Interior Shutdown: National Parks Open With Limited Staff. Oil And Gas Permitting To Continue Apace.

Don’t count on a few new AI lawnmowers to steward America’s national treasures through the fallout.

On Tuesday evening, with the federal government on the brink of a shutdown, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum took to social media to tout the agency’s deployment of autonomous lawnmowers on the National Mall and at several other National Park sites.

“By harnessing AI’s potential, we can protect these natural treasures more efficiently, enhance visitor experiences, and set a global example of how innovation and stewardship go hand in hand,” he wrote on X.

This morning, he and every other American woke up to a National Park system headed for predictable chaos. As it did during the 35-day shutdown of 2018-19, the Trump administration has opted to keep national parks and monuments largely open to the public, albeit with a skeleton crew of rangers and other employees.

As it gambles with park resources and visitor safety, Interior will maintain staff to process oil, gas and mining permits during the shutdown, while halting the agency’s work on renewable energy projects.

Over the last week, park advocacy groups and dozens of former National Park superintendents urged the Trump administration to shutter national parks to avoid a repeat of the 2018-19 shutdown, when sites were plagued by damage, vandalism and sanitation issues.

“Past shutdowns in which gates remained open with limited staff have hurt our parks: Iconic symbols cut down and vandalized, trash piled up, habitats destroyed, and visitor safety jeopardized,” more than 40 retired park superintendents wrote in a letter to Burgum last week. “If you don’t act now, history is not just doomed to repeat itself, the damage could in fact be much worse.”

They went on to note that budget cuts and staff reductions at NPS have already pushed parks “to the brink.”

“With their future already under threat, now is not the time to use the parks and public lands as pawns in political games,” the former superintendents wrote.

Photo by Lydia Koh on Unsplash

The Trump administration did not heed those warnings.

In an email announcement to staff on Tuesday, which Public Domain obtained from Interior sources, agency leadership condemned Democrats in Congress for “blocking” a Republican short-term funding bill “due to unrelated policy demands.”

“The agency has contingency plans in place for executing an orderly shutdown of activities that would be affected by any lapse in appropriations forced by Congressional Democrats,” the announcement read.

Those contingency plans, released late Tuesday, note that National Park “roads, lookouts, trails, and open-air memorials will generally remain accessible to visitors.” Sites will only close if “visitor access becomes a safety, health or resource protection issue (weather, road conditions, resource damage, garbage build-up to the extent that it endangers human health or wildlife, etc).”

Since Trump took office, NPS has lost at least 24% of its workforce, according to the National Parks Conservation Association. And the Trump administration has threatened to use the current shutdown as a tool to further slash federal staff and programs.

“Our parks can’t function without the people who care for them. With deeper cuts ahead, the administration is swinging a wrecking ball at the very mission of the National Park Service, and the damage could be irreversible,” Theresa Pierno, President and CEO of the National Parks Conservation Association, said in a statement Wednesday.

While approximately 12,000 park staff have been furloughed, the Trump administration has found a way to continue prioritizing its favorite industries during the lapse in federal funding.

“In order to protect human life and federal property and address the National Energy Emergency, [Bureau of Land Management] staff responsible for processing oil & gas permits / leases, coal energy leases, and other energy and mineral resources necessary for energy production will be excepted or excepted on-call,” reads the bureau’s contingency plan.

Meanwhile, Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which oversees offshore energy development, “will cease all renewable energy activities but continue limited work on conventional and marine minerals based on available resources.”

Jennifer Rokala, executive director of the Center for Western Priorities, said Interior’s shutdown plans “show just how little respect Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has for America’s public lands.”

“At the same time, Burgum is trying to have it both ways and give oil and gas companies even more permits to drill while the government is shut down,” she said in a statement. “This awful situation is President Trump’s dream for America’s public lands: exploit what you can and trash the rest.”

If you find yourself at a national park in the coming days, the rangers might be missing, the trash cans overflowing and the toilets filthy. But just know, there are few new AI lawnmowers out there trimming the grass through the turmoil.