Episode Guest
Alan Spears – Senior Director of Cultural resources & registered Lobbyist
National Park Conservation Association
Episode Transcript
After the longest government shutdown in US History, join me as we explore the impact that the 43 day shutdown had on our parks and public lands, and how we navigate what’s next for our treasured places. I’m your host, Missy Rents, and this is the Parks podcast.
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[00:00:23] Missy Rentz: I’m thrilled to welcome Alan Spears to The Parks Podcast. Alan is the senior director of Cultural Resources at the National Park Conservation Association. He’s also a registered lobbyist in the Government Affairs Department. Alan, welcome to The Parks Podcast.
[00:00:40] Alan Spears: Thanks, Missy. It’s great to be with you.
[00:00:41] Missy Rentz: When we first started talking about you coming on The Parks Podcast, I want you to come on for a million reasons, but this specific one was we weren’t really sure if the government shutdown would be over. It is, which is great, but now what?
Just now what Alan, what’s going on when it comes to the parks and public lands?
[00:01:01] Alan Spears: Oh, well, everybody’s come together and complete agreement on how we move forward in a bipartisan, unilateral way. It’s no, so 43 days, I think it was, that’s the longest shutdown in the history of the United States government.
Where we could talk about a lot of things coming outta the shutdown. But I think we’re here to talk mostly about national parks and public lands. And so where we are is we still don’t have a budget for FY 26. We got, in my opinion, as an advocate for National Parks, and someone who works for the National Parks Conservation Association, we got a really bad budget proposal out of the House of Representatives back in July of this year before the shutdown took place, that would cut probably about 176 million more million more dollars from the National Park Service budget. So we’re not a fan of that. The Senate then came out a little bit later in that month with a bill that kind of holds level funding, flat level funding for FY 26, and included a couple provisions about, preventing mass firings and rifts at the park service.
And so we like that bill much better, but we still don’t have a timeline on when either of those things will get moving in the House and the Senate. And then there’s the process of reconciliation. And of course with the past being prologue, we’ve got a continuing resolution in place until the end of January of 2026, when we may yet again find ourselves headed towards yet another government shutdown if people can’t agree on the top line numbers.
So that’s kind of where we are right now.
[00:02:26] Missy Rentz: Yeah. What was the impact of the shutdown on our parks and public lands?
[00:02:32] Alan Spears: I think it was tremendous. But I think the thing that, most of the public who’s visiting national parks are even concerned about this stuff in just an ancillary way should understand is that the National Park Service, these people are masters at not showing the public how much they’re being stretched or stressed.
And I think the Park Service was actually under orders during this most recent shutdown to do what you can to keep parks open, do what you can to maintain visitor services and keep the trash picked up. But , parks generate about $56 billion in economic revenue. And when they are closed or partially closed, we are robbing communities of that money.
I think we lost somewhere along the lines of, $2 million or so, in terms of fee collection because some parks that were opened, they didn’t have anybody on staff who could sit in those fee collection booths and take the money from people who were coming in to visit during that 43 day hiatus shutdown, and so the revenue has been hit.
There are places like, Yosemite National Park in California that have seen staffing reductions, and then the shutdown, which furloughed a bunch of staff at the same point that they were seeing historic rises in visitation and we’re told that backcountry, search and rescue calls increased exponentially during that period.
Sometimes there were people there who could answer those calls, sometimes maybe not. There were impacts, but I think maybe the biggest impact of all that we really have to talk about is not budget, it’s not numbers, it’s not, whether or not people were able to continue to do research and take care of resources, but it was on the morale of the people who work for the National Park Service.
That morale was already subterranean. You go to like a high rise building or a shopping center. You get in the elevator and you see you’ve got parking one P one, P two, P four. I think Park Service morale is somewhere down by P five at this point in time and maybe below that. And it’s just getting worse, because, employees were being, I’m gonna use the word deliberately abused during the shutdown process, being told to work but not being guaranteed that they would be paid. And we still got, a question about whether or not some employees will receive back pay that they deserved, for working during portions of the shutdown.
So it’s a mess. And morale, I think, took another hit. That’s one of my biggest concerns is, being a fan of National Park Service Rangers, historians, interpreters and maintenance staff, all the people who are out there keeping these resources up and running and open to the public, I just think they’re, it really breaks my heart that we’re not giving them the respect that they deserve.
[00:04:57] Missy Rentz: Yeah, and I was at a few places and you run into Rangers and you would never know. I mean, they are brilliant. They love their jobs, they love what they do. They’re kind and welcoming. Mm-hmm. You wouldn’t get that at any other industry, , when they’re stressed like they are. And I did get a lot of people, we did two other episodes during the shutdown with former park rangers and I did get a lot of people coming to me and saying, I went to the park and it was just fine.
