By Jon Heshka
It’s impossible to know the scope and scale of how and where President Trump’s budget cuts will be felt by visitors to national parks but it is safe to say that there will be pain.
Last year, 331.9 million people visited national parks. This was an increase of 6.4 million visits, or 1.9%, from 2023.
There can be little doubt that the cuts will be felt.
That pain has been felt by the 1000 provisional employees of the National Park Service who have already been laid off and the inconveniences – toilets that won’t be cleaned as often, trails that won’t be maintained as well, longer lineups to enter the parks – that will occur due to the reduced levels of service to the public.
What can’t be written off as mere inconvenience is the effect the cuts will have on the people who rely on search and rescue.
From 1992 to 2007 (the most current dates publicly available), there were, on average across the US National Park Service, 11.2 SAR incidents each day, or 4090 incidents per year, at an average cost of $895 per operation or $3.66 million per year. Personnel costs accounted for 49.8% of the total costs from 1992 to 2007. Aircraft costs accounted for 49.7% of the total cost.
More recent estimates put the annual cost around $6-7 million per year.
Hiking accounted for nearly half (48%) of all search and rescue missions between 1992 and 2007, boating was 21%, swimming was 6%, climbing 5%, and the remaining 20% was due to vehicle/driving, canyoneering, mountaineering, animal riding, aircraft, snowmobile, fishing, surfing, biking, skiing, and suicide.
During the same period there were 2659 reported fatalities, 24,288 individuals reported as either ill or injured, 51,541 individuals who were neither ill nor injured, and 13,212 individuals classified as a save (meaning the person would have died without the intervention of search and rescue).
Search and rescue will be adversely affected and people’s lives impacted by the budget cuts.
Here’s how.
Searches will be less efficient and effective. They will be staffed by fewer people. It will take longer to deploy. It will take longer to search. The consequences of this are that it will take longer for people to be found. This translates to greater suffering for those who are lost, or injured, or ill and in need of search and rescue. This also means that some will die as a result of the delays caused by the cuts.
Will any liability attach due to the diminished search and rescue capacity because of the budget cuts?
Probably not.
The U.S. National Park Service is not obligated to provide search and rescue. In a 1992 landmark decision, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Johnson v. US Department of the Interior that search and rescue is a “discretionary function” of government that is protected under general rules of exception of the Federal Tort Claims Act at 28 U.S.C. § 2680(a).
Along with three friends, Ben Johnson hiked to the 11938 foot summit of Buck Mountain in Grand Teton National Park. The group divided into two during the descent, Johnson got separated from his partner, and he subsequently fell to his death.
His family sued the Department of the Interior claiming the National Park Service failed to: properly warn him of the dangers of climbing; adequately regulate recreational climbing activity in Grand Teton National Park; initiate a rescue effort after Macal’s initial report; and conduct a reasonable rescue effort.
The 10th Circuit affirmed the inherent dangers of mountain climbing are patently obvious, that both manpower and economic resources should be conserved to preserve availability during emergency situations and that many park visitors value backcountry climbing as one of the few experiences free from government regulation or interference.
The 10th Circuit further said that decisions concerning when and how to regulate mountain climbing go to the very essence of the Park Service’s judgement in maintaining the Park according to the broad statutory directive.
By their very nature, the 10th Circuit held, these decisions involve balancing competing policy considerations pertaining to visitor safety, resource availability, and the appropriate degree of governmental interference in recreational activity. Consequently, the Park Service’s actions, insofar as they relate to the regulation of mountain climbing in Grand Teton National Park, were therefore shielded from judicial review by the discretionary function exception.
The 10th Circuit affirmed that “No statute imposes a duty to rescue, nor are there regulations or formal Park Service policies which prescribe a specific course of conduct for search and rescue efforts. Instead, the decision if, when, or how is left to the discretion of the SAR team. Therefore, the rangers must act without reliance upon fixed or readily ascertainable standards when making a search and rescue decision in the field.”
The Park Service, the 10th Circuit said, has limited human and capital resources that it must allocate and deploy carefully. Decisions around “if, when or how to rescue inherently involves the balancing of safety objectives against such practical considerations as staffing [and] funding.”
Search and rescue decisions in national parks are grounded in social and economic policy and are thus shielded from liability under the Federal Tort Claims Act. Consequently, while more people will suffer and die because of the budget cuts, it’s unlikely that any liability will follow.
Jon Heshka is a professor specializing in sports law and adventure tourism law at Thompson Rivers University in Canada.
