With more questions than answers brought on by the COVID-19 outbreak, the superintendents of the nearby national parks held an unprecedented conference phone call inviting regional gateway businesses, government leaders and media into a two-hour discussion this week.

Yellowstone National Park Superintendent Cameron Sholly and Grand Teton National Park acting superintendent Gopaul Noojibail discussed the challenges brought on by closing the two parks a month ago. The parks closed after visitation began increasing as spring weather neared. No date or timeline for reopening the parks has been presented.

“Not sure exactly where the tipping point is where the stressors of economic impact will overcome the fear of the virus, but I would say that I’m already starting to see different opinions on whether we should stay closed or how long we should stay closed,” Sholly said during the conference call. “And I expect those opinions will get much more divided as we move forward. It's ever important that we have open lines of communication that we can do our best at reconciling divergent opinions as much as possible.”

Sholly said the park closure came during the “shoulder season” when visitation is typically low, “but during the summer, we get about 1 million visitors per month,” he said. Continued closure poses a bleak economic prospect for the parks, gateway towns and business owners. Entrance fees bring in roughly $15 million annually for Yellowstone, and a recent study estimated that Yellowstone tourism contributes $647 million per year to the region's economy.

Sholly said Yellowstone typically hires about 500 seasonal workers. “The initial wave of that we are planning on bringing on is roughly 160 to 170 that would go into park housing and another 40 to 60 that have housing in the local communities,” he said. The first wave of workers would be used to operate “front-country facilities.”

He said other summer hires have been delayed because they would be required to live in shared housing. Concessionaires, such as Xanterra, hire even more seasonal workers and are looking for ways to house an abbreviated workforce.

“As (the outbreak) starts to relax, we’ll start looking at bringing on more and more,” he said. “There are things that we are going to do differently this year.”

Noojibail said Grand Teton expects to close about 40% of its beds dedicated to seasonal workers to allow for adequate spacing.

Some projects, such as the lake trout eradication in Yellowstone Lake and aquatic invasive species inspectors, are deemed necessary and contractors will continue as in years past.

Some business owners who operate concessions in the parks or businesses outside the parks expressed concern about how their operations could continue or about getting advanced notice of opening to help them with hiring employees.

One comment came from Bert Miller, the general manager of a car dealership in Cody, Wyo., about a recent shift in sentiment regarding when to open the park back up.

“It’s just the last week, maybe it’s spring, maybe it’s being cooped up, but I’ve noticed there is a large amount of people starting to talk in Cody that it’s time to open up and move forward,” Miller said.

Sholly acknowledged seeing a similar shift but said the parks will take a measured approach, collaborating with as many stakeholders as possible.

“One thing we don’t want to do is open it wide open and get overwhelmed and not be able to pull it back,” Sholly said.

“This is unknown to us, so making sure that we are doing everything in collaboration with everybody else and have everybody’s opinions on this is going to be really important,” Noojibail said.

“It's critical how we do this because we don’t want a resurgence of the disease,” said Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon during the conference. “We certainly don’t want to burden any of those bordering communities, but at the same time it is absolutely essential that our businesses have the opportunity to do what is so important for them.”