Park Service Lack of Transparency Created Its Huge FOIA Backlog
By Jeff Ruch, Pub. Employees for Envtl. Responsibility, Nov. 18, 2022
The National Park Service is drowning in unanswered Freedom of Information Act requests. According to the Interior Department’s latest quarterly report, NPS led all other Interior agencies in both new requests and in its backlog of 1,421 unprocessed requests.
This backlog has nearly doubled during the past two years while both the number of requests the Park Service received and its backlog continue to spiral up with each passing month.
By contrast, the Fish & Wildlife Service, which manages more than 500 wildlife refuges and has significant regulatory and enforcement responsibilities (e.g., administering the Endangered Species Act), currently has a backlog of only 347 requests, less than a quarter that of NPS, and that backlog is shrinking while the Park Service’s continues to swell.
What explains the difference?
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