Protective face masks are now a requirement for entry into a national park.

The National Park Service announced its new mandate in a press release, which notes that the PPE requirement is in compliance with President Biden’s executive action that states masks must be worn on federal property, including parks and buildings.

Mask wear is required for visitors, park employees, partners and contractors due to the severity of the coronavirus pandemic. This order remains in effect indefinitely.

Face masks must be worn on lands managed by the National Park Service when social distancing cannot be maintained. This includes “narrow or busy trails, overlooks and historic homes,” according to the release.

Additionally, the National Park Service is implementing capacity limits on one-way trails as a coronavirus-related health and safety measure. Temporary closures can be applied in response to local conditions.

On-duty park rangers will reportedly uphold the mask and distancing requirements.

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At the National Mall in Washington, at least four National Park Service employees have tested positive for COVID-19 in recent days as the pandemic hit its highest level yet in the nation’s capital.

At Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, officials said they’ve had 28 confirmed cases within the park.

And in California, parks this week once again started closing campgrounds and other facilities in response to restrictions imposed by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

With the pandemic worsening, NPS is under growing pressure to step up its protections for employees as its caseload grows.

NPS officials have declined to disclose the specific number of cases, citing the privacy of employees, but a public health official told the NPS advisory board in September that about 150 staffers had tested positive since March.

The park service has declined to provide an updated number.

More employees have tested positive this year as most parks have remained open during the pandemic, complying with orders from both President Trump and Interior Secretary David Bernhardt.

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Public lands in Western North Carolina are set to get a chunk of the $9.5 billion approved for deferred maintenance projects with the ratification of the Great American Outdoors Act. The National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service both released project lists last week.

Hailed as the largest single investment in public lands in the nation’s history, the bipartisan act dedicates up to $9.5 billion over five years to address the much larger maintenance backlog on federal lands, as well as $900 million per year to the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which has for the past 50 years protected land for parks, wildlife refuges and recreation nationwide. The law requires that half of the money received from energy development revenues on federal lands and waters go toward these programs, not to exceed $1.9 billion in any fiscal year.

Nationwide, the Forest Service has a deferred maintenance backlog of $5.2 billion, while the Park Service’s stands at $12 billion. As of 2018, the last year for which figures are available, the backlog in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was worth $235.9 million, and the Blue Ridge Parkway carried a backlog of $508.1 million.

The funds will go to agencies under both the Department of Interior and Department of Agriculture, each of which is handling the process of prioritizing and carrying out the projects in a different way.

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As a way to celebrate the 104th birthday of America’s National Parks System, parks will be open to the public free of charge on August 25, 2020.

On Aug. 25, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Organic Act, establishing the National Park Service as a bureau in the Department of the Interior responsible for maintaining national parks and monuments.

Today, the NPS manages 419 of what they call “units,” which includes parks, monuments, battlefields, memorials, lake shores, historic sites and more.

According to the National Park Service, the fee-free days are designed to give everyone access to their public lands.

The entrance fee waiver for fee-free days does not cover amenity or user fees for activities such as camping, boat launches, transportation or special tours in any of the national parks or other park service sites.

Other fee-free days in 2020:

Sept. 26: National Public Lands Day
Nov. 11: Veterans Day

As people head outdoors to escape cabin fever during this stay at home order, local trail systems are seeing more garbage and even vandalism. The National Park Service recently posted pictures on their social media, showing graffiti on trees and rocks. This was done on several parts of popular trails, throughout the United States.

NPS Chief of Interpretation and Visitor Services, Eve West, stressed this is not acceptable. She is encouraging people to be mindful in nature, or suggests being a virtual visitor.

“There are a lot of national park areas that have webcams set up,” West said. “If you go on our website, that is kind of a window into the world of national parks and all the virtual videos that are out there as well.”

West said if you do plan to visit any of the National Parks or Rivers, remember to follow ‘leave no trace’ policies, practice social distancing, and plan accordingly since most public restrooms are currently closed during the pandemic.

There are consequences and fines issued for littering and vandalism. #beagoodsteward

As superintendent of Glacier National Park, Jeff Mow has grappled with wildfires and wayward bears, flash floods and fatal avalanches. He’s tangled with budget deficits and government shutdowns, climate change and record-setting throngs of visitors that stretch the park’s infrastructure to maximum capacity.

He’s modeled scenarios that account for rising temperatures and shrinking glaciers, endangered species and invasive ones, trailheads choked with hikers, the strategic placement of a vault toilet, and the logistics of maintaining a 50-mile expanse of alpine highway that has to accommodate around 3 million people every year.

Until now, however, he’s never had to contend with a pandemic. “This is a first,” Mow said. “But we do have some experience dealing with dynamic circumstances at Glacier National Park.”

Managing a unit of the National Park Service is, after all, a job that demands a high degree of administrative acrobatics, particularly when its accessibility is inextricably linked to the economies of its gateway communities. Each NPS supervisor must deal with their own set of unique requirements when considering future operation.

