WHAT WE DO

   Park managers across the country are making difficult decisions for this summer as they struggle to balance budgets. Unfortunately, seasonal personnel, hired during the months of heaviest visitation to assist interpretive, maintenance, and other critical park functions, are often vulnerable to cuts.

   This summer, Acadia National Park in Maine is eliminating up to 30 seasonal staff positions-about 20 percent of the popular park's seasonal workforce. Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site in Pennsylvania used to have 25 seasonals in costume each year to share the park's story about life in the 1800s and iron making; this summer, the park cannot afford to hire any seasonal help. Apostle Islands National Lakeshore in Wisconsin is reducing its seasonal workforce from 14 to 8, so visitor center hours and interpretive opportunities will be limited. The inspiring story of Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin - who balanced the budget after the Revolutionary War and funded the Lewis & Clark expedition - will now only be accessible to visitors three days a week instead of seven, because his historic home at Friendship Hill National Historic Site in Pennsylvania is understaffed. Few, if any, of the 13 seasonal interpreter positions will be filled at Washington's Olympic National Park this summer, one of the park visitor centers has been closed, and the hours of the main visitor center have been reduced. In Washington, D.C., the National Park Service has eliminated the opportunity for visitors to enter the 18th-century Old Stone House in Georgetown-one of the oldest known structures in the nation's capital.

   Other park positions are simply not filled. Lake Mead National Recreation Area, mentioned previously as having one of the most under funded park law enforcement programs, received a $350,000 increase in law enforcement funds in fiscal year 2004, but won't be able to hire even one additional ranger this year because the increase merely covers existing costs. Great Smoky Mountains National Park - created to protect some of the last remaining old growth forests in the eastern United States and home of the first comprehensive scientific assessment of park species - cannot afford to replace its retiring Chief of Natural Resources. Critical funding shortfalls mean that Shenandoah National Park, one of the country's most polluted national parks from sooty haze, ozone, and acid rain, will not be able to fill the recently vacated position for the Air Resource Program Manager. Yellowstone is not filling several necessary permanent positions, opting instead to use the money to maintain visitor services and pay for seasonal employees this summer.