America’s national parks bring us together as a nation, tell our shared stories and provide us with experiences filled with awe and wonder. To maintain the long-term health of these incredible places, the Park Service must make park protection their top priority.
I am deeply concerned by the 24% cut to park staffing this year, along with the ongoing hiring freeze. These actions are putting our national park resources at risk and degrading visitor services and park access. A high-quality visitor experience relies on adequate funding and staffing for the National Park Service. This includes frontline rangers and planners, social scientists, historians, resource managers and other experts both in the parks and across the country, whose roles are critical to the foundation of visitor facing functions. Parks need these positions filled with trained federal employees to ensure they are protecting park resources and preserving our history while welcoming hundreds of millions of visitors each year, for generations to come.
I also support smart visitor use management plans, to protect park resources while providing reliable and safe access. From Acadia to Yosemite, national parks across the country have developed unique and dependable systems over the last several years, including timed entry and reservations. These parks must have support to identify and implement a broad range of long-term solutions to crowding and congestion catered to each park. Solutions could include transportation systems, appropriate infrastructure, and even managed access systems like reservations and timed entry. These systems protect both park resources and visitor experience, and they should be allowed to continue to operate in those parks that have them.
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