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Former US Representative John Dingell of Michigan. Photo courtesy Wikipedia via United States Congress.

Former US Representative John David Dingell Jr. of Michigan, an architect of some of the most important wildlife conservation laws in the nation, died February 7, 2019 in Dearborn, Michigan. He was 92.

During his 59 years in Congress spanning 1955 to 2014, the longest Congressional tenure in U.S. history, Mr. Dingell served as the main architect on the Clean Water Act of 1972, and authored several laws advocating for wildlife conservation: the Water Quality Act of 1965, the National Wildlife Refuge System Administration Act of 1966, the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, the Endangered Species Act of 1973, and the the Clean Air Act of 1990. He sponsored the National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act of 1997. He also established the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge in 2001 — the only international wildlife refuge in the nation and managed jointly by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the Canadian Wildlife Service. He was a member of the Migratory Bird Conservation Commission from 1969 until his retirement in 2014.

Jonathan B. Jarvis, a former director of the US National Park Service, says that keeping national parks open during the current partial federal government shutdown is a terrible mistake. He writes in today's Guardian:

Leaving the parks open without these essential staff is equivalent to leaving the Smithsonian museums open without any staff to protect the priceless artefacts. Yet as a result of the government shutdown, which furloughed most park staff, this is what has happened. It is a violation of the stewardship mandate, motivated only by politics. While the majority of the public will be respectful, there will always be a few who take advantage of the opportunity to do lasting damage.

Jonathan B. Jarvis was the 18th director of the US National Park Service. He is now the executive director for the Institute for Parks, People and Biodiversity at the University of California, Berkeley.

The United States Department of Interior has been impacted by the partial federal government shutdown that went into effect early Saturday December 22, 2018. Funding for about a quarter of the federal government has expired and some 800,000 employees from nine key federal departments and dozens of federal agencies have been furloughed or are working without pay. The departments impacted are Agriculture, Commerce, Justice, Homeland Security, Interior, State, Transportation, Treasury, and Housing and Urban Development. This is the third federal government shutdown this year.

Among the federal employees furloughed at the Department of Interior (DOI) are most of workers at the National Park Service (NPS) and the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). DOI websites and social media accounts will not be updated.

Under the contingency plan of the National Park Service, no national parks will be open and no visitor services — including restrooms, facility and road maintenance, snow plowing, and trash collection — will be provided. Scheduled programs will be canceled, visitor centers will be closed and campgrounds will be unstaffed. Visitors are requested to practice "leave no trace" principles to avoid fouling up the national parks when no visitor services are available.

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