Furloughed staff will return to 38 protected sites around the country. Critics are panning the move as a way to avoid bad optics during the political tussle.
Park officials said few rangers are on hand to prevent off-road driving, which causes destruction of the park's namesake trees. Volunteers have been cleaning the nearly 800,000-acre park.
The giant clump of fat, oil and wet wipes lurking below the town of Sidmouth measures 210 feet, making it 42 feet longer than the White House. It will take about eight weeks to break it apart.
Volunteers and a skeletal staff have maintained sites in some parks. In others, the amount of damage and trash triggered an unprecedented move from the National Park Service to return more workers.
The partial federal government shutdown has furloughed thousands of people who work on millions of acres of public land across the country. That means work on critical projects has mostly stopped.219
Senior officials at Pacific Gas & Electric are working on a plan to sell off the company's natural gas division to avert bankruptcy and raise funds to cover huge projected liability costs.