National Park News: Plan For Baseball in Tetons Backfires, Lawsuit Over Foreign Visitor Fees, NPS Restructuring?

RV Miles Podcast

This episode covers significant operational and policy shifts within the National Park Service, highlighted by a proposed 'hub-and-spoke' management restructuring that has drawn concern from former

Key takeaways

• Former park superintendents warned Interior Secretary Doug Burgum that the proposed 'hub-and-spoke' restructuring could strain operations during ongoing staffing reductions.
• Grand Canyon crews face compounded setbacks after a second flash flood on September 16th damaged temporary repairs to the North Kaibab Trail and Trans-Canyon waterline.

Main topics

• NPS hub-and-spoke restructuring
• Grand Canyon flash flood recovery

Notable quotes

"One mistake can become thousands of acres of fire, enclosed roads, enclosed trails, millions of dollars in suppression costs, and in this case, a loss of life."

Conclusion

The episode underscores the complex balancing act between park preservation, visitor

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) The National Park Service could be headed for a major restructuring that would change how hundreds of parks are managed across the country. An abandoned campfire has started a wildfire in Yosemite National Park. Major League Baseball has asked the federal government to build a temporary ballpark inside Grand Teton National Park. A tour company is suing over the new $100 fees for international visitors. Arches National Park launches a shuttle service and more. I'm Jason Epperson. This is RV Miles. It's time for the latest in national park and public lands news. Hey there, folks. Real quick, Jason here from the editing chair. After I recorded this video, a major piece of news broke. Congress has passed legislation to make Arizona's Chiricahua National Monument our nation's 64th national park. Chiricahua is an isolated and striking landscape in southeastern Arizona known for its towering rock hoodoos and sky island ecosystems and has long been pitched as a candidate for national park status. The bill passed the House back in March and now the Senate has passed its version of the legislation and the only thing left is for the president to sign the bill. First protected as a national monument in 1924, Chiricahua spans about 12,000 acres and preserves volcanic formations created nearly 27 million years ago, along with a rich plant diversity and significant cultural history, including sites connected to Buffalo Soldiers and Apache leader Geronimo. While visitation peaked at more than 100,000 annual visitors in the 90s, it's since dropped down to around 62,000 a year. Okay, back to the full news roundup. Welcome back, everybody. Thanks for being here. First up, the National Park Service may be headed for another significant reorganization. Internal planning documents that have been reported on in recent weeks describe a potential new management system being called a hub-and-spoke model. The basic idea appears to be that larger National Park Service units would serve as regional hubs and provide leadership, administrative support, and resources for groups of smaller park units around them. So instead of every National Park, Monument, Historic Site, and other unit reporting to a regional director, smaller parks could increasingly share resources and decision-making with larger nearby parks. It's not a final restructuring plan. The documents that have surfaced are drafts, and the Interior Department has not announced a final version of this new organizational structure. But the fact that this is being seriously considered is significant because we're talking about potentially changing how hundreds of National Park Service units are managed. The Park Service already has seven administrative regions, and this wouldn't necessarily eliminate that regional structure. Instead, these hub parks would apparently sit underneath those regions and take on greater responsibility for groups of nearby sites. There are a lot of small National Park Service units that don't have their own full staff. For things like human resources, contracting, maintenance, communications, or law enforcement, sharing some of those resources isn't inherently unusual. The question is how far this goes. Does a small historic site simply get... better access to maintenance workers from a larger park nearby, or does that larger park eventually start determining staffing budgets? priorities for several smaller parks. Do we eliminate jobs over this? And this is all happening at a time when the Park Service has already gone through substantial staffing reductions and organizational changes. A group of former park superintendents has publicly warned Interior Secretary Doug Burgum that additional restructuring during this period could further strain park operations. That's their assessment, and Interior has argued more broadly that its organizational changes are intended to improve efficiency and make better uses of agency. resources. So this is one we're going to continue to watch closely. And for now, there's no final new organizational chart for the National Park Service, but there is clearly a serious conversation happening inside Interior about changing who manages what and how much authority individual parks have over their own operations. At Grand Canyon, crews are still dealing with the aftermath of the massive flash flood that tore through Bright Angel Canyon on August 29th. That flood heavily damaged the North Kaibab Trail, bridges, and sections of the Trans-Canyon waterline that feeds the water to the south side of the park where most of the developed area is. And then because apparently one catastrophic flood wasn't enough, another flash flood hit the canyon on September 16th while crews were already working on... temporary repairs. Thankfully, nobody was injured at that second event, but it damaged some of the temporary infrastructure crews had installed and added another complication to what already was a very difficult recovery. The North Kaibab Trail remains completely closed. The Park Service says there is extensive damage to the trail and associated infrastructure in Bright Angel Canyon, and there's still no reopening date for that area. At the same time, the North Rim is getting ready to transition into modified fall operations beginning October 15. Cape Royal Road and Point Imperial Road will temporarily close from October 15th through November 3rd for road rehabilitation, and the North Rim Campground closes for the season October 16th. The entrance gate is scheduled to remain open through November 30th or until the first major snowstorm forces it to close. The North Rim's already operating with reduced services after everything that's happened over the last two years. Last