The ongoing government shutdown in the United States has significant implications for national parks across the country. Historically, government shutdowns have often resulted in the closure of many national parks due to lack of staff and resources. However, the current scenario shows a divergence where national parks, including some of the most iconic such as Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Grand Canyon, will remain partially open despite the shutdown, continuing to welcome visitors but with limited staff presence and services. This article explores the reasons behind this decision, the impact on park operations, visitor experience, and the broader economic and environmental consequences.
Government shutdown and its impact on national parks
A government shutdown occurs when Congress fails to pass adequate funding legislation to keep federal agencies running. This lapse in funding directly affects departments like the National Park Service (NPS), which relies on federal budgets to operate facilities, maintain safety and cleanliness, and protect natural and cultural resources. The shutdown, which started on October 1, 2025, follows unsuccessful congressional negotiations to approve a short-term spending measure, marking the third government shutdown in the last decade driven by political gridlock.
Under previous shutdowns, many parks were shut entirely. During the last lengthy shutdown in December 2018 to January 2019, parks remained open with minimal staffing, leading to widespread damage including vandalism, overflowing trash, sanitation issues, and harm to sensitive cultural sites. This precedent raised grave concerns among conservation groups and former NPS officials about park safety and preservation during the current closure.
Despite these risks, the Trump administration previously opted to keep national parks open with skeleton crews, a policy that has been reiterated in a similar spirit under the current administration. This strategy aims at allowing public access while balancing limited workforce availability. However, the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) and other advocates warn this approach leaves parks vulnerable to harm and neglect, urging officials to consider closures where staffing is insufficient to maintain safety and security.
Partial park operations amid staffing challenges
With thousands of park employees furloughed and no final contingency plan announced, national parks face significant operational downsizing. Parks like Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Zion, Acadia, and Rocky Mountain National Parks are expected to remain accessible, but visitor services such as guided tours, educational programs, visitor centers, and routine maintenance are curtailed or suspended. Entrances with gates or doors may be locked to restrict access where staff presence cannot be guaranteed.
This partial availability means that while visitors can enter many parks, they will find reduced or no ranger assistance, limited law enforcement, and diminished upkeep. This scenario raises safety concerns over overcrowding, increased wildlife encounters, and potential environmental degradation due to unsupervised human activity. Reports from the 2018 shutdown showed that the absence of staff resulted in increased litter, vandalism, and damage to park infrastructure, challenges that once incurred can take months or years to repair.
Economic and community impact
National parks are major economic drivers for surrounding gateway communities, contributing billions annually through tourism spending on lodging, dining, transportation, and retail. The current shutdown threatens not only park preservation but also local economies that rely heavily on visitor revenues. The NPCA estimates losses of up to $1 million daily in park fee revenues and up to $80 million in visitor spending lost to neighboring communities for every day the shutdown persists.
The decreased visitation services and uncertainties also impact long-term tourism appeal and employment stability within these communities. Furthermore, parks themselves suffer financial setbacks as healing from environmental damage and infrastructure neglect costs substantial funds, often beyond what fee revenues alone can cover, further straining NPS budgets during and after shutdown periods.
Why did the US government shutdown occur?
The government shutdown in 2025 stemmed from Congress and the executive branch not being able to come to an agreement on appropriations for the federal budget. Much of the underlying political conflict revolved around spending levels, funding for border security and a myriad of other legislative priorities with the resulting outcome being a failure to authorize the spending of any funds for the federal government. Unlike prior temporary government shutdowns where the interruption of activities lasted for a few days, this current political deadlock greatly threatens the continuity of operations for an indefinite period of time across the range of federal services, including the National Park Service.
Political variables have been known to influence the length of government shutdowns historically, and in many prior examples, both involved complex negotiations with deep ideological divides over policy issues of high priority.
