Amid an increase in visitation and crimes in national parks, the National Park Service has narrowed the scope of the crimes its dwindling number of top-level investigators will handle.
According to a National Park Service internal memo released Thursday by the watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), in August the agency reduced the types of crimes that its special agents would lead investigations into. The move was announced in an internal memo from Jennifer Flynn, the associate director of Visitor and Resource Protection, to the service’s regional directors, park superintendents and chief rangers. Flynn described the change as a “more streamlined service model” for special agents.