports, the park remains fully staffed to ensure visitor safety and protect natural resources” and that “unauthorized camping, squatting and illegal activities like BASE jumping are being addressed with firm, appropriate law enforcement action.”

But Yosemite sprawls across 1,200 square miles, much of it wilderness territory. So even though enforcement rangers are on duty, it’s not possible to keep track of every visitor’s activity — even outside of a shutdown, but especially while research- and education-focused rangers, often found on trails, are missing.

John DeGrazio, owner of YExplore, which runs private tours in the park, agreed that he hasn’t seen as much unruly behavior or “abuse” this shutdown as during past ones. But he said he has seen more people than usual sleeping in their cars in the park and bringing their dogs on unpaved trails, both of which are not allowed in Yosemite.

He even met a couple last week on their honeymoon who told him they wanted to thank President Donald Trump for the opportunity to camp in Yosemite for free, said DeGrazio

“There are people who know how to take advantage of the system,” he said.

As big wall climber Cadence Brown sat in El Capitan Meadow watching his friends scale “The Nose,” he said he, too, had noticed the park seemed busier than usual for fall.

At night, he said, El Cap’s 3,000 feet of sheer granite has looked far more illuminated with climbers’ headlamps.

Beyond experiencing the same difficulties finding parking I did, Brown said the only sign things might be different at Yosemite right now was the visitors he witnessed traipsing off-trail in the park’s meadows, seemingly emboldened by the lack of rangers to stop them. But for him, search-and-rescue crews still being fully active was key. “So as long as they’re here, we’re stoked,” he said.

While DeGrazio, too, is grateful the park is still open to keep his tours and his business running, he said he doesn’t know what the future holds.

“I think there’s always a question of allowing access versus having that access being abused,” he said. “There’s going to be that concern of: How much abuse is actually happening long-term?”

‘No long-term planning’

Mark Rose, Sierra Nevada program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association, said his visit to the park earlier this month only confirmed his worries.

“Really small things like visitors trampling through meadows — that builds up more and more over time,” he said. “Even if 99% of folks visiting the park right now are being responsible and doing what they’re supposed to, all it takes is that 1% of visitors who see this as being this free-for-all.”

Like the coalition of former park leaders and advocates, Rose also sounded an alarm about the lack of conservation and biological data being collected within the park while federal scientists working here are furloughed.

All kinds of behind-the-scenes work that goes unseen by visitors is completely on pause — work that was already being impacted by an estimated 24% reduction in NPS staff since Trump’s inauguration in January.

Right now, Yosemite is operating without a Chief of Resources, Rose said, a crucial role that heads up all of the park’s science and restoration work around its natural resources. And with Trump threatening to fire furloughed workers after the shutdown ends, the staffing crisis will only deepen, he warned.

“They’ve let go so many of their scientists and [natural] resource and cultural resource staff,” he said. “There’s no long-term planning being done; all the science that was happening has mostly just been put on pause and/or completely cut.”

“There’s a lot that’s piling up now that the government’s shut down that they’re going to have to take care of,” he said.

Rose also expressed concern that the pot of money currently being used to pay for basic operations and materials like fuel and cleaning supplies — which is keeping the visitor experience feeling so comparatively smooth during the shutdown— may even be being used illegally.

After the last shutdown, the Government Accountability Office determined that these fee dollars are supposed to go toward park projects, while Congress should fund the park’s general operations.

And at some point, with no fees being collected at entrance gates, it’s going to run out. “We’re draining those accounts,” he said.

When I told Rose that I had seen much of what he did at Yosemite — meaning, not much on the surface — he warned that it’s really too soon to tell.

“We don’t know to what degree the backcountry, other areas of the park, might be impacted — because that’s just not being monitored and reported out on by the park service,” he said.

‘Eyes on the horizon’

The ripple effect from the shutdown will be felt for generations to come, warns Jesse Chakrin, executive director of the Fund for People in Parks.

The moment Chakrin learned I’d just returned from visiting Yosemite, he didn’t hold back about his thoughts on the current situation during the shutdown, employing phrases like “facade management” and “veneer.”

“These impacts, it’s a lagging indicator,” he said. “It’s not the canary in the coal mine. When we notice the impact, it’s probably too late.”

Chakrin said he isn’t just worried that the Trump administration’s razor-sharp focus on continuing to allow parks to generate revenue harms park resources today and tomorrow.

He’s also deeply concerned by the fact that critical operations like law enforcement, cleanliness and some visitor-facing services being maintained — in large part thanks to nonprofit dollars from the Yosemite Conservancy — could also be used as an argument to even further cut the staffing and budgets of national parks, and turn them over to further privatization.

“It’s a precedent that I think has some danger in it,” he said. “I think it opens the door for this idea that maybe a passable experience is possible through privately run, privately funded, ‘national’ parks.”

“This government seems very willing to privatize the things that are in the commons,” warned Chakrin.

Don Neubacher, retired Yosemite superintendent, said while he, too, gives credit to nonprofits for their work to fill gaps in funding, “parks take sustained money over time,” he said.

“There is very little evidence that nonprofits and these private groups can fund these parks in the long term,” he said, noting the $30 million yearly allocated to Yosemite from Congress. “That’s a tall order to have any nonprofit raise that kind of money and continue to manage Yosemite the way it should be.”

What visitors enjoying the park in its limited state today need to understand, Chakrin said, is that it’s the oftentimes invisible work of currently furloughed federal workers that makes parks like Yosemite so treasured — and fulfills their mission to leave these natural areas “unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.” The kind of things that go beyond a well-run Yosemite Valley tour, or a functioning bookstore.

“You’re making decadal policy with a blindfold on,” said Chakrin. “We need people with their eyes on the horizon.”

“We need the American public to understand what’s happening to their treasures,” he said.