During the first full week of March every year, the mountain passes of Yellowstone
National Park
rumble with the sounds of hulking snow plows operated by two dozen,
mostly seasonal workers. This month, the plows will be silent.
The costly and complex road-clearing operation that was
scheduled to start on Monday will be postponed this year because of the
U.S. government's across-the-board budget cuts known as the
"sequester," which took effect on Friday.
Park managers have to trim $1.75 million from
Yellowstone's $35 million annual budget, which will delay the opening of
most entrances to America's first national park by two weeks. Park
managers will give more details on Monday.
Local tourism
industry leaders are not happy with the decision. A delay in the park's
traditional early May opening and other service reductions could mean
millions of dollars in lost tourism and tax revenues for small, rural
towns in Montana and Wyoming.
"I think it's counterproductive, and I expect a lot of people to be raising hell," said Mike Darby, whose family owns the Irma Hotel in downtown Cody, Wyoming, at the east gate of Yellowstone.
Built in 1902 by frontier showman Buffalo Bill Cody,
the hotel is decorated with bison heads and hunting rifles. The business
survives the lean winter months by drawing local customers to its
restaurant and Silver Saddle Lounge, where cowboys meet for a beer on
weekends.
A two-week delay in Yellowstone's opening means Cody
will miss out on more than 150,000 visitors spending an estimated $2.3
million, according to figures released by the Cody Country Chamber of
Commerce. Similar shortfalls in four other gateway towns around the park
could put total losses from a two-week delayed opening at more than $10
million.
Beyond Yellowstone, the National Parks Conservation Association
has warned that a $110 million cut to the National Park Service budget
will result in job losses and reduced services at the country's 398
national parks.
For example, the U.S. spending cuts could lead to a 20 percent reduction in spring student education programs at Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania, affecting 2,400 students; a two-week delay in the reopening of Glacier National Park's
Going-to-the-Sun Road, which could cost $1 million in lost revenue
daily to surrounding communities and concessions; and a delay in the
opening of the Grand Canyon National Park's East and West Rim Drives,
according to the NPCA.
"It's alarming that this very avoidable threat could
become a reality. From Yellowstone to Cape Cod, the Grand Canyon and
Great Smoky Mountains, our national heritage and local economies are at
risk," NPCA President Tom Kiernan said in a statement on Thursday.
GRIZZLY BEARS
Yellowstone and neighboring Grand Teton National Park
each attracts roughly 3 million annual visitors who come to see grizzly
bears, geysers and wide-open spaces. The two parks generated a total of
$766 million in tourism spending in 2011, supporting 11,438 jobs,
according to a Michigan State University analysis released last month.
If the budget cuts roll on through the summer, local
business owners fear that families may decide to vacation elsewhere,
which could mean disastrous losses in local tax collections for gas,
food, lodging and merchandise.
"They could end up losing more in taxes over the season than what they saved with budget cuts," Darby said. "It's ridiculous."
Some tourism leaders in Wyoming are working on their
own plans to raise money to plow the roads at Yellowstone, in an effort
to honor the spring opening dates that many families have already
planned their vacations around.
With a budget focused largely on fixed costs like fuel
and salaries for key employees, there are no easy cuts to be made in
Yellowstone's operating expenses.
"We really do have very few places that we can go" to
cut costs, said Yellowstone spokesman Al Nash. "Our workforce is made up
of a lot of seasonal employees, so that's certainly a major area where
we can make changes."
Plowing more than 300 miles of high-altitude paved
roads in Yellowstone takes weeks, and burns through as much as $10,000
worth of diesel fuel each day.
Waiting for warmer weather to help clear some of that
snow is expected save about $250,000 in plowing costs, Superintendent
Dan Wenk told Darby and other gateway community business leaders this
week in a conference call to outline planned cuts.
A further $1 million in savings will come from not
hiring replacements for some departing permanent workers. Wenk expects
to save an additional $500,000 by reducing the seasonal workforce and
through travel and training reductions.
In Jackson, Wyoming, at the southern boundary of Grand
Teton National Park, business owners are pushing to get the word out
that the parks and surrounding areas will be open for business this
summer, despite the cuts.
But budget cuts mean that three popular visitor centers
in Grand Teton will not open at all this summer, said park spokeswoman
Jackie Skaggs.
Since many maintenance workers and other seasonal
employees carry out double duties as on-call firefighters, paramedics or
search-and-rescue workers, payroll reductions will mean fewer emergency
responders in the park this summer.
"We will do our best not to allow those reductions to
impact the safety of our visitors and employees," Skaggs said. "But the
reality is our response capabilities will be reduced."
In staunchly conservative Wyoming — where legislators
just cut most state agency budgets by 6.5 percent despite virtually no
state debt and more than $15 billion in savings — the across-the-board
federal cuts are raising questions.
Residents who depend on tourism for a living are
already complaining to the state's all-Republican congressional
delegation, which is on record as supporting the cuts if it means the
alternative is raising taxes.
"I'm sorry, but in how this is affecting us, it doesn't
seem to me like it's fiscally responsible," Darby said. "Somebody needs
to refigure this, or we need to get better advocates."
In November of 1820, a seafaring expedition went all wrong when a whale repeatedly attacked and sank the whaling ship the Essex. The young captain, George Pollard Jr. and the crew were stranded on three 20-foot boats for months. A few of them survived. 
Buddha statues have joined Barbie dolls and characters from "The
Simpsons" TV cartoon as banned items in the backward nation.
Bazillionaire
Dennis Tito's Inspiration Mars mission to send a man and a woman to the
Red Planet has got 99 problems, but radiation from cosmic rays ain't one.
Why? Because it's just been solved ... by poo.
Graham
Cansdale is a professional translator at the European Commission in
Brussels. He is considered fluent in the 14 languages he uses in his
work, but he has studied other languages. Cardinal Giuseppe Mezzofanti
was a linguist who died in 1849; he was said to have known between 40
and 72 languages. Is this even possible?