But those rangers are saying it’s not frontward facing that you’re gonna see it’s the back of house. It’s the fact that they can’t do, crime investigations, they can’t rescue people, they can’t fix things that, those are the things that were really hurting during that time.
[00:05:37] Alan Spears: You know, the phrase that comes to mind is Potamkin Village. You’ve got this great facade and it looks like everything is wonderful. But maybe not. There were a few instances of vandalism in cases of vandalism, but, it’s hard necessarily to figure out exactly how you score that because we’ve had instances of vandalism while parks were up and running and staffed.
But I think it’s the morale issue. I think it is, like you said, front of house versus back of house. And, people have a lot to be concerned about these days. I get that we all could use a little bit more intelligence in the way that our parks are managed and what it takes, the service and the sacrifice that it takes to keep a place like Yellowstone or Gettysburg or even the Frederick Douglass home up and running and open to the public, ’cause it’s a lot of backend operation that you don’t necessarily see when you show up. Pay your fee, get a brochure, see the video in the visitor center, and then get one of those excellent interpretive talks or walks from a Park Service ranger. It takes a lot to put that on.
[00:06:32] Missy Rentz: Yeah, sure does. Can we assume, I’m gonna ask the question then, there’s a big asterisk on this one.
Can we assume that everything is back to normal? And I just wanna say like normal, we were way understaffed with like before the shutdown, there was a lot of trauma that hit us, but are they back up and running now?
[00:06:51] Alan Spears: Well, uh, you know, first, no, we can’t make that assumption. And then I think the second part to, answer to your question is that’s gonna be on a park by park basis.
My organization, the National Parks Conservation Association, NPCA is tracking a more than 24% decrease in permanent staff for the park service just since the start of this year. So 11 months ago, 10 months ago, whenever, January of this year was, it seems like it was about five years ago . so staffing levels have just gone down, and that’s from reductions in force, the Doge Fork in the road offer of a buyout.
You either take a buyout and deferred resignation now, or you risk being terminated later on. And, when you talk about things getting back to normal or getting back up and running. Staffing issue maybe actually exceeds the budget issue. They’re both tied together along with history erasure. So those three things are a kind of triumvirate of challenges right now.
But the staffing level is, I think, the thing that’s of biggest concern. So you reopen a site. Maybe the person who was the superintendent took deferred resignation. They’re gone. You had maybe some other people who were hit in a rif, they’re gone. You’ve had a consolidation of your IT and human resources department.
So they’ve been taken out of parks or even out of regions and moved to interior. So those folks are gone. And I don’t think we ever fully recovered from the fact that earlier this year, the seasonal employees were, the park service was not able to hire their seasonals in the way that they wanted, and there was a decision that came out of the Trump administration,
okay, let’s ease up and lax up on that, but, it came so late that a lot of the seasonal help, if you’re gonna have somebody at Harper’s Ferry, National Historical Park in West Virginia, one of my favorite places to go, you’ve gotta have them in late March or April to start getting trained on how they’re going to interact with the public and what they’re gonna say and what they’re gonna do when their seasonal work kicks in in late April May.
June, July. And so when that initial hiring was delayed, you had parks that weren’t able to pick up seasonal employees. So the staffing levels at this point in time are one of the most critical things because you wanna have people there who are familiar with the mission. You wanna have people there. And even if it’s like a facilities and maintenance person, those are some of the best interpretive rangers in the National Park Service right now. And so you come across somebody who might be paving a road, doing planting, in invasive species, and they might be the person at Vicksburg that tells you the story about Ulysses S Grant that you hadn’t heard from any other historians or interpreter rangers because they’ve been there for decades.
They know the history, they love the stories, and so when we lose people like that, I think the park service has been, there is no more excess left to cut. Within that agency. So sure, we’ve got parks that are opening back up, but what are they opening up with? That’s the question right now.
[00:09:40] Missy Rentz: And so I guess if you’re planning a trip, it’s really important to go in and do your own research and see what is open, what is available, to go visit.
[00:09:50] Alan Spears: I think that’s a critical point. Now at larger landscape parks, places like Yosemite and Yellowstone, there might be, we’re heading into the winter season, so some of these places will have standard operating procedure. They will be closing roads and trails because of inclement weather or the threat of inclement weather.
