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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, JANUARY 8, 2019
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Kirk Siegler/National Public Radio
The Eastern Sierra mountains near Mammoth Lakes, Calif.
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‘An eerie silence’ where federal land
agency workers are furloughed
By KIRK SIEGLER
National Public Radio
The government shut-
down has forced the partial
or complete closure of some
of the nation’s most popular
national parks and has fur-
loughed thousands of fed-
eral land agency workers.
This means all kinds of
under-the-radar, yet critical,
work has mostly stopped —
from timber sales to wildfi re
prevention projects to the
general upkeep and enforce-
ment of laws on millions of
acres of U.S. public lands.
“It’s an eerie silence,”
says John Wentworth, a
town councilman in Mam-
moth Lakes, California.
“The folks that are respon-
sible for stewarding, main-
taining and watching out for
one of the great legacies of
the United States are absent;
they’re gone.”
Wentworth’s town is
completely surrounded —
and largely dependent on
— U.S. public lands, not
the least of which is its ski
resort which operates on a
U.S. Forest Service lease.
The shutdown has coin-
cided with one of his town’s
busiest seasons. Suddenly
there’s no one staffi ng area
visitor centers or popular
trailheads for snowshoeing
or snowmobiling. There’s
no one to interact with vis-
itors, enforce the rules and
just manage the land.
“It’s kind of scary,”
Wentworth says. “We don’t
know what to tell our visi-
tors; we don’t know how
to be good hosts and stew-
ards of these public lands
because the federal presence
is not there.”
Wentworth’s anxiety is
familiar to communities
across the West that pro-
mote themselves as gate-
‘IT’S KIND OF
SCARY. WE
DON’T KNOW
WHAT TO TELL
OUR VISITORS;
WE DON’T
KNOW HOW TO
BE GOOD HOSTS
AND STEW-
ARDS OF THESE
PUBLIC LANDS
BECAUSE THE
FEDERAL PRES-
ENCE IS NOT
THERE.’
John Wentworth,
a town councilman in
Mammoth Lakes
ways to massive amounts of
U.S. public land. Much of
that land is open to the pub-
lic and to everything from
natural resource extraction
to outdoor recreation. The
latter contributes billions to
the U.S. economy, accord-
ing to several recent studies.
So when your landlord
is suddenly unreachable,
almost everything is thrown
into limbo. About half of all
of California is federal land.
Next door in Nevada it’s
more like 80 percent.
“Sure, there are lots
of citizens out there that
will pick up trash, but the
larger landscape planning
issues, they’re not being
addressed,” says Jaina
Moan, of the Nature Con-
servancy’s Nevada chapter.
In recent years, groups
like the Nature Conser-
vancy have played a big role
in large collaborative con-
servation and other devel-
opment projects on federal
land, such as programs that
help improve rangeland for
ranchers and reduce wildfi re
risk in national forests.
Moan’s group can keep
working on the side, but
they can’t access certain
lands or the federal scien-
tists who work on them.
And big collaborative meet-
ings about these projects are
postponed indefi nitely.
“Like most of America,
we hope that Congress and
the president can resolve
this soon because we need
those government partner-
ships to work so that we can
make sure that the conserva-
tion of our lands and waters
can continue,” Moan says.
Westerners have been
watching for years as fund-
ing for federal lands agen-
cies and infrastructure
has generally been on the
decline. John Wentworth, of
the Mammoth Lakes town
council, says local govern-
ments like his have been try-
ing to plan around this new
reality, launching collabo-
rative partnerships to pool
resources and get some of
the work done that was tra-
ditionally the federal gov-
ernment’s responsibility.
“So that if these spasms
that come out of Washing-
ton due to unprecedented,
existential, partisan crazi-
ness, we will have partner-
ships and working relation-
ships in place to be able to
mitigate these effects,” he
said.
This summer, his town
is partnering with the For-
est Service to remove trash
and staff area trailheads.
But this latest shutdown,
Wentworth says, happened
so quick there was no time
for even short-term contin-
gency plans.
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