Why did national parks look so normal during this shutdown?

As the government shutdown stretched on last week, Travis Puglisi saw something unusual at Joshua Tree National Park: two rangers doing graffiti checks.

“Do you know how often I run into rangers in the park and actually have conversations with them out in the field?” he said. “Never.”

Puglisi would know what’s normal. As a hiking guide, he logs about 700 miles on foot in the park each year.

“The park is in many ways better staffed and taken care of now than it is during normal operations,” he said. “It’s really weird.”

The longest government shutdown in U.S. history appears poised to end. But at certain national parks, it hasn’t been obvious one was happening.

That’s in stark contrast to the last shutdown during President Trump’s first term, when images of overflowing dumpsters and bathrooms made headlines.

Another visible difference this time is that some visitor centers — often the first stop on a tourist’s itinerary — remained open. That includes those at Joshua Tree, Death Valley and Yosemite national parks, where centers are being staffed or funded by nonprofits.

Although Joshua Tree National Park remained open during the government shutdown, sources say there was trouble behind the scenes.

(Allen J Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Regular park employees are also keeping things in order by continuing to empty trash cans, clean up toilets and perform emergency and law enforcement duties.

But advocates and sources say that behind the scenes, conditions are far from business as usual. Parks officials were directed to keep employees who perform front-facing visitor services, such as maintenance and sanitation, on duty, along with essential law enforcement and emergency functions. By contrast, many of those who work in conservation, research and education were told to stay home. Some employees reporting to work are getting paid, while many others aren’t.

This was laid out in a contingency plan issued the day before the shutdown began. It states that 9,296 of the park service’s total 14,500-member staff, or roughly 64%, would be furloughed.

“It seems like they’re trying to keep up the facade to impact the American public less,” said a ranger at Death Valley National Park, who spoke on condition of anonymity, for fear of losing their job. During the last shutdown, in 2018-19, the ranger said, resource damage was rampant at numerous parks because the guidance “was, like, shutter your doors, skeleton crew, leave the park open.”

Last time around, one of the park’s winter campgrounds was a “total mess,” a camp host at Death Valley told the ranger. Without maintenance staff, bathrooms stopped working and had to be locked. Visitors kicked down the doors of a historic building to access a toilet. Having law enforcement around to prevent such damage is not a bad thing, the ranger said.

People walk through a campground in Yosemite late last month amid the government shutdown.

(Fredric J. Brown / AFP via Getty Images)

The ranger, who handles visitor interactions, is getting paid, but making less because of sharply reduced hours. Others, including maintenance and utility workers, as well as administrators and managers, are required to show up without getting paid right now, the ranger said.

“We’re all kind of just taking it day by day and week by week,” they said. “Because the thought of trying to prepare for the holidays and not getting a paycheck is incredibly stressful.”

Many basic visitor services are funded by congressional appropriation. The current shutdown instead directs them to be funded by visitor fees, something that was a point of dispute during the last shutdown.

Staffing at visitor centers has often been supplemented by volunteers or employees of nonprofits, but it depends on the park. Several sources said this time nonprofits took a more robust role than during the shutdown six years ago.

In any case, “it’s not sustainable,” said Chance Wilcox, California Desert program manager for the National Parks Conservation Assn. The fee money was bound to run out, he said, and nonprofits “don’t have the budgets to keep absorbing the extra work. And soon the facade will crack.”

Some environmental advocates have called what’s happening a pretense: Although the parks look clean and well-tended, work to conserve the landscape, protect plants and wildlife from threats such as climate change and invasive species, and do trail building have stopped. Those losses may not be immediately visible but will eventually become noticeable, advocates said.

Jordan Marbury, communications manager for Friends of the Inyo, an environmental group, fears that the Trump administration will leverage the idea that parks performed well during the shutdown to argue for more permanent job cuts and privatization of park services.

A spokesperson for the Department of the Interior rejected the notion that it’s simply keeping up appearances or operating unlawfully.

“Maintaining minimal on-site staff to support visitor and sanitation services is not cosmetic; it is essential to prevent conditions that could endanger visitors, damage park resources or trigger higher recovery costs later,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

Nonprofits and volunteers have long lent a hand to parks and don’t represent a “substitute workforce,” the spokesperson said.

Some park employees said the furloughs have compounded stressors from firings, retirements and buyouts over the last year or so. The park service has lost about a quarter of its permanent staff since Trump reclaimed the White House.

At Joshua Tree National Park, about a third of 145 positions are unfilled, according to a firefighter there who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal. There were once 30 people on the resources team, which works to protect endangered desert tortoises and Joshua trees, monitor air quality and restore areas after a fire; right now, none are working regularly, the source said.

The seasonal hiring that’s typically underway now is on pause, the firefighter said.

“Those of us that work at this park have been thinking a lot about what is left of this park for future generations, for our kids and our grandkids,” the firefighter said.

The shutdown has hindered seasonal hiring at Death Valley as well, according to the ranger there, who said only nine of the typical 40 or so hires were brought on.

“We are allowed to keep bathrooms cleaned and stuff,” the Death Valley ranger said. “But even now that we’re allowed to do those things, we’re struggling to even have the staffing to do it.”

Death Valley National Park’s resource team has been understaffed for years, they said, but there are bright spots. Officials deemed the feeding and monitoring of the area’s pupfish, which can thrive in some of the saltiest and warmest waters, essential during the shutdown, the ranger said, because they’re “this star animal of the park.”

The shutdown coincides with busy seasons at Joshua Tree and Death Valley national parks, when cooler temperatures make the desert more welcoming. Yet some say visitation is down amid confusion about what to expect.

Puglisi, owner of Wandering Mojave Hiking Services, said his business is down at least 25% compared with November of last year. And last November it was down substantially from the same month the previous year.

The way he sees it, people are uncertain about whether the park is open, whether their campsite will still be available when they arrive and whether the bathrooms on site are being cleaned. Potential international visitors may also be concerned about traveling to the U.S. amid tariffs and immigration raids, he said.

One thing he doesn’t buy is that certain types of bad behavior are exacerbated by the shutdown.

“Graffiti happens all the time, whether there’s a government shutdown or not,” he said.