National Parks

National Parks Week begins this weekend, kicking off with free entry to all parks on Saturday, April 19 — just weeks after mass layoffs and court-ordered reinstatements of some park workers.

For example, Utah’s Zion National Park has four days annually on average above 92.4 degrees – its 99th percentile temperature. That could jump to 21 days, or even higher.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum last week ordered all national parks to “remain open and accessible.” The directive comes after about 1,000 National Park Service employees were fired. In March, a federal judge ordered them – and thousands of other laid-off federal workers – to be reinstated, but the U.S. Supreme Court recently blocked that order.

The proposal would give each park superintendent the authority to decide where micromobility devices can go. Some public lands groups worry they'll be permitted in environmentally-sensitive areas.

Record numbers of visitors came to national parks last year, and many of those sites were in the Mountain West. However, staffing cuts and potential reductions have some advocates worried about the future.

New polling shows widespread support for increasing or keeping funding the same for the National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service. This comes on the heels of the Trump administration’s recent firings of federal park and forest employees.

A new project asks travelers to donate to tribes whose homelands and sacred sites are occupied by parks and monuments. The goal is to compensate tribes connected to the land and to educate visitors.

What do poor planning, spilling micro-trash, and rock collecting have in common? It’s all behavior to avoid if you’re visiting national Parksplike Arches,…