Or maybe it’s just the seasonal time to stay away from a particular area because there are wildlife considerations or other things. But at smaller historical sites, we had a staff person at NPCA who went to visit the Maggie Walker site in Richmond. And if folks have an interest in the African American experience and especially African American women’s history, the Maggie Walker site is a really great place to go and learn about this important woman, they appeared to have hours of operation that were limited to the weekend, Saturdays and Sundays, and that’s directly due to staffing and funding. Yeah, so you do have to call ahead and find out when folks are open and it probably is best actually to make that phone call as opposed to try to rely on a website that maybe hasn’t been updated, frequently enough to catch all the nuances of staffing and operational hours.
[00:10:52] Missy Rentz: Yeah, absolutely. Wow. Okay. So I feel like we jumped from, and you’ve named some of these already, but we’ve jumped from major staffing cuts in February to like this land grab in May and June. Then we had the Roadless rule followed by the Ambler Road, and then the government shut down, and I’m sure there’s so many more that I am not thinking of.
But we’ve done a lot of advocating for the parks and public lands, trying to educate people with what’s going on. What is going on? What’s next? What are we up against because we know it’s not over?
[00:11:25] Alan Spears: Well, I’d say the one thing that was missing from that list, which was very inclusive, is the presidential order on restoring truth and sanity to American history.
And President Trump did, drop that executive order in March. It was followed up by a secretarial order, SO3431 that was released, introduced, sent out by Secretary Doug Burgum on May 20th of this year. And the secretarial order backs up or operationalizes the presidential executive order for National Parks and any public lands management agencies within the interior department that are managing historic and cultural resources.
So the idea is on the part of the administration is that American history has been overtaken by woke people. It is no longer history. It is indoctrination. They’ve gotta wrangle that back from people like me, I suppose. Maybe even people like you and, put history to a place where it no longer denigrates America or Americans.
Okay. So if you take a look at what that means, it’s anything that has to do with race, racism, black subordination, white supremacy, anything that’s got anything to do with transgender, rights or activists or people mention of that is now. Has been excised from National Park Service Interpretation, and we could also see history, erasure or sanitation being aimed at things like labor rights and history in this country, women’s rights and women’s suffrage.
And certainly we have already seen some efforts to downgrade, edit, or race the history of this country’s relationships with native or indigenous people. So, SO3431, when it was released on May 20th, the first impact was to put QR codes in all national parks. And the idea was that people visiting these sites would see these QR codes on the front door at the front desk, and you’d scan ’em.
And if in the course of your visit to, let’s say, Yorktown Final Victory, Gettysburg National Military Park, Harper Ferry National Historical Park, the Frederick Douglas Home here in DC, if you saw anything that offended you. What you could do is scan the QR code and then write in, “I don’t like the way the park service has been talking about this.”
It was basically designed to help the public tattle on park rangers and get people in trouble. Fortunately, the comments that were coming in from that QR code, at least the original batch in May and June, and maybe a little bit of July of this year, we’re about 10 to one in favor of the NA National Park Service telling a complete unfiltered American story.
And people saying, we actually want more of this, or You need more about native people, you need more about civil rights stories, other things like that. And it was a admonishment of the administration. Keep your hands off our history. Let the park service do what they’re meant to do. And, maybe just now would be a good place to stop for a second and say, for any of the folks that are listening to this podcast, that the National Park Service, all 433 units in the National Park system, manage, protect, and interpret historic and cultural resources. So that’s not just the small battlefields or cultural resource sites in the east, it’s the large landscape sites in the west, of the United States as well. So the Park Service has really been in the history business since its inception in 1916, and that’s why this effort to sanitize or erase history and parks was such a big deal.
The QR codes were followed by instructions from the National Park Service, and from interior leadership to park superintendents and managers. Give us a list of anything in your interpretive array that might run afoul of. SO3431, and those lists were submitted. Not all parks did. Most parks did, and then letters of compliance were sent out in September, just a couple months ago, basically advising national parks on what they had to remove.
Or what they had to cover up or what they had to sanitize. We saw that signs about interpretive signs about climate change were taken down in Acadia National Park in Maine and that at Jamaica Bay in, the New York area signage about the abrogation of treaty rights with indigenous, communities and cultures and tribes.
Those were removed because they were felt to be denigrating of Americans, and America. The Independence Hall has still an exhibit on the enslaved people that General Washington brought with him from Mount Vernon to Philadelphia in 1790 when he began serving as president. Remember, there wasn’t a Washington DC to go to until 1800, and the administration actually wanted that entire external interpretation exhibit ripped out of its roots and removed from the park. And then we saw the Park Service get instructions to remove the scorched back photograph of “Whipped Peter” from interpretation about the horrors of slavery that were featured at Fort Pulaski in Georgia. So there was a lot of stuff that was coming out.
