One issue that remains unclear is the legal foundation for those closure protocols, including what authority rangers have to either remove “trespassers” or even ticket and arrest them. If the rangers don’t have that power, then many of the barricaded areas are, by default, still open to the public.
Under a 1981 memo by then-budget Director David Stockman, which is still in effect, the federal government in shutdown mode is allowed to keep policing and protecting “federal lands, buildings, waterways, equipment and other property owned by the United States.” Other essential services cannot be funded, however, including most of the primary mission of the Park Service: providing guidance and interpretation for visitors.
In that way, visitors coming into the parks could be seen as a distraction for rangers providing basic protection, land policy experts suggest.
Still, US law, court precedents, and Department of Justice rulings don’t make it clear whether federal agents can actually keep people out of the parks, beyond suggesting that people don’t enter in the first place. For example, would someone entering a national park area in order to get a drink of water from a stream actually be breaking the law?
To many, attacks on the Park Service for its barricade tactics seems opportunistic and political, especially considering that more than 300 parks were closed during brief shutdowns in 1995 and ’96
“The Park Service could hardly pick favorites – opening the memorial for the Second World War but not for the Vietnam War, opening Yellowstone not Yosemite – and it shouldn’t be asked to,” writes Margaret Talbot this week in the New Yorker.