Officials at Acadia National Park may stop reporting deaths in the park.
That possibility comes from a U.S. Department of the Interior internal memo obtained by the Washington Post instructing staff at national parks not to confirm deaths or provide details about severe injuries on park property.
According to the memo, which applies to “all Interior bureaus and offices,” only “appropriate authorities” can confirm a death. The memo does not say which authorities specifically, the Post reported.
Park staff are only allowed to confirm “that an incident occurred,” give “the general location,” say that “Interior personnel or partners are responding,” “that the incident remains under investigation” and “that additional information will be shared when appropriate,” according to the newspaper.
A spokesperson for the Interior Department told the Washington Post “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.”
The Interior Department did not immediately respond to an email request from the BDN seeking information about whether the policy is in effect at Acadia National Park.
There have been a total of more than 90 reported deaths in Acadia since the park was founded in 1916, which makes for an average of less than one per year — a miniscule fraction compared to the recent annual average of nearly 4 million visits. The park’s deadliest year was in 2004, when 7 people died from causes that include drownings, crashes, one medical event and one suicide.
The most recent death reported at the park came in January when a 25-year-old from Maryland was found dead after becoming stranded on an island near Bar Harbor that can be reached by foot at low tide. His death was reported by Acadia’s then-spokesperson Amanda Pollock on the same day the man’s body was found.
The park waited nearly two weeks to notify the public when a hiker died after falling and hitting his head in June 2025. It was the third serious incident and the second fatality that the park responded to that month. In April of the same year, a man was found dead outside his vehicle in the Schoodic section of the park. Park officials reported the death.
The same reporting policy applied to the 2023 death of a Brewer High School student who fell 25 feet at Otter Cliffs, and cyclist who died of a medical event on one of the park’s carriage roads in 2022.
Communication from Acadia was already in decline. The park has responded less frequently to media queries the past two years, and since late last month has not had a designated spokesperson. Instead all public communications are now handled by the Interior Department.
