Op-Ed | Yellowstone National Park — The Reports Of My Death Are Greatly Exaggerated

Recent actions by President Trump and his Department of Government Efficiency committee addressing spending cuts across a broad spectrum of federal agencies, including the Department of Interior and National Park Service, have created handwringing amongst many of the NPS supporters — and Trump haters.  

The hysteria has created dire predictions of massive lines at entrance stations and park facilities, closed campgrounds, uncollected trash and dirty bathrooms, among other catastrophes.  A recent visit to Yellowstone National Park with my wife and three grandchildren indicates those predictions are far from reality.  To paraphrase Mark Twain, the reports of the park’s death are greatly exaggerated.

Why might that be the case? First, one must realize that the vast majority of public-facing activities aren’t conducted by federal workers but rather employees of private companies, mostly the Xanterra Travel Collection in Yellowstone.  These include the major campgrounds, bathroom facilities, general stores, marinas, and services such as tour buses, horseback trips, boating, chuckwagon outings etc.  The administration’s actions have no impact on these activities. 

Where do you interface with federal employees? Well, the first interaction is at the entrance gate. We arrived from Cody, Wyoming, at the east gate on a recent Sunday, mid-morning. Our wait?  About 2 minutes, having only one car in front of us. On departing the same gate three days later, we witnessed a similar line, or lack there of, entering the park.

How about the visitor centers?  We visited Grant, Old Faithful, Fishing Bridge, and Mammoth (Albright) visitor centers. In every case, lines to speak with a ranger were short or non-existent. The bathrooms were clean and trash cans far from overflowing. 

We coincidently encountered three ranger-led programs ,and at Grant Campground there was a ranger program every evening.  Driving the entire Grand Loop, we didn’t see a single closed campground. This is my fifth visit to Yellowstone and the services, both public and private, have never been better. Kudos to the National Park Service and the rangers.

Of course, there are a number of services that are not customer facing. For example, maintenance. Maintenance certainly didn’t seem to be lacking as we saw chip sealing underway from the South Entrance to West Thumb, fiber optics being laid West Thumb to Old Faithful, and weed control around Midway Basin. Nor did we see any obvious signs of significant maintenance issues on the roads, buildings, or other facilities. 

Yellowstone is the crown jewel of the National Park System and it’s no wonder that the NPS would want to keep it polished.  Our observation is clearly anecdotal and other units, the costume jewelry, may not be faring as well.  (A call for more visits).  

However, a few observations about the ability to trim allocations from the top:

• First, only about a half of what Congress allocates to the NPS makes it directly to the operations of the parks. That suggests a lot of fat between Acting Director Jessica Bowron and Ranger Tina giving her bison presentation at Fishing Bridge. 
• Second, there are many park units where the cost allocation per visitor exceeds $100, even rising to over $1,000 at some. That compares with $8-9 for Yellowstone and Yosemite and under two dollars for the likes of Arches, Bryce and Zion.  Surely there is room to trim some of the less visited and more expensive (per visitor) units. 
• Finally, there is a large sum of money, about half a billion dollars, going to the parks that doesn’t come from Congress. These include entrance and concession franchise fees that go directly to the parks. That number is up several hundred million in the last ten years and will continue to grow with more parks charging fees and the fees themselves rising. In addition, there are “friends” organizations like Yellowstone Forever that make substantial contributions unaffected by federal budget cuts.

My conclusion? Don’t let the Chicken Littles scare you from visiting the parks. The lines are no longer than before, trash is being collected and the bathrooms are clean. Old Faithful is keeping up its regular schedule, the rivers are flowing, the mud pots boiling, and the animals are roaming the forests and valleys.  After all, that’s what really matters. All is well in Yellowstone National Park. 

Eric Buck is a long-time reader of the National Parks Traveler and an avid parks traveler.