GRAND TETON NATIONAL PARK — How often does Congress meet in the Tetons?
Members of the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources met outside of the Jenny Lake Visitor Center in Grand Teton National Park (GTNP) on Friday, Sept. 5. Wyoming’s Rep. Harriet Hageman was joined by Chairman Bruce Westerman (Arkansas) and committee members Teresa Leger Fernández (New Mexico), Doug LaMalfa (California), Susie Lee (Nevada) and Amata Coleman Radewagen (American Samoa) for a hearing on the Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA), which is up for renewal ahead of its expiration at the end of September.
GAOA was signed by President Trump during his first term, in August 2020. It established funds for addressing a large backlog of maintenance projects on federal lands, including up to $1.3 billion per year to the National Park Service (NPS). Highly visible GAOA projects in western Wyoming have included upgrades to GTNP’s Moose-Wilson Road corridor and the Yellowstone River Bridge in Yellowstone National Park.
As Congress considers a renewal, the committee heard testimonies from five witnesses with park connections: GTNP Superintendent Chip Jenkins, Jackson Hole Travel and Tourism Board Chair Julie Calder, Jackson Hole EcoTour Adventures Founder/Owner Taylor Phillips, National Parks Conservation Association Senior Vice President of Government Affairs Kristen Brengel and GTNP Foundation President Leslie Mattson.
Lawmakers represented a spectrum of support for the act. Hageman, LaMalfa and Westerman each indicated that they would want to see changes in how the funds were allocated, expressing concerns that projects in urban cities including Washington, D.C., and San Francisco were disproportionately prioritized.
Leger Fernández took the opportunity to discuss cuts to the federal workforce that Brengel detailed in her testimony, including a 24% cut to permanent NPS staff (since January) along with a hiring freeze.
“President Trump has also suggested a $1 billion cut to the National Park Service,” she said, adding later, “Can we meet our mission with a 24% cut or a $1 billion cut?”
“No way,” Brengel said. “There’s no way.”
All five witnesses urged the committee to renew the GAOA, citing a successful first five years of the park improvements it enabled while pointing out the enormous amount of work still to be done as park use increases and evolves. The Teton County Board of County Commissioners also submitted a letter to the committee endorsing the reauthorization.
Superintendent Jenkins made multiple mentions of Colter Bay as an ideal candidate for the modernization and maintenance projects a renewed GAOA could facilitate.
“The infrastructure is suffering from over 75 years of wear and tear and is not meeting our visitors’ needs, nor matching the beauty that is Colter Bay,” he stated. “Central to addressing increasing visitation is our need to effectively distribute people to lesser-used areas of the park.”
Jenkins’ and Phillips’ remarks elicited rounds of applause at different points in the two-hour hearing from members of the public who gathered to listen. Jenkins’ closing remarks were delivered through tears.
“I have worked all over the country,” he said. “There’s magic in this place. There’s magic in this place because of these people. I think in this magic, there is something that the park service, the Department [of the Interior] and Congress can learn about in terms of the collaboration between the State of Wyoming, Teton County, the Town of Jackson and the business community, the way we work together to be stewards of this place.”
Read full witness statements and access other meeting documents here. Watch the entire meeting below.
