ASHEVILLE — The usually much-anticipated spring and summer seasons in Western North Carolina’s national parks will come with fewer places to camp on the Blue Ridge Parkway and Great Smoky Mountains National Park; a disappearance of rangers and their familiar Stetson hats; and longer waits for restrooms, picnic areas and visitor centers to open.
The full effect of the so-called sequestration budget cuts on the National Park Service hit full force this week, when park administrators devised plans to meet the budget slashing.
All parks must cut their budgets by 5 percent, including the parkway, the most visited of all national park units, for the rest of the year. Parkway superintendent Phil Francis said the immediate effects will mean the loss of some 40 jobs and all seasonal interpretive programs for the remainder of the year to accommodate the $784,000 budget cut.
“We’re going to cut 21 seasonal interpretive jobs. There are four districts between North Carolina and Virginia — the cuts will be equally distributed,” Francis said. “We’ve got four maintenance seasonals we won’t be able to hire, a handful of seasonal rangers in the campgrounds we can’t hire.”
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