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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PHOTO: April will bring the blooms of Redbuds in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Due to federal budget cuts under the sequester, 3 campgrounds, 2 picnic areas and 1 horse camp will not open this summer. Photo credit: Public Domain
March 15, 2013
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Federal budget cuts mean you may have to revise those summer vacation plans.
The sequester is leading to closures and cutbacks on services offered at places such as the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Great Smoky Mountains.
That’s because the National Park Service is among the areas that got hit with the automatic spending cuts that began to take effect this month.
Don Barger, Southeast regional director of the National Parks Conservation Association, says the impact will be felt since there was little-to-no wiggle room before.
“When paying for staff and fixed costs take up about 90 percent of your budget and you get a cut of 9 percent in your spending authority for
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