Feeling The Pinch

National parks

In years past when winter storms toppled roadside trees at Great Smoky Mountains National Park, officials sent out work crews to turn the fallen giants into chips that could be easily scattered on the forest floor. This spring, after a harsh winter in which tree losses were unusually heavy, the park simply bulldozed the logs off the road and left them to rot.

“It looks messy,” acknowledges park spokesman Bob Miller, but he says officials had no other alternative. In previous years, the park in North Carolina and Tennessee - which attracts 8 million visitors annually - sought supplemental funds from Washington to clean up the storm damage. “But this year we didn’t get the money.”

In the nation’s national parks, forests and other wilderness recreational areas, the money crunch stemming from federal budget cuts has hit hard, and visitors this summer are likely to see the effects in the form of trims in services and maintenance that will make the parks less scenic, less educational and, perhaps, less safe. Some parks are shutting down campgrounds, visitor centers and museums to save money.

To save $70,000 this season, Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming won’t open the 116-site Norris Campground, and doors will remain shut on two nearby museums, the Norris Geyser Basin Museum and the Museum of the National Park Ranger.