National parks
Trump’s proposed budget cuts would cripple Big Bend and other protected areas.
As its name so straightforwardly describes, Big Bend National Park sits at the spot where the Rio Grande makes the great sweeping bend that gives our state its distinctive shape. Its 801,000 rugged acres of mountains, canyons and high desert embody the state’s cowboy mythology. Mescalero Apaches and Comanches ranged across the territory late into the 19th Century. Despite the harsh conditions, Spanish, Mexican and Anglo farmers worked the land.
Today, visitors to the park find remnants of all these cultures and experience a terrain largely unchanged, free from the distorting effects of modern life. The night sky is ablaze with stars undiminished by artificial light and sunsets splash pink and crimson and violet across a vast horizon. Hikers can lose themselves in absolute solitude along mountain trails, inside deep canyons or among the agave and yucca and prickly pears of the high desert. It is, in short, a treasure deeded to all the people of the United States as a national park in 1944. It is hard to imagine Texas without Big Bend, but it could happen not only to Big Bend but Yellowstone and Yosemite and Grand Canyon and more.
The National Park Service operates more than 400 parks nationwide, encompassing 84 million acres with 22,000 employees on an annual budget of about $3 billion, which is smaller than the city of Austin’s $3.7 billion. The Trump administration’s 2018 budget proposal would cut that total to $2.55 billion, the largest reduction since World War II. It includes a $30 million cut from funds that would help ease an already staggering $12 billion backlog in much needed repairs and maintenance.
The cuts will require the Service to shorten hours at some parks, eliminate tours and close campgrounds and hiking trails. Visitors will experience longer wait times, dirtier bathrooms, maybe even park closings, according to Park Service personnel.
Perhaps the most destructive move is Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke’s announcement that peak season entry fees at the 17 most popular parks, including Yosemite, Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Grand Teton, Rocky Mountain and Joshua Tree, will more than double, from the current $25 or $30 to $70. Other fees and services — for camping, picnicking and tours, for example — are also scheduled to increase, putting a visit to a national park out of reach for many middle-class families. Zinke claims that the increases are needed to pay for maintenance and repairs, an excuse that is hard to square with the budget cuts.
The problem for the administration: Americans love their parks. In fact, the National Park Service is consistently one of the most popular federal programs, with a 75 percent approval rating in a Pew Research Center poll in 2015. Last year, the national parks had a record 331 million visitors — more than the entire U.S. population.
But it’s not just vacationers who value the parks. Many nearby rural communities rely on park tourism to sustain their economies, much as Marathon, the gateway to Big Bend, does. In 2016, park visitors contributed about $18.4 billion and thousands of jobs to these economic regions, according to the National Park Service’s own report.
In the news overload from the sex abuse scandals and Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation and a seemingly endless string of mass shootings, it is easy to let this very important issue slip under the radar. We believe the national parks belong to all Americans and should be preserved and made accessible to all. We strongly urge our representatives in the U.S. Congress to maintain the Park Service’s funding and block the fee increases.
If you can’t imagine Texas without Big Bend, write your representatives. Sen. John Cornyn has shown support in the past, so start with him. Remind him what it’s like to hike through old Comanche camping grounds on your way to the remnants of an abandoned ranch site deep in the desert. These places tell the hardscrabble history of our forebears, and once lost, can’t be replaced.