Shenandoah National Park remains open during the federal government shutdown, but advocates warn that limited staffing will impact visitor safety during the park's busiest season.
National parks are still open, including Shenandoah, but a contingency plan from the U.S. Department of the Interior states that, of the roughly 15,500 agency employees nationwide, around 60% are expected to be furloughed during this time.
Those still working are "necessary to protect life and property," such as law enforcement rangers and emergency responders, or their jobs are funded by revenues other than Congress' annual appropriations.
"So there will be minimal staffing presence, basically treading water," says Kyle Hart, the senior program manager covering the Shenandoah Valley for the National Parks Conservation Association, an advocacy organization.
"The other thing that we're really concerned about is technical search and rescue. Of course, law enforcement staff are able to assist with that, the minimal on-site park rangers … but if there were a very technical search and rescue operation, say at Old Rag Mountain, we would expect a significantly delayed response time."
The park also can't collect entrance fees during this time – as we enter the fall foliage season.
"Upwards of 30% of their annual visitation occurs in the month of October," says Hart. "So if you extrapolate out from there, if the federal government were shut down for the entire month of October, that's potentially $3.6 million in lost fee revenue for the park."
The shutdown comes on top of a year when the National Park Service already lost 24% of its permanent staff due to Trump administration layoffs and buyouts, according to the association's analysis of federal workforce data.