A balancing act
The partial reopening of national parks during the 2025 U.S. government shutdown raises the issue around a complicated and precarious balance. There is both a desire to allow access to some of the most beloved natural scenery and cultural sites in the country, but the limited resources meant to conserve and recover federal funds while the majority of the workforce was furloughed, create areas of uncertainty for visitor safety, environmental protection efforts and where communities economically rely on national park visitation, well, to go south. In this layered scenario, operational constraints and ongoing political deadlocks are punctuated by the vulnerability of public assets, while revealing the broader need for ongoing sustainable funding for our national parks.
Government shutdowns occur when federal appropriations lapse, most recently occurring in October 2025 due to Congress’s inability to agree on spending priorities, including border security, and resources devoted to investments in domestic priorities. Agencies such as the National Park Service (NPS) that rely on federal appropriations will engage in immediate furloughing of its employees, with approximately two-thirds of the NPS’s approximately 14,500 employees to be placed in a leave without pay status. Only a skeleton crew of staff will continue with the agency’s mission, engaging in activities for visitor and employee health, safety, law enforcement, fire suppression, and emergency response.
Despite this, several parks across the United States, including marquee parks such as Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Zion, Acadia, and Rocky Mountain National Parks, can be partially open. Partially open parks draw upon the Department of the Interior’s contingency plans. Such plans detailed the implementation of outdoor facilities (e.g., trails, roads, lookouts, open-air memorials). Maintenance of basic visitor services, such as restroom operations/cleaning, trash collection/cleaning, campgrounds, and basic road maintenance, are conducted using minimally compensated staff, which includes parks gathering fees from visitors via the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act, which not all park staff, amenities, and operations result in collecting fee revenue. Fees are used to pay for core visitor services with fewer staff. However, without complete staff, a variety of visitor experience and safety issues continue to occur.
The partial functioning of national parks during shutdowns exerts considerable pressure on park infrastructure and natural resources. The potential of accidents involving visitors, animal-human conflicts, and other disturbances to special ecosystems increases with the ranger presence reduced. After prior longer shutdowns, such as the 35-days shutdown that occurred from late December 2018 - January 2019, unattended cultural and natural national park areas had issues such as overflowing trash in and around visitor center areas, acts of vandalism to cultural and natural resource areas including rare trees, and sanitation facilities that were not serviced. Repairs and restorations of cultural and natural resource damages often took months to address and resulted in both long-term impacts to park resources and vision of visitor services.
Additionally to environmental impacts, there are economic impacts felt in gateway communities that significantly depend on national park tourism. Visitor spending which supports local jobs and businesses (hotels, restaurants, shops and tour companies) disappears or diminishes as services and facilities within the park shut down, become unstaffed, or deemed too much uncertainty to proceed to visiting a park. The National Parks Conservation Association estimates up to $1 million in direct park fee losses and another up to $80 million in lost revenue and local spending for each day of the shutdown. Economic interruptions further worsen impacts for small towns and rural communities particularly dependent on consistent visitation influences throughout the year and especially during peak visitation periods.
Stalemates that prevent Congress from creating a budget lead to governmental shutdowns that are also indicative of deeper systemic issues surrounding our public land management and funding. The routine occurrence of budgetary crises and associated uproar at federally managed sites demonstrates the ways in which national parks as public good are susceptible to external policy decisions. Although parks provide vital cultural, ecological, and economic significance in communities across the country, their management relies heavily upon policy compromise, which is often not agreement-free or timely. Another government shutdown highlights a desire for Congress and the executive branch to devise a funding approach that is more predictable and insulated from the politics milieu that now threatens our national heritage and public lands while also effectively protecting community needs and ecological health.
The approach to the 2025 US government shutdown meant keeping national parks partially open verges on being a careful balancing act of continued public access versus protecting our national parks with limited people resources. Visitors are still able to enjoy many of this country's greatest natural wonders; however, responsible, healthy, and effective visitor services, safety, and park conservation is impaired due to reduced staffing. Meanwhile, national parks struggle to meet capacity demands (strain) relative to park infrastructure and nearby economies while unable to adapt to unstable federal funding resulting from partisan gridlock. This scenario highlights the need to reconsider budgetary stability to ensure national parks retain their amazing value to current and future generations.