Websites were being scrubbed, other things were happening this summer and then this fall. I’ll quickly sum up “where we are right now.” It’s difficult to know how to score it. We did see interpretive signage removed. The display about enslaved people is still up at Independence Hall because there was an uproar from community leaders who were like, “you can’t touch this.”
And it seems like there was enough opposition generated by groups like NPCA, people like me, that the “scourged back” photograph, I think, is still up at Fort Pulaski. So those are wins, but we also know we’re not done yet. And we think, as you ask the question, I think back in the late 1990s when I started this answer, the.
The idea was, where are we going from here? We’re likely to see more attempts to, erase or sanitize American history as it’s being told in national parks. And this is something that I think we’ve gotta fight back on because, to paraphrase Jack Nicholson from a Few Good Men, his character, we can handle the truth.
I think we want the truth and we want that kind of complex history because it’s that nuance that makes history so compelling. I would just share with anybody out there who has concerns about. ” Does mention of slavery or racism or white supremacy does that denigrate America?”
And there are concerns about taking monuments down the American historical mantle piece that we have. It’s huge. And it’s broad. Yeah. And we don’t have to take down Robert E. Lee. We just have to make sure we add Harriet Tubman.
[00:17:27] Missy Rentz: Yeah. Absolutely. Oh, I so agree. Okay, I don’t even remember the date, but just recently, Senator Sheehy and Senator Heinrich.
Started a, they call it the Senate Stewardship Caucus, and just Senator Tim Sheehy is a Republican from Montana. Senator Martin Heinrich is a Democrat from New Mexico, and this caucus is meant to, it’s supposed to be bipartisan and it’s meant to promote conservation and the management of our public lands and our parks.
And I’m, is this promising? Is this a good thing?
[00:18:01] Alan Spears: Yeah, I think it’s promising. We’ll have to see where it goes. I’m going to say something harsh and then hopefully sweeten it up a little bit. It feels like the, the 119th Congress spent the better part of this year abdicating much of its responsibility on public lands and budgeting.
We still have champions and heroes on both sides of the aisles, and Independents who are operating in the House and the Senate, who I think are maybe understanding that the need to stand up for national parks is still a critical thing. Their constituents want it. No district, no state in the nation benefited from a government shutdown that closed down or partially closed down national parks.
And so the development of a stewardship caucus is a good thing, if they embrace the power that they have as lawmakers and appropriators. But we need better budgets. We need better policy. And we need people to be prepared to oppose this administration as they continue perhaps, to propose more mass terminations, more firings.
As they propose hiring rifs, and when we see people in the Department of Government efficiency taking punitive actions and restricting people in the federal government to a $1 limit on their credit cards for purchases, for stuff that’s needed to keep a park open on a daily basis, those things are ridiculous.
[00:19:15] Missy Rentz: Yeah.
[00:19:15] Alan Spears: There isn’t a, there isn’t a. Federal organization in the history of humankind that wouldn’t have been able to benefit from some streamlining and reorganization. But when you get to the point where so much damage has been done to our national parks at this point in time, that we are definitely gonna need people like the senators you mentioned, to pull together in a bipartisan way to make sure that these parks are protected.
Important to understand. More than 100 years ago, we, the people in this country, made a decision that we were gonna set aside in perpetuity for the benefit, enjoyment, and inspiration. Some of the best places on the American landscape, scenic, recreational, natural, cultural, historic. It is way too late for us to walk back on that commitment right now.
And in fact, we need to double down on it. I welcome a stewardship caucus in the Senate. Let’s hope we get one in the House, and let’s hope our congressional champions recover their desire, their ability, their commitment to our national parks and our public lands. We need ’em now more than ever before.
[00:20:17] Missy Rentz: Alan, what can listeners do? Listeners of this podcast are either lovers of our parks or curious about our parks and public lands. What can we do? What do we need to be prepared to do to advocate for our parks and public lands?
[00:20:33] Alan Spears: Yeah. So the first thing I would say is for anybody who has an opportunity to visit a national park anytime, we don’t have much time left in 2025.
The end of the year is with us. But if you go, in what’s left of November or December, if you go anytime next year, the first time you see someone in a National Park service uniform or volunteer in parks, I don’t know. Are we still in elbow bump territory? Are we in handshake territory?
