Each October, Great Basin National Park celebrates its birthday.

But last week, the park received an early gift.

Five park employees laid off in February — about 20 percent of the park’s staff — were rehired after a federal appeals court upheld a lower court’s decision directing President Donald Trump’s administration to rehire terminated federal workers. 

The layoffs were part of the Trump administration’s effort to scale down the size of the federal government, including the National Park Service. But for the already understaffed Great Basin (which after the layoffs had less staff than it had two decades ago), the cuts led to reduced park services and concern among local officials who worried about the trickle-down effects on the local economy.

“If people don’t have confidence in travel or feel like we’re going into a recession and don’t come out and take vacations, that’s our hit,” said Kyle Horvath, White Pine County’s director of tourism. “If people aren’t traveling, we don’t have the money coming into room tax. That limits our ability to invest back in the community.” 

Part of Great Basin’s appeal is its remoteness. An hour outside Ely, getting to the park requires a six-hour drive from Reno or a more than four-hour drive from Las Vegas.

Despite its remoteness, visitation at Great Basin has doubled over the last two decades, and the park now sees more than 140,000 visitors annually.

In 2023, the park’s 143,000 visitors contributed an estimated $15.4 million to the local economy. 

“When you invest in national parks, you invest in economies in rural areas that often don’t have as many means to have a vibrant, thriving economy,” said Aviva O’Neil, executive director of the Great Basin National Park Foundation, the park’s official nonprofit partner.

Great Basin is the largest tourism draw in White Pine County, where two-thirds of taxable sales are generated by tourism — in 2023, taxable sales totaled $64.5 million. White Pine County reinvests 51 percent of the room tax it collects directly back into recreational infrastructure and events to attract tourists — a loop that cuts to the park could severely disrupt.

“If a person believes their national park experience may not be what they are looking for — that it may not include ranger-led programs, an opportunity for a Lehman Caves tour, telescope viewing, open campgrounds and clean bathrooms — they will be less likely to come to our area,” Horvath previously said. “That would be an enormous hit to our economy.”

'Still highly concerned’

Each year, thousands of tourists flock to Great Basin National Park to hike Wheeler Peak, the second-tallest mountain in Nevada, take advantage of the area’s dark skies for stargazing or view the park’s ancient bristlecone stands.

But it’s a feature tucked beneath the surface that’s among the park’s most popular attractions. Winding along for 2 miles underground, Lehman Caves is the largest known cave system in Nevada. Each year, the caves draw roughly 50,000 visitors, who book reservations well in advance to view its unique shield formations. 

When the five employees were let go in February, the cuts were crippling to the park, which already had eight vacant positions, O’Neil said.

“The scary thing with these recent layoffs is that most of them are interpretive rangers, and those are the ones leading the cave tours and providing the service everyone comes for,” Horvath said. 

With the staffing reduction, the park significantly reduced its number of cave tours, offering them only on a first-come, first-served basis hinging on daily staffing. Previously, the tours were offered via reservations that often sold out.

The park’s foundation temporarily rehired the five workers as foundation employees at a cost of $1,000 per person per week, O’Neil said. But, with only $25,000 to work with, that funding was set to expire soon before the court order brought the rangers back to work at the park’s two visitor centers and lead cave tours, as well as do maintenance work. 

But there’s still a lot of uncertainty for the park and the communities that rely on it for tourism revenue heading into the summer, the park’s peak visitation months. 

“Part of the story is how complicated it is to plan,” she said. “When you’re a national park, a lot of your planning happens in the spring [and] there’s still that kind of not really knowing.”

The park’s superintendent is on leave and the acting park superintendents did not return an email from The Nevada Independent. 

Meanwhile, staff members are bracing for another round of reductions in force ordered by the administration. 

“We are still highly concerned with staffing levels moving forward,” O’Neil said. “We know a reduction in force is in the works, but have no idea what that could mean for Great Basin National Park.” 

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In the weeds: 

Removing green is going green — The City of Henderson is offering residents a $575 supplementary rebate for replacing decorative grass in addition to the Southern Nevada Water Authority's (SNWA) rebate. SNWA pays residents $3 per square foot.

Qualifying projects must be approved by SNWA and be single-family residential parcels of at least 400 square feet within city limits.

In 2024, more than 314,000 square feet of turf were removed from Henderson, saving an estimated 17 million gallons of water annually. 

Pumped storage project advances — The Bureau of Land Management this week gave White Pine Waterpower LLC the green light to move forward with hydrogeologic testing for its controversial White Pine Pumped Storage Project outside Ely. 

The proposed project would generate 1,000 megawatts of power — more than any current, single utility-scale solar project — by moving water between reservoirs at different elevations; the project would tie in to the nearby Robinson Substation. The approved testing includes two test and three monitoring wells to track, among other things, groundwater response to pumping.

Solar installation boom — Nevada added a record 1.6 gigawatts of solar capacity in 2024 and now has nearly 8 gigawatts worth of installed solar capacity, enough to power 1.5 million homes.

Pulling a quarter of its energy from solar, Nevada ranks sixth in the nation for installed solar capacity. More than 138,000 Nevada households have rooftop solar installed on their homes. 

Solar is the fastest-growing source of electricity in the nation, according to Climate Central, and nationwide solar capacity is estimated to reach 739 gigawatts by 2035. 

Gas bills could go up — Southwest Gas is seeking to increase the average Southern Nevada single-family residential customer monthly bill by $3.05, or 5.21 percent, and the average Northern Nevada single-family residential customer monthly bill by $3.77, or 4.49 percent.

The utility has filed its annual rate adjustment application with state energy regulators, who will determine the reasonableness and prudence of gas procurement and other costs from the past year. It is separate from requests for general rate adjustments related to infrastructure and from quarterly gas cost filings.

Let it snow! — Mount Rose Ski Tahoe is expanding its operations by opening the largest tubing park on the West Coast this coming season. The new 20-lane tubing center will feature 750-foot-long runs served by a conveyor lift. 

To serve the facility, a new lodge and parking area are being built ¾ mile west of the Mt. Rose Main Lodge entrance. 

Throwing shade — Through a partnership with the Arbor Day Foundation, Clark County is giving away free trees to increase the shade canopy in the Las Vegas Valley. The community project aims to address rising temperatures in the region. Species include water-efficient weeping willows, Japanese magnolias and chaste trees. Trees are available through May, or when supplies run out. 

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ICYMI:

‘Soil is a living thing:’ Why a healthy dirt program is again before Nevada lawmakers

A long-term water buyback program in Nevada? 

Even as lithium prices drop, industry expansion in Nevada still underway

Bees, butterflies and beetles — bill would allow Nevada to manage certain invertebrates

Curious how Trump’s cost cutting could affect your national park visit? You might not get a straight answer.

Trump administration cancels $8M for Nevada schools, food banks to buy from local farms

The high cost of fixing Lake Tahoe: Famed alpine lake still murky after decades of efforts

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Here’s what else I’m reading (and listening to) this week: 

The new head of Southern Nevada’s Bureau of Land Management took the federal buyout after less than two months on the job, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports. 

More than $1 million from Nevada’s Lake Tahoe license plate program will fund environmental projects, according to KUNR. 

Two Republican assemblymembers are sponsoring a bill that would require gross and net revenue data from Nevada’s mines, and the taxes paid on those revenues — information that was once public — to again be publicly available from the state Department of Taxation. More from the Nevada Current. 

A federal appeals court sides with corner-crossing hunters in Wyoming dispute, from the Montana Free Press. (WyoFile also has some good reporting on it.)

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A closer look: 

A recent poll found that most Americans support national monuments in their current form. What do you think?