I greatly appreciate all the replies and ideas. I will say I debated if it was needed or not. Just kind of assumed since it had clips there was a reason. I will say for the first year I didn't realize it had clips and just thought the fan sucked (or didn't suck) because we would run it with the clips close and it wouldn't do much! I'm pretty sure I've forgotten to close them before getting on the road a handful of times now and haven't seen any ill effects unless that how the one clip got snapped off.
I may check out those screen clips just for a piece of mind