How Should Congress Benefit National Parks?

In addition to spending in local towns due to visitation of national parks, they also provide a source of jobs. The Great Smoky Mountains National Park alone provided 12,759 jobs in 2014 (Cullinane Thomas, C., C. Huber, and L. Koontz). These jobs helped with keeping the park open to the ten million people that visited the park in 2014. It is important that Congress allocates more funds for the National Park Service because of the jobs that these parks provide. If Congress reduces the funding for national parks, like it has in recent years, than parks are forced to lay off employees and close the parks to the public. The National Park Service has encountered “more than a 7%, or $173 million reduction in the account to operate national parks” (NPS Funding). A reduction in the budget can have long effects. If parks are forced to close for a period of time, than there is a sharp decrease in the visitors to the park and the tourism in the local …show more content…
As a result of this, there is less visitor spending and businesses may have to shrink their businesses or lay off employees. If these towns are structured around tourism to the national parks than it is important that these national parks receive the proper funding needed, if not more. Towns near national parks benefit from the tourism because it allows them to create new hotels, restaurants and commercial buildings that provide a source of jobs. These new buildings in return help provide jobs in the local communities and benefits the town as a whole. The more these national parks grow, the more economic benefit these towns receive.
It is imperative that Congress allocates more funds for the National Park Service to create more national parks because they provide full-time careers for people as well as internships and seasonal jobs. Within these parks, some of the