The citizens Jackson Hole, Wyoming (population 9,710)—an almost-gateway to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks and a pleasant tourist town in its own right, if you don’t mind the town square with its frankly creepy antler arches—has taken on the job that couldn’t be managed by government of the United States of America (population 313,914,040). Because of the mind-numbing incompetence that has led to the current sequester, our income-generating national parks have undertaken a range of money-saving strategies. In the case of Yellowstone, one of those strategies was to delay the opening of the park’s south gate by one week, until May 17.

 

A closed park means fewer visitors through Jackson Hole, so the city’s Chamber of Commerce and tourism board cobbled together money to start plowing the roads so the original May 10 target could be met.

 

A few fascinating details about Yellowstone snow clearing operations, for the nerds:

  • Because “Yellowstone’s winter roads are hard-packed from months of grooming machine, snowmobile and snow coach use,” plowing is slow—just “a half-mile to four or five miles” a day.

 

  • The initial cost estimate for the plowing was $70,000, but that was based on a 55-inch snowpack; the snowpack has already fallen to 33 inches, so the actual job could be faster and cheaper.

There’s a happy narrative here: local citizens banding together, Wyoming DOT official’s allowing their plows to be used if Jackson Hole could come up with the funds, National Park Service plows meeting up with the DOT plows 16 miles up the road to finish the job. Except that it underscores the economic value that local folks see in parks being open—value that is being lost thanks to the sequester’s thoughtless budget cuts.

 

And there is this troubling side note: the same National Park Service that couldn’t find the funds for a timely opening of its crown jewel park open could find $630,000 for the Minneapolis bike sharing program. A very nice program, yes. A worthy program, yes. But it’s unclear why the NPS is donating that kind of money for use in one city’s parks, when it doesn’t have the money to open its own. Or take care of its multi-billion-dollar maintenance backlog.

 

Bad optics and more: we suspect politics and mission creep.

Photo: Jackson Hole elk antler arch, via Wikimedia Commons