National parks struggle with Internet shutdown

National parks struggle with Internet shutdown

Jan. 8, 2001

By Janelle Holden
journal staff writer

Paul Henderson, a spokesperson for Canyonlands National Park, has to go home each day at lunch to check his e-mail and look up information on the World Wide Web that he needs for his job.

Like thousands of other National Park Service employees, Henderson can’t access the Internet or send e-mail outside the park during working hours because of a court order.

On Dec. 5, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth shut down the Interior Department’s computer systems so the department could fix security problems that he said threatened Indian trust accounts.

As a result, would-be visitors to national parks can’t access any official park web site to make vacation plans or download backcountry and camping permits.

Will Morris, a spokesperson for Mesa Verde National Park, said the decision won’t affect the park’s tourism as much as one might think.

"We don’t generally deal with folks over e-mail, although occasionally folks will get ahold of us that way," said Morris, who admitted the decision was affecting park operations but said, "It’s nothing that would be seen by the visitor."

Morris said there are many web sites one can access to find park information, just not the official one.

"If people are looking for information for the park, there are so many sites that address the park they are going to get some information, although I can’t vouch for the accuracy of that," said Morris.

Mesa Verde is also one of the few parks whose concessionaire, ARAMARK, handles camping, lodging, and tour reservations, and is not hampered by the court ruling.

Tourists can still make reservations on ARAMARK’s web site, www.visitmesaverde.com, which offers information about the park, tours, and lodging.

"The good news is our reservation phone line is ringing and people are really starting to make reservations. I think we’re going to have an excellent year this year for regional and statewide travel," said Judith Swain, ARAMARK’s director of sales. "It’s very cheerful at the moment."

Things are not so cheerful at Canyonlands, which is in the middle of its busiest tourist-planning time of the year, and unable to share any information with visitors over the Internet or via e-mail.

"January and February is traditionally a pretty busy trip-planning time of the year," said Henderson, who explained that visitors often download permit applications and visitor information from the Canyonlands web site. The southeastern Utah parks receive over 1.5 million hits a year, he said.

Most people access the Canyonlands web site through ParkNet, a site which has links to all of the National Park web sites. But when you try to access ParkNet now, the following message pops up on the screen:

"Due to conditions outside our department, the National Park Service has suspended operation of ParkNet - www.nps.gov, Links To The Past - www.cr.nps.gov and NatureNet - www.nature.nps.gov until further notice. We apologize for this inconvenience and are working to restore service as soon as possible."

The park also has special e-mail addresses to help visitors obtain general information and backcountry reservations that no longer can be used. "We are just cut off from the outside world right now other than via telephone or fax machine," said Henderson.

And because the Internet is down, more people are trying to call the park, which isn’t ready to handle a flood of calls. Therefore, many callers are not reaching a human voice and are asked to leave a message.

"I’m sure their frustration level is up. I know ours is up," said Henderson.

The computer shutdown is also affecting internal affairs.

Paying park employees is no longer possible with a stroke of the computer key, and paychecks are being delayed because payroll is being done by hard copy.

"Internally it’s affecting our payroll, it’s affecting personnel actions, it’s affecting payment to vendors, it’s a pretty major impact," said Henderson.

The park was granted limited access to its business systems, the payroll processing, and the federal finance system today but it might be a long time before things are back to normal.

"We are going to have to certify that each individual work station does not have access to Indian-trust-fund accounts, which is obviously a pretty onerous task," said Henderson.