Due to a congressional failure to pass a funding bill for the coming fiscal year, the US federal government has shut down, prompting many to ask about the state of America’s treasured national parks. On September 30, the Department of the Interior released a nine-page contingency plan for National Park Service (NPS) sites and backend operations during the shutdown, detailing that most parks and monuments are expected to remain open, even as forced staff furloughs mean that many will be operating with a skeleton crew. This shutdown is going to be bad for the national parks and all of our public lands," says Dan Ritzman, director of conservation at the Sierra Club, a US-based environmental organization. "This action to keep the parks open is a clear indication that [the government] knows that the parks are a very popular part of the American identity." "But public lands, national parks, and BLM lands are kind of a physical manifestation of what the government does."