National Parks Traveler Podcast · Kurt Repanshek

National Parks Traveler Podcast | Government Shutdown Blues

·48 min·3 clips

Brengel says Interior may pursue a “mass termination” of thousands of staff across the Park Service and other bureaus.

The episode begins with a simple but uneasy question: the federal government is shut down, but most national parks are still open. Kurt Repencheck uses that setup to frame the issue as one of protection, not just access. He points back to President Donald Trump’s first-term shutdown from late 2018 into early 2019. That earlier choice mattered. Parks stayed open, and that led to vandalism and damage to some park resources. Repencheck uses that history to ask whether this shutdown could bring similar harm. Kristen Brengel of the National Parks Conservation Association joins the conversation to answer from the policy side. She treats the situation as an operational problem with real consequences. The discussion stays grounded in the people who keep parks functioning when the federal system is strained. It also stays focused on the communities around those parks. Brengel argues that mass terminations would cut them off from gateway communities in a huge way. She says the result would be a serious loss of communication. A secretarial order promising one person per bureau to work with gateway communities does not ease that concern. In her view, removing the staff who do the work makes the order hollow. She says none of it makes sense. The layoffs were supposed to happen the following week, but an injunction would probably push them back. Even so, she thinks the effort itself will continue. The conversation widens beyond the Park Service. Brengel says the same pressure would hurt other federal agencies too. She also pushes back on the idea that these are only D.C.-based employees. They are spread across the country, including in very red states like Alaska and Idaho. The episode closes with Repencheck shifting from policy back to place, recalling Acadia National Park as an early wonderland and the introduction that made the national park system feel personal.

As heard by us

A plainspoken shutdown conversation about park protection, staffing strain, and the communities around the parks.

National Parks Traveler opens with a shutdown in which most national parks are still open, then keeps its focus on what that means for park protection and resources.

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Why you'd press play

See how a shutdown changes life at the parks, not just the headlines.

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