National Park Administrators have announced plans to dip into entrance fees to the parks to pay for necessary services to keep the parks open during the government shutdown. In a press release yesterday, Deputy Park Director P. Daniel Smith said, “As the lapse in appropriations continues, it has become clear that highly visited parks with limited staff have urgent needs that cannot be addressed solely through the generosity of our partners.”
At this time, the Park Service is still deciding which parks will be able to tap into the entrance fee money. However, there were indications in Sunday’s announcement that the move would pertain to the agency’s most popular parks. Meanwhile, cross country trails in Grand Teton National Park are being groomed largely thanks to funding from the non-profit Grand Teton Association while road grooming in Yellowstone and other necessary services are being funded by concessioners including Xanterra Parks and Resorts and 13 park concessioners from Jackson, Cody Gardiner and West Yellowstone. Over the weekend, the Bozeman Daily Chronicle reports about 10 Gardiner residents cleaned up rest stops and removed garbage from the Lamar Valley area.
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