As it turns out, a public-health crisis of this magnitude dwarfs blazes and bears and budgetary woes — or, rather, it lumps them all into one confusing ball of string. Concerns for health of staff, gateway communities, seasonal workers and visitors are complicating the reopening of national parks shuttered due to the coronavirus pandemic.

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Overarching concerns for the health of staff, concession workers, and visitors are complicating the reopening of national park sites shuttered due to the coronavirus pandemic. Business won’t return to normal quickly or uniformly, with many parks confronting a unique set of issues they must resolve before they can welcome the public’s return.

Exactly when individual parks will reopen is unknown, with some units of the National Park System already saying they’ll be closed into late June, and others saying they might try staggered openings before summer officially arrives.

Seasonal workforces, thousands of individuals strong, normally are getting their positions for the summer season finalized now. But bringing workers in from not just across the country but possibly from throughout the world and housing them in dormitory settings is a potentially deadly proposition.

“… we cannot predict the exact burden of disease that our workforce and parks will see as the COVID-19 pandemic runs its course, but we can say with absolute certainty that leaving our parks open to the public when social distancing is not being practiced, onboarding employees originating from throughout the country and world, and permitting significant shared housing environments will result in a significantly greater burden of disease and death than if we had taken the proactive measure to continue to close these parks and/or limit operations,” one NPS manager said.

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The Trump Administration’s budget plan for 2021 proposes serious cuts to the National Park Service and other federal agencies that if enacted, would jeopardize the protection, maintenance and operation of our more than 400 national parks across the country.

The administration’s budget calls for a total cut of $587 million (17 percent) to the National Park Service. The budget also proposes a $2.4 billion (26 percent) cut to the EPA, the agency responsible for implementing and enforcing laws like the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act so we can drink clean water and enjoy scenic national park vistas unmarred by air pollution.

Additionally, it nearly zeros out funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, a critical conservation tool that supports local tourism and recreational economies and enhances opportunities for the American public to enjoy access to its public lands.

Cuts $60 million from the budget to operate national parks, funding critical to ensuring parks can meet their mission to protect park resources and ensure a quality visitor experience.

Cuts desperately needed deferred maintenance funding for our parks that are already faced with nearly $12 billion in backlogged repair needs.

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  A federal judge has refused to dismiss a lawsuit against the National Park Service stemming from the deadly Chimney Tops 2 fire at Great Smoky Mountains National Park, holding that the park’s Fire Management Plan required that area residents be notified of the wildfire.

When the Chimney Tops 2 fire was reported atop one of the many ridges of the national park late in the day on November 23, 2016, it covered only about 1.5 acres and park crews, due to darkness and steep cliffs in the area, planned to attack it the next morning, Thanksgiving. At the time, no one knew how it started, but there had been a park-wide ban on campfires and grills due to atypically dry conditions caused by a long-running drought.

Hurricane-force winds on November 28 into November 29 blew the fire up into a conflagration that swept through nearby Gatlinburg, Tennessee, trapping many in their homes and destroying or damaging approximately 2,500 structures.

Officials later said the wildfires originated from multiple locations, including an arson fire set at Chimney Tops inside the park, and from downed power line ignitions throughout the county. Fueled by extreme winds and dry weather, the fire storm was blamed for 14 deaths and 190 injuries. In all, losses attributed to the fire have been estimated at $500 million.

Michael B. Reed, Brittany H. Hyre Anculle, and Brittany Adkins separately brought lawsuits against the Park Service, alleging that the agency was “negligent in failing to monitor the wildfire overnight, failing to comply with command structure requirements, failing to adhere to mandatory fire management policies and requirements, and failing to warn Park neighbors.”

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Proof of the challenge the National Park Service faces in trying to catch up with deferred maintenance across the National Park System can be found in the agency’s latest report on the matter: Nearly $700 million was spent during Fiscal 2018 on maintenance projects, yet the backlog still is nearly $12 billion.

Congress had a chance last year to give the Park Service a big lift by passing legislation that would have provided $6.5 billion over five years specifically for maintenance needs. But the measure died near the end of the 115th Congress as the politicians found themselves at budgetary loggerheads with President Trump. The legislation has been introduced again to the 116th Congress, but has yet to move.

“It’s great to see the National Park Service making progress on some key repair projects. At the same time, the agency’s maintenance backlog continues to grow because the number and cost of repairs compounds each year,” pointed out Marcia Argust, who manages The Pew Charitable Trusts’ Restore America’s Parks initiative.

How bad are things? Even though the Park Service spent more than $671 million in repair work during Fiscal 2018, the backlog still grew, from $11.6 billion at the end of FY17 to $11.9 billion a year later, an increase of 2.7 percent. Aging facilities, increased visitation, and resource constraints have kept the maintenance backlog between $11 billion and $12 billion since 2010, the Park Service noted.

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