I don’t think you wanna hug anybody unless they give you permission first. But you need, we need desperately, desperately to convey to people who are working, in our national parks that we love ’em, we respect ’em, we care about ’em, and we’re doing whatever we can to make sure that they understand that and that they’re getting backed up in the way that they need to be backed up with budgets and policies that work and that aren’t punitive or just dumb. So I think that’s the first thing. It’s just the human thing of making sure we’re thanking the people that we need to thank.
The second thing is NPCA is an advocacy organization. We’re a 501(c)(3) advocacy organization. You can visit our website at www.npca (fornationalparksconservationassociation) .org, and you can see some of the talking points about some of the breaking issues.
You can learn about what’s going on in our national parks. And, there could be activist alerts where you can send a letter or get a template on how you can connect with your elected representatives to let them know parks are important and the budgeting and staffing things need improvement. The history erasure, issue needs to be monitored, and we need to reverse harmful policies on all three of those things.
So visit our website.
And then I think just, continue to, people have a lot going on. I was just listening to another podcast that talked about the fact that although the productivity of the American worker has gone up steadily over the last 25 to 30 years, the power in wages has either stagnated or gone down.
So that’s hitting a lot of us right now, and people have a lot to worry about in their communities. I’m not asking people necessarily to drop everything to become an advocate for the national parks. That’s my job. But you can help me do my job defending national parks by taking an interest by, on a quarterly basis, if not on a monthly basis, checking in on our website, sending a letter, making sure your elected representative understands that parks are important for you.
And here’s a tip, we’re heading into an election year. Which means that a lot of people are gonna be out of Washington, DC and back in their home districts or in their home states. They’re gonna be at the barbecue pit, they’re gonna be at the softball game, they’re gonna be at the library opening, they’re gonna be at other things like that.
And they’re gonna wanna ask the public for questions. What do you guys think? And they’re gonna get a lot of stuff about. Foreign policy about the budget, about the economy. That’s a good time always for you with two of your friends and the audience to raise your hands and say, I wanna know your views on our national parks and the preservation of our public lands.
And so when you ask those questions, there’s such a thing as congressional math. They’re expecting the questions on the budget. They might not be expecting the questions about national parks or the National Heritage area that’s in your region. And when two people ask a question about National Parks, it’s multiplied because the folks that are receiving the questions understand if two people are asking, maybe 20 or 200 people in our district or in our state are interested.
And that’s a big number in our constituency that we wanna address in a way that’s positive, most likely. So you can do that. Last thing I’d say is we are coming up on the 250th anniversary of American Independence. Please check in locally. The Park Service is gonna be doing some things, but the money’s a little bit questionable about what they’ll get to help celebrate the semi centennial of American Independence from, Great Britain.
There’re gonna be a number of local things. So support your local operators who are running these programs, but also do your best to look for programs that embrace the breadth and depth of that history. ’cause the last thing we need for the semi quincentennial is fireworks, which are lovely, but.
Not all we need. And then a bunch of guys in white wigs with blue coats shooting blanks at a bunch of guys in white wigs and red coats, and then everybody goes and has a beer in a bratwurst That’s not a semi quincentennial celebration that this country needs right now. We need something that is involving the history that is accurate, just inclusive and inspiring.
So look for those and support them with your participation. Those are my four.
[00:24:44] Missy Rentz: I love it. Alan, I also recently came across, a list of blog posts from you. I’m gonna link to it on our, episode page because if you want more information on your thoughts and your research and your experience and books to read and things like that, you have an incredible array of blog posts on the National Park Conservation Association.
[00:25:02] Alan Spears: Oh, thank you.
[00:25:03] Missy Rentz: Yeah. They were fantastic. I have added to my reading list based off of your blog from last, I think it was January that you posted that one.
Alan, thank you so much for your passion, your knowledge, and everything that you give to the parks and you have been gracious to give to us today.
[00:25:18] Alan Spears: Missy, It’s my pleasure. We’ll do this again sometime, I hope, and maybe have slightly more positive news to share with people.
[00:25:24] Missy Rentz: Yeah. I’d like really like to tap into the cultural history. You are. You’re gonna be someone I’m pinging on for that as we move into a, a special series on The Parks Podcast.
[00:25:33] Alan Spears: Absolutely be my pleasure. You just let me know. I’m standing by.
[00:25:35] Missy Rentz: Wonderful. Well, happy holidays to you and your family. Happy holidays to you, our listeners, and until next time, we’ll see you in the parks,
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please be sure to like and share on your favorite podcast platform. Music for the parks podcast is performed and produced by Porter Hardy. For more information, please follow us on Instagram at , the parks podcast. Or visit our website@theparkspodcast.com.