Moab resident Allyson Mathis was hiking with a friend in the Devil’s Garden area of Arches National Park on November 5, when she noticed spray-painted graffiti on the red rock in the area.
She said it looked fresh, like it had been painted since the last rain in late October. She reported it to the information center in town.
“Generally, you want to address it right away because once there is some graffiti, there tends to be more graffiti,” she explained.
“To be in a place that you can look at and you can see Landscape Arch, one of the… most significant arches in all of Arches National Park, was just really upsetting and, and shocking.”
When Mathis discovered the graffiti, the nation was in the midst of the longest shutdown in American history, lasting 44 days. On November 12, lawmakers narrowly approved a deal to reopen the government.
But during the shutdown, national parks stayed open to the public with little to no staff. There have been reports of illegal activity and unmaintained facilities in parks around the country.
Mathis said she sees a direct connection between the lack of staffing during the shutdown and things like the graffiti. She and her friend didn’t see any rangers patrolling the trails during their visit to Arches.
“Visitors today, although they’ve been out in the parks, they haven't had the chance to have that full interaction, and that chance to maybe look over the shoulder and there's a ranger there, a ranger willing to answer their questions, who has detailed knowledge about what the people are looking at, whether it's the geology of how a natural arch formed or the bird species that they're looking at, or the plant, et cetera,” she said.
Mathis is a 20-year veteran of the National Park Service, which she called an “honor” and “privilege of a lifetime.” Her background is in geology, and she served in a variety of roles, primarily in interpretive roles where she interacted with visitors at parks like Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, and the Grand Canyon.
“Just cleaning the bathrooms and collecting the trash isn't meeting the full mission of the National Park Service, which is ‘preserving parks unimpaired for the future generations,’” she said. “Parks have not been properly protected during this time period.”
Mathis said in addition to no rangers monitoring—and cleaning up—graffiti, the shutdown halted vital seasonal work. In southeastern Utah, the field season for research and data collection typically takes place in spring and fall.
National Park Service workers won’t be able to get that time back, she said.
“They've lost one of their two main field seasons for the biological seeps and springs monitoring, which are really important as well, because water is life here in the desert,” she said. “This time of year, there might be crews out doing invasive plant treatments… and so those crews haven’t been able to work. Let's say they're putting in new bathrooms. You might have to have crews come in and do re-vegetation work.”
But it’s not just the shutdown, Mathis said. She acknowledged that the length of the shutdown was unprecedented, but the political climate for public lands and the NPS also posed a challenge.
“All the staffing cuts and funding cuts to the National Park Service… parks have had a really tough year, and the people working for them have had a really tough year because a lot of people have lost their jobs,” she said. “People have been under threat of being fired. They've not been able to hire people, nor have been able to fill empty positions, and it really makes a difference. The park service probably has always been understaffed and underfunded. And so you take that and you cut 24, 25%—which is what has happened to date—there's more cuts looming, and then you shut it all down for 42 days? That’s unprecedented.”
Public lands agencies like the NPS have seen massive cuts to staffing and funding during the Trump administration. The National Parks Conservation Association estimates a 24% reduction in workforce at the NPS since Donald Trump took office, and that over 4,000 workers were furloughed during the shutdown. Court filings from the Department of Interior showed that officials had planned an additional 2,000 cuts during the shutdown.
“Living in a town like Moab, I obviously know a lot of people who work for the park service and the level of stress that these people are feeling right now, I have never seen anything like it whatsoever,” Mathis said.
Other controversies have emerged from the NPS under Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, like the removal of information about climate change from interpretive signs at certain parks, and asking visitors to report “negative” information about American history on signs at parks.
Mathis hopes that going forward, support for national parks with dollars and staff won’t be a political issue, and that people from all walks of life will continue to enjoy the parks for generations to come. But, she said, it’s going to take a recognition that these places are vulnerable, and require a concerted effort to protect.
“To me, the most important function of a fee booth is not the fees that they're collecting, although that, of course, supports the parks,” she said. “It tells people as they're going into a park, that they are entering a special place, that it deserves their care.”
Copyright 2025 Rocky Mountain Community Radio. This story was shared via Rocky Mountain Community Radio, a network of public media stations in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico, including Aspen Public Radio.
