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Several months ago I talked about the proposed peak season entrance fee increase and shared my support for it. The entrance fee increase was proposed to address the National Park Service’s 11.6 Billion Dollar Maintenance Backlog. This month the NPS announced that they indeed would be raising entrance fees, but not as steeply as originally stated.
[Read more…] about Parks Raise Entrance Fees to Address Maintenance Backlog
After months of debate, and not one, but two government shutdowns, a spending bill for the federal government was finally passed on March 22nd. Much to the pleasant surprise of public lands advocates, Donald Trump’s proposed cuts were nowhere to be seen and instead the budget is actually up by over $3 billion. In America’s system of checks and balances, it is ultimately congress that has the power over the budget, and it looks like public lands advocacy is paying off. Let’s take a look at where that money went.
[Read more…] about Public Lands Advocacy Pays Off in Spending Bill
This past month there’s been quite a lot going on in the Public Lands world, and so I thought we would spend today catching up on February’s current events.
[Read more…] about Public Lands Current Events February 2018
On Friday January 18, Congress failed to come to an agreement on a budget and a Government Shutdown occurred. Unfortunately, this is not the first time this has happened and it will not be the last. However, what was different about this shutdown was that the national parks remained open. Today, we are going to examine the pros and cons of that decision and about how this shutdown (and future shutdowns) has the ability to affect our public lands.
[Read more…] about The Cost of a Government Shutdown to our Public Lands
About two years ago the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) conducted an audit of the National Park Service’s hiring practices. Recently, they announced their findings. What they found was that the NPS was abusing their hiring authority. This was not so shocking for those us who work the NPS. With the shrinking budget, corners have had to be cut to be able to continue to operate at the same level we have been for years. However, the changes put in place to correct these issues are going to make a huge impact, especially for seasonal employees, Here is what you need to know.
[Read more…] about The OPM Audit and What it Means for Seasonal Employees
Over the years, I have written a lot on this blog about national park visitation, the threats facing our parks today, and the diminishing budget for our parks. What I am going to talk about today deals with all of these things, but from what I have seen so far, it seems to be a sensitive topic. The opinion I hold on this topic is not necessarily a popular one, but after working in parks and researching them for many many years it is an opinion I think is informed, and one that I am sticking to.
[Read more…] about Proposed National Park Fee Increase, a Good Thing?
Like many others who dream of having careers with the federal government in the forestry field, when I graduated from college in 2013, I was overwhelmed with a sense of hopelessness. All that I ever been told was how competitive and impossible it was to land one of these jobs. I was told to prepare to try for a decade before I was able to get into these fields. Surprisingly, despite all that I had been told, I landed a job less than a year later. I realized it wasn’t as difficult as I had been warned and that it has been increasingly easier to get jobs in forestry field in the past years. Students have even more reason to be hopeful about their future careers thanks to an especially generous federal budget that was just released this past week. [Read more…] about 2016 Federal Budget to Provide Job Opportunities in Forestry