The Interior Department’s guidance instructs parks staff not to confirm deaths, the severity of injuries or other details.
June 24, 2026
By Jake Price
On Friday, a 17-year-old girl drowned in Sequoia National Park after slipping into a river. On Saturday, a 23-year-old man died after falling over a waterfall in Yosemite. The same weekend, a body was found in the desert at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, while a motorcycle accident killed one person in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
But recent internal guidance prohibits park staff or other Interior Department employees from directly notifying the public about the deaths. The department, which oversees the National Park Service, had not issued any statements on this weekend’s deaths on the department website or social media as of Wednesday afternoon.
The memo, issued in December and reviewed by The Washington Post, states that Interior employees, including park staff and others who communicate with the media, are no longer permitted to confirm deaths or details about severe injuries, a restriction that current and former rangers say breaks with the department’s previous disclosure policy.
An average of about 350 people die in national parks each year, or about 7 per week, according to Park Service data. That represents a small fraction of the more than 300 million people who visit each year, with park advocates and staff emphasizing parks are generally safe.
“The guidance was developed to create a more consistent approach to incident communications across the Department and is not intended to conceal fatalities or delay information,” Interior press secretary Aubrie Spady said in an email.
“We continue to provide public safety information, statements, news releases, and incident updates as appropriate, while respecting investigative processes, privacy considerations, next-of-kin notifications, and, in some cases, requests from family members not to release identifying information,” she added.
Seven current and former National Park Service staffers, however, said the policy marks a shift from the agency’s long-standing approach to release as much information as possible. The current agency employees spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation.
While the overall number of deaths remain small compared to overall attendance, they said, public disclosure helps keep visitors safe by informing them about the risks they may encounter while on public lands.
“The basic process was always to get people as much information as you could give them as soon as possible around an incident,” said Dan Wenk, who served as head of operations for the park system as well as superintendent of Yellowstone National Park.
“When I had a grizzly bear kill somebody, I literally had 10 uplink trucks outside my office the next morning, and people want facts and they expect answers. And the intention is to give them as much information as you can while still maintaining the correct protocols,” Wenk said.
While the exact procedure could vary somewhat depending on the individual park, former staffers said, correct protocols included making sure families are informed before the Park Service gives out names or identifying information about the person involved.
The new internal policy states that “Interior shall not confirm a death,” adding that it applies to “all Interior bureaus and offices” and “all Interior communications involving fatalities, suspected fatalities, serious injuries, or emotionally sensitive incidents.”
Only “appropriate authorities” can confirm a death, the document says, after coordinating with the communications office and notifying next of kin. However, the memo does not indicate which authorities are authorized to act under these circumstances.
“Interior shall not confirm the severity of injuries,” it adds. “Interior may state only that an individual was transported and the method of transport. No additional medical information may be released.”
Instead, staff are only allowed to confirm “that an incident occurred,” “the general location,” “that Interior personnel or partners are responding,” “that the incident remains under investigation” and “that additional information will be shared when appropriate.”
Previously, the Park Service would often issue press releases on its website within 24 to 48 hours of the deaths, although deaths in remote or backcountry areas could sometimes take 72 hours, the staffers said.
But days after this weekend’s four deadly incidents, the agency has not issued such statements. The Park Service confirmed to SFGate, which was first to report the possible death of a man falling over the waterfall at Yosemite, that an incident occurred there, but the department did not post a statement publicly. Interior has similarly not issued a statement on the death in Sequoia National Park, which several local media outlets reported on.
Staffers pointed to a Park Service press release on a major fire in Arizona, which was caused by a fatal aircraft accident, as an example of how deaths are communicated under the new policy.
Rather than explicitly stating the pilot had died, the Park Service said that “Emergency responders responded to the scene and located the pilot who was transported to the local coroner’s office.”
Before the new policy, the Park Service made a template available for each park to write their own crisis communications guidance, that they could tailor to their staff and circumstances.
One version based on this template advised that staff should follow a policy of “Maximum Disclosure, Minimum Delay” that gives details to the media as quickly as possible once information is confirmed, to avoid public speculation or panic. That guidance, reviewed by The Post, advised staff to answer questions based on what is known without engaging in speculation.
Park staff historically released information over time as certain details are confirmed, according to Bill Wade, executive director of the National Association of Park Rangers, which represents current and retired rangers. They typically started with the basics that a death occurred and followed up with the cause, Wade said, often within a day or so.
Incidents like those over the past weekend — a deadly fall, drowning or car crash — would typically be confirmed to the public quickly, said Wade, who retired as superintendent of Shenandoah National Park in 1997.
Sometimes certain details would take longer because of delays in informing next of kin or determining cause of death, he added.
Despite the new guidance, the agency this year still periodically issued press releases on deaths in parks. Park staffers and advocates said that happened because the agency is huge and word on new policies can spread slowly and haphazardly.
The current staffers said that in some cases, releases still go out with delays, as staffers are confused about what the guidance means, while employees at other parks may be unaware of the policy and continue to issue statements as they have in the past.
Three of the agency staffers say the announcement that three people died from extreme heat in the Grand Canyon earlier this month was also delayed by the policy.
A 72-year-old man died of extreme heat in the Canyon on June 12, while a couple aged 67 and 68 also died of heat there on June 16.
The deaths were only announced on June 19, the staffers said, adding that communicating that sort of basic information can make hikers aware of possible risks so they take the necessary precautions.
Alexandra Picavet, a board member for the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, said that the policy was not as big a shift as some are suggesting.
The agency previously did not issue press releases for every fatality, and incidents like car crashes often would not be announced unless they resulted in a road closure, said Picavet, a former Park Service employee whose roles included handling communications at Sequoia National Park.
“It is not a requirement or an edict that every accidental death that occurs in a park gets a press release,” she said.
However, Picavet said the policy seems disconnected from the reality of parks staff working in the field and will most likely not work.
“There are times when it is evident someone has passed, and there are times where it extremely evident what the cause of it is, and it makes the agency look ridiculous to hem and haw around that,” she said.
“This type of prescriptive and in some ways threatening guidance — the way they wrote it was intimidating in some portions — will not in the long run be effective.”