Latest / Ranger PamPaw's Park Report / Nearly 1,500 Park Projects Called “Low Priority,” Chiricahua Is Park #64, and Scotty's Castle Tours Return

Transcript

Nearly 1,500 Park Projects Called “Low Priority,” Chiricahua Is Park #64, and Scotty's Castle Tours Return · Ranger PamPaw's Park Report

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Nearly 1,500 projects on a low priority list.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Chirookawa becomes America's 64th National Park, and Scotty's Castle is back on the tour schedule, but only from the outside.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Mark Tetzel, Ranger Pampall.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: This is the Park Report for Wednesday, October 28, 2026.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: First up, a new analysis says nearly 1,500 maintenance and programming projects at national parks have landed on a Park Service low priority list.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: The Center for Western Priorities, a public lands policy group, built an interactive map from an internal Park Service database.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: It shows 1,492 projects marked low priority.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Source NM and other outlets used the map to look at parks across the southwest.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: A few examples.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: At Petroglyph National Monument in Albuquerque, a visitor center heating and cooling project that park staff had called an emergency is on the list.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: At Lake Mead, a flash flood warning system, safety lights, and restroom maintenance were downgraded.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: A Vallez Caldera, it's$8,000 for a weather station.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now a caution.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: Low priority is not the same as canceled.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Reports differ on how many of these projects have actually stopped, and the center says it has told some of were listed because the Park Service doesn't have enough employees to manage the contracts.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: Interior didn't respond to source NM's request for comments.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: In an earlier statement about park spending, the department said it will continue to prioritize funds that best serve the American people and keep parks safe, affordable, and open.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: This is a separate issue from the partner agreements we covered in episode three.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Next, Chiricawa is now a national park.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: President Trump signed the Chiricawa National Park Act on Tuesday, October 20th.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: The Senate passed it unanimously on September 30th after the House passed the identical bill in March.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Chiracawa National Monument in southeastern Arizona has been protected since 1924.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's about 12,000 acres of rock spires and balanced rocks, left behind by a volcanic eruption some 27 million years ago, and it's the homeland of the Chiricawa Apache.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's Arizona's fourth national park and the first new national park in the country since New River Gorge in 2020.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: The Act keeps the boundaries as they are and protects tribal access to cultural and religious sites.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: At the signing, Interior Secretary Doug Bergum said, quote, all those budgets get bigger when you become a national park, and pointed to water systems, sewer trails, and visitor centers.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Afar reports the Act doesn't automatically bring federal funding, and the National Parks Conservation Association is calling for restored staffing and funding.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Finally, Scotty's Castle in Death Valley National Park is back on the schedule, but only from the outside.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: The Park Service announced October 8th that Rangers and Death Valley Natural History Association guides will lead exterior tours most Saturdays and Sundays through April 17th.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Private weekday tours for small groups are available on request.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Tickets are through dvnha.org.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: The Spanish Revival Estate, built in the 1920s by Albert and Bessie Johnson, has been closed since the flash flood in October 2015, damaged its buildings, roads, utilities, and historic landscape.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: The Park Service says the earliest full reopening is November 2028.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Exterior tours have been offered off and on since 2017, so this is a limited option returning, not a reopening.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: Two quick ones.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yellowstone's thermal areas are giving up a record haul of trash.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: The U.S.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: Geological Survey's Yellowstone Volcano Observatory reports that as in the early September, crews had pulled more than 20,000 pieces of trash out of the park's hydrothermal features this year.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: That includes 5,600 rocks and sticks, 280 hats, 17 pacifiers, and 5 airpods.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: Objects can cause the plumbing, change runoff channels, and add chemicals and sediment.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: And coins harm the microbiolife in the formations.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: USGS says a record hall doesn't necessarily mean more littering.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: If something falls in, don't try to get it, tell a ranger.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: And at Minnedoka National Historic Site in Idaho, the Idaho Capital Sun reports that restoration projects worth more than$5 million are underway.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: And new interpretive exhibits are being designed.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Minnedoka is where the government held about 13,000 Japanese Americans during World War II.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now from the Ranger's chair.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: This is my opinion and mine alone.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: In February 2018, I went to Death Valley with a group of students from the Park Services Facility Manager Leadership Program.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: We were there to analyze maintenance and project work, and the project manager for Scotty's castle restoration took us on a tour.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: We went all through the castle, including places visitors never see.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: What stayed with me was the complexity.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: The utility systems were damaged.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: So were the tile work, the interiors of some rooms, the grounds, and the roads.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: And just getting there was hard.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: The highway was still washed out in places.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: Back then the castle was the park's largest source of fee income, so the restoration was high priority.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: The park hoped to reopen in about two years.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Remote location access problems, funding, and other issues kept pushing that back.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: My view is that the flood had more to do with a changing climate than with deferred maintenance.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: It was a natural event.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: A storm stalled over the canyon in October 2015.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: And Death Valley has seen heavy rain and flooding more than more than once since then.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: 2022, 2023, and 2024.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not a climate scientist, but this is the hottest, driest place in North America, and the water keeps coming.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Something has changed.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: And Scotty's Castle is indicative of a lot of the park service.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: When a place is remote, everything costs more.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: Contractors are harder to find, access is harder, and the budget was already stretched.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: So when I hear that nearly 1,500 projects are on a low priority list, I think of places like this one, where every project is complicated and expensive, and where waiting makes it worse.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: If you get the chance to take one of those exterior tours this winter, go do it.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: What to watch for?
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: First, the National Christmas Tree Ticket Lottery.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's free.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: Entries open just a few hours ago and close at 3 p.m.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: Eastern on Wednesday, November 4th.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: You enter at recreation.gov.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: Winners are notified Thursday, November 12th for the ceremony on December 3rd on the Ellipse in Washington.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Second, watch whether Interior responds to the low priority list and says which projects are actually stopped.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Corrections.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: If you catch something I got wrong, email parknews at rangerpampall.com.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the park report for today.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: Look for the newsletter a little bit later with more on all these stories.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: Look in your feed next week for the next episode of the Park Report.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: And until then, go find your park.