- Interior Secretary Doug Burgum emphasizes the importance of gateway communities to national parks.
- Burgum's order formalizes coordination, appoints local liaisons and restructures park staffing.
- Utah's national parks significantly impact local economies, supporting thousands of jobs annually.
WASHINGTON — Interior Secretary Doug Burgum issued an order Monday to bolster relationships between gateway communities and national parks, saying it is vital to tap into a mutual benefit.
At the meeting of the Western Governors' Association in New Mexico, Burgum said such relationships are vital.
"(The order) is going to formalize close coordination between each park and the local gateway communities that are essential to the success and sustainability of each of the national parks."
The order includes the designation of a local liaison.
"They'll be holding regular gateway community meetings and support the continued growth of the vitality of the private sector that could support our national parks."
He said he also wants to restructure how the parks and monuments deploy their employees, emphasizing that there are too many office jobs and not enough boots on the ground.
"I somehow don't think we need 1,000 people in communications and 2,000 Twitter sites for our 63 crown jewel national parks and our 400 historic sites," he said. "I think we can be a little more efficient around that. And when we do that, we can free up support opportunities for that headcount."
He added he believes people go to work for the National Park Service to actually work in the park, not behind a desk. Those employees can also help combat the problem of the deferred maintenance backlog of projects that need attention, such as maintenance of trails, bridges and other infrastructure.
"So we can make some changes there," he added.
Gateway communities in Utah
The cities surrounding national parks in Utah are important and serve as an economic driver for the state's economy.
A report issued last year by the National Park Service, for example, said that the 2.4 million visitors to the national parks of the Southeast Utah Group in 2023 spent $397.6 million in communities near the four parks.
That spending supported 5,122 jobs in this region and had a cumulative benefit to local economies of $486.1 million. That is a lot of impact from the parks, which offer a wide diversity of beauty and recreation opportunities.
Visitation continues to grow.
Last year broke records across the parks system, logging nearly 331.9 million visits to more than 400 national parks.
National park visitation in the state grew 100% between 2005 and 2024. At the same time, National Park Service jobs grew 8%, according to a new report from the University of Utah Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute.
