Shutdown damage will persist for a while
WASHINGTON — The government may be reopening, but the consequences of the longest federal shutdown in U.S. history are likely to linger for national parks, forests, the federal workforce and cuttingedge scientific research. Some may even be permanent.
Many fire crews missed their window for controlled burns to prevent wildfires. Irreplaceable relics may have been damaged in unguarded national parks. Science experiments were abandoned. And a generation of talent may now think twice about signing up for government, while workers returning to a month of unopened emails and missed meetings will have to decide which of their priorities to sacrifice this year.
And there’s the threat it could happen all over again. Congressional negotiators start work this week to find a permanent budget solution due by Feb. 15. President Donald Trump’s acting chief of staff on Sunday didn’t rule out another shutdown.
“The lapse in funding has prevented progress on projects that would normally occur at this time of year, affecting partners, tribes, local communities and businesses,” John Haynes, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service, said in a statement. “Qualification training in fields such as firefighting and law enforcement has been delayed. Certain fuels treatments to improve forest conditions have been delayed or canceled. Work that could only be done during winter months may not be completed.”
Ecologists and conservationists are bracing for lasting damage on the nation’s public lands and wild places — herons poached from Florida’s Everglades, felled desert succulents that would take decades to regrow, defaced relics from rocky outcroppings in the West.
“These are natural ecosystems,” said Jonathan Asher, a government relations manager with the Wilderness Society. “We can’t just go out there and make it better.”
Images of damage have already become iconic symbols of the shutdown’s toll on nature. From California’s Joshua Tree National Park, an image of the eponymous plant slashed down to make room for off-road vehicles went viral on Twitter.
But Collin O’Mara, president of the National Wildlife Federation, said he’s heard reports of wider-ranging damage that hasn’t yet been documented. That includes harm to fossils and ancient rock carvings in Utah and Colorado, injuries to sea turtles and manatees by motorized boats in the Everglades, and sage brush trampled by vehicles.
“We’ve also heard some poaching issues in the Everglades, where folks are going in and taking birds,” O’Mara said. “It’s a million little things.”
The impacts may be concentrated in the U.S. West — harsh, isolated landscapes with rugged features that betray their fragility. Even a footfall can crush living cryptobiotic crust in western parks and public lands, much less the offroad vehicles reported driving across them.
Damage that will have to be addressed stems not just from people deliberately driving or treading into forbidden areas, Asher said, but also unintentional harm, like when wellmeaning volunteers slipped bleach into composting toilets.
The physical damage isn’t limited to land. The shutdown is delaying updates to government rules dictating catch and size limits for salmon and other marine species that will in some cases force fishermen to limit what they collect under outdated, unduly stringent restrictions. In other cases, too many fish may be plucked from the sea this season.