Lillian Crook, Bismarck

I have been in love with National Parks for as long as I have conscious memory. Back in the 1960s & 1970s, my family camped in countless National Parks.

At this point in life, I have visited every National Park except the two, and I intend to visit those two. Later in my life, I got to work for the National Park Service, at Theodore Roosevelt National Park, the only National Park named after an American President. By that time, I knew every single trail and much about the flora and fauna of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, and quite a bit about the history of Theodore Roosevelt National Park and TR.

I like to ask people how many National Parks they have visited. How many have you visited? Last year, during the government shutdown, 9,000 staff were furloughed. Since then, the NPS has lost 25% of its full-time, permanent workforce through firings, buyouts, and forced retirements. 450 retired Park Service leaders called on the NPS leadership to close the parks during the shutdown. Someone wrote, “It felt like you showed up to school and none of the teachers were there.”

According to the National Parks Conservation Association, “some states, localities and associations pitched in hundreds of thousands of dollars — with no guarantee of repayment — in an unsustainable bid to keep visitor centers open and staffed.” Other parks dipped into their bucket of fee dollars, a move that advocates argue is illegal as the legislation that allows for parks to collect fees dictates that those dollars be used for projects that enhance the visitor experience — not for normal park operations. It is estimated that the NPS lost $41 million in fee dollars during the government shutdown.

Is this what we want on the 250th birthday of the United States?