By WILL PERKINS
Glasgow News 1
Mammoth Cave National Park will close Saturday if U.S. lawmakers are unable to avoid a partial government shutdown by Friday night.
“If they don’t pass a budget by Friday, Saturday we will be shutting down,” said Barclay Trimble, superintendent of Mammoth Cave National Park. He gave a parks report to members of the Cave City Tourist and Convention Commission on Monday afternoon during their regular meeting.
Trimble said the national park has been previously shut down during his time as superintendent.
“I’ve experienced anywhere from a day to over 30 days,” Trimble said. “So that would be an unknown.”
Commissioner Vick Patel asked Trimble if he expected any staffing or funding cuts in a new budget.
“I won’t know that until Friday,” Trimble said, adding that he has read details about potential cuts from various media outlets. “If you read the paper, non-defense spending on the proposed budget is taking a $13 billion cut.
“I can’t even guess on that until Friday comes out and we’ll see if they pass a budget.”
Jennifer McNett, director of the commission, said she and other tourism directors recently met with lawmakers. She said they expressed to them how a lack of funding would negatively affect park operations.
“We really, really pushed to try to make sure that they understand the importance of our national parks,” McNett said.
Trimble said the future direction of the national park would “come down to the guidance we get from the president of the United States.”
“I will not know until I get direction from up above about which way we proceed,” he said. “Hopefully by Friday we’re in better shape.”
Mammoth Cave National Park currently offers limited cave tours through May 17 that can be reserved on recreation.gov. The park also began offering self-guided cave tours last weekend that will run through the end of the summer, according to Trimble.
“Hopefully by the middle of April we’ll be back to normal capacity,” Trimble said. “We want to maximize visitation to the area as best we can, and that’s the best way we figured we could get it.
“As we continue to get staff, we’ll add to those tour numbers and add to those bookings and have a lot of walk-up stuff.”
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