WHAT WE DO

   In the effort to make ends meet, park managers have several short-term solutions available to them, ranging from increasing entrance fees to greater recruitment of volunteers. However, this Band-Aid® approach is far from sufficient to meet the parks' funding and staffing needs as identified in this report.

Recreational Fees

   Recognizing the financial needs of the parks, Congress in 1997 created the vital Recreational Fee Demonstration Program. The program allows some parks to charge entrance and recreational fees and retain at least 80 percent of funds collected for use within that specific park. Since the fee demonstration program
began in fiscal year 1997, it has provided $584 million to the Park Service, with another estimated $250 million in fiscal years 2003 and 2004. This program, which should be made permanent for parks, has made important contributions to addressing a number of backlog maintenance needs, but cannot be used to fund full-time positions. As a result, Acadia National Park, which increased entrance fees this year, has funding for capital improvements such as new restrooms, but cannot afford staff to clean them.

Construction & Major Maintenance

   Congress and the administration have provided funding for parks to address critical construction and maintenance needs, ranging from new visitor centers to rehabilitation of historic buildings. But one-time project funding must be accompanied by increased operating dollars to ensure that park managers won't struggle to fund day-to-day upkeep. A new visitor center at Fort Necessity National Battlefield in Pennsylvania, for example, is scheduled to open in 2005. Although the building was funded through private partnerships and appropriated dollars, a lack of operating funds means that the park can't afford to maintain it or adequately staff it with interpreters.

   "We now find ourselves with brand new facilities in our national parks and too few people to take care of them," the Ellsworth American editorialized in March.

Private Philanthropy & Partnerships

   Nationally, park friends groups and other park philanthropies raise about $100 million a year for the parks. This funding provides a valuable shot in the arm, supporting park projects such as monitoring the reintroduced California condors at the Grand Canyon and operation of the Island Explorer shuttle buses at Acadia National Park. Such organizations make significant investments in the parks, but if these funds are used to replace instead of augment annual appropriations from Congress and the administration, friends groups warn that individuals will lose motivation to continue donating.

   Private corporations also provide much-needed funding for parks through supportive partnerships managed by the National Park Foundation. Ford Motor Company, for example, generously funded rehabilitation of Glacier National Park's fleet of historic red buses for public transportation. But in Yellowstone National Park's 1999 State of the Parks report, park managers warned, "While corporate donations and other alternate funding are gratefully received, the pressure to compete for them carries the risk of encouraging management decisions that will please the funders even if they are not in Yellowstone's highest priorities."

Volunteers

   The enormous staffing shortage has encouraged the Park Service to turn to volunteers for help. In fiscal year 2002, 125,000 volunteers donated 4.5 million hours (equivalent to 2,156 FTEs) to the national parks. Since 1990, the number of volunteers in the national parks has increased by roughly 5 percent per year.

   "We're not in dire straits yet, but I see a trend," the superintendent of Rocky Mountain National Park told the Coloradoan in June 2003. "We can rely more on our volunteers, but they can't do it all."

   Unfortunately, most parks are not equipped to take full advantage of volunteers - and they do not come for free. To make effective use of volunteers requires park staff to properly train and guide them, time to nurture the relationship (to reduce turnover), and money to support the work that they do, which does not include all activities performed by permanent park staff. Joshua Tree, Olympic, and Yellowstone national parks, for example, have limited capacity to manage volunteers, hindering their use in those parks.

   In May 2003, Friends of the National Parks at Gettysburg, Inc., organized a group of 70 volunteers to construct one mile of 19th-century fencing at Gettysburg National Military Park. Unfortunately, the park had funding to buy materials for only half a mile.