‘Honestly Terrifying’: Yosemite National Park Is in Chaos

I was always eager to accept invitations to chaperone my kids’ class trips to various parks around California, and especially Yosemite with it’s unequalled grandeur.

Perhaps I’ll get the same opportunity when my grandchildren come of age, but that seems unlikely at this point, given Trump’s cuts to budgets that are used to manage the huge flow of visitors without ruining the natural environment.

From the article linked above, subtitled California’s beloved national park is on the brink of disaster:

Yosemite National Park is in trouble. Hamstrung by President Donald Trump’s hiring freeze, hundreds of rescinded job offers and the threat of coming layoffs, the park is poised to enter its busiest months of the year severely short-staffed. Not only that, but the park’s day-use reservation system — created to protect park resources and improve the visitor experience by reducing crowding — appears unlikely to return this year.

Worst of it all, say current and former National Park Service employees, nonprofit leaders and other Yosemite experts interviewed by SFGATE, is that decades of efforts to protect the park’s ecosystems for future generations are being derailed.

On lovely summer days, as many as 20,000 visitors show up to the park. “Catastrophic” is the word former Yosemite Superintendent Don Neubacher used to describe the looming staffing situation to SFGATE.