Yosemite, other national parks to remain partially open, understaffed amid shutdown

Liliana Fannin, The Fresno Bee on Oct 1, 2025

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Yosemite and other national parks will remain partially open with skeleton crews during the government shutdown, according to a National Park Service contingency plan, a move the National Parks Conservation Association says could cause irreparable damage to the parks.

Open air sites will remain open to the public, but buildings such as visitor centers that require staffing will be closed. The contingency plan says that park roads, lookouts, trails and open-air memorials will stay open, but emergency services will be limited.

National parks could lose as much as $1 million in fee revenue each day the shutdown goes on, and gateway communities could lose as much as $80 million in visitor spending, the NPCA said in a news release Wednesday.

In a 2018 shutdown from Dec. 22-Jan. 25, the Trump administration also left national parks partially open. Some workers were furloughed and some facilities closed, but mostly unsupervised visitors were still allowed to enter. As a result, the parks suffered vandalism that took years to correct. In some cases, the damage was irreversible.

“It’s not just irresponsible, it’s dangerous,” Theresa Pierno, President and CEO for NPCA said Wednesday.

If public access with limited staffing begins to pose a safety, health or resource issue, the area must close, the contingency plan specifies. At California's Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks during the 2018 shutdown, human waste and trash issues reached levels so problematic that the parks were eventually forced to close.

Cases of chopped-down Joshua trees, which can be more than a century old, were reported at Joshua Tree National Park. Prehistoric petroglyphs were vandalized and irreparably damaged at Big Bend National Park. At Death Valley National Park, campgrounds were kept open, but restrooms closed, leading to sanitation issues. Plus, many parks suffered damage to infrastructure from illegal off-roading, according to the release.

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