a call to action:

saving our

national park system

 

 

released

September 21, 2004

in conjunction with

the 88^th anniversary of the national park service

 

 

 

 

This report is dedicated to the memory of David Ochsner, our friend and colleague of many years in the national park service, and significant contributer to this report. Dave passed away on october 1, 2004

table of contents

 

Overview	………………………………………………………………………..	Page 4
Preface	………………………………………………………………………..	Page 7
Chapter 1	National Park Service History, Law and Policy………………………..	Page 10
Chapter 2	Chronic Problems and Disturbing Trends Threaten Long-term Sustainability of Our National Park System …………………………..	Page 14
Chapter 3	Current Manifestations of the Chronic Problems: The Bush/Norton/Mainella Record ………………………………………	Page 20
	I. The Department of the Interior is Violating the Intent of the Mission of the National Park Service …………………………………	Page 20
	II. External Threats: Park Values and Resources are Increasingly Being Assaulted from Outside Their Boundaries ……………………………	Page 27
	III. Parks are Plunging Toward Privatization …………………………	Page 33
	IV. Parks are on a Starvation Diet ……………………………………	Page 41
	V. The Uniqueness and Professional Credibility of the NPS and its Mission are being Marginalized ………………………………………	Page 46
	VI. NPS Professionalism is being Marginalized, Ignored and/or not Developed ……………………………………………………………	Page 51
Chapter 4	A Call to Action: Saving Our National Park System ………………….	Page 58
Appendix I	………………………………………………………………………..	Page 64
Appendix II	………………………………………………………………………..	Page 65

 

overview

 

While our nation’s (and the world’s) first national park, Yellowstone, was established in 1872, it was not until 1916 that the Congress formally established an agency, the National Park Service (NPS), to manage the collection of parks then in existence. The Congress said in that 1916 Act that the Service:

 

“…shall promote and regulate the use of the Federal areas known as national parks, monuments and reservations hereinafter specified…by such means and measures as conform to the fundamental purpose of the said parks, monuments, and reservations, which purpose is to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”

The Congress in 1972 stipulated that the areas that it and former Presidents had created should be managed as a system:

 

“The national park system shall include any area of land and water now or hereafter administered by the Secretary of the Interior through the National Park Service for park, monument, historic, parkway, recreational, or other purposes. That, Congress declares that the national park system, which began with the establishment of Yellowstone National Park in 1872, has since grown to include superlative national, historic, and recreation areas in every major region of the United States, its territories and island possessions; that these areas, though distinct in character, are united through the inter-related purposes and resources into one national park system as cumulative expressions of a single national heritage; that, individually and collectively, these areas derive increased national dignity and recognition of their superb environmental quality through their inclusion jointly with each other in one national park system preserved and managed for the benefit and inspiration of all the people of the United States…”

The Congress returned to the issue of the management of the System in 1976 when it amended the act to establish Redwood National Park:

 

“The authorization of activities shall be construed and the protection, management, and administration of these areas shall be conducted in light of the high public value and integrity of the national park system and shall not be exercised in derogation of the values and purposes for which these various areas have been established, except as may have been or shall be directly and specifically provided by Congress.”

Despite the fact that the Congress has established these strong standards of care for the units of the national park system, financial and political support from successive congresses and Democratic and Republican Administrations have almost never provided the necessary resources so that the National Park Service can indeed “…conserve [the resources] and provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.” One former senior manager of the Park Service summed up the situation this way: “The headlines are always the same.” The National Park Service never has enough money. The maintenance backlog of unfunded cyclic and repair/rehab projects continues to grow, now estimated to be somewhere between $4 and $6 billion. External threats to park resources multiply in number and severity.

 

Moreover, in the last 3 ½ years, an Administration that has dropped all pretense of bipartisan management of the national park system has adopted policies and initiatives that threaten the future of the areas that succeeding generations of Americans had decided deserve protection in perpetuity. The Coalition of Concerned NPS Retirees has identified 6 broad areas where current actions dilute the concept of protection in perpetuity. In Chapter 3 of this document, the authors provide corroborating evidence to support their contention that 1.) the political appointees in the Department of the Interior are failing to uphold the mission of the National Park Service; 2.) the political appointees in the Department of the Interior are actively promoting activities beyond the boundaries of park areas that threaten the very resources for which these parks were established; 3.) the political appointees in the Department of the Interior, side-by-side with their allies in the private sector, are adopting initiatives that are leading to the privatization of the parks that were once held in public trust for present and future generations; 4.) the political appointees in the Department of the Interior are misleading the public about the amount of allocated dollars available to fund park operations and maintain park infrastructure; 5.) the political appointees in the Department of the Interior are deliberately undermining the uniqueness of the National Park Service in an attempt to transform it into just another public land managing agency; and 6.) the political appointees in the Department of the Interior are ignoring the advice of senior NPS leaders and creating a crisis of confidence among NPS employees.

 

It is time to reverse these trends, change the headlines, and elevate the management of the national park system into a national priority. The Coalition of Concerned NPS Retirees proposes the following “Calls to Action” to initiate this process:

 

To Address Immediate Needs and Threats

 

Call to Action I:

 

• Increase immediately the annual recurring operational budget for the National Park Service by at least $600 million dollars to restore the Service’s ability to manage the daily operations of our national park system.

 

• Cease immediately efforts to weaken the mission of the National Park Service by a variety of initiatives carried out by the current Administration and replace them with progressive and constructive decisions that celebrate and strengthen that mission.

 

• Restore immediately the agency discretion to manage the national park system through a National Park Service whose career professionals are valued, encouraged, developed and held accountable to managing the public’s trust.

 

To Preserve the Future of the National Park System

 

Call to Action II:

 

• Establish and convene a non-partisan National Parks Blue Ribbon Commission to examine the most effective organizational model for the governance of the national park system and the National Park Service. The Commission would report to Congress, the President and the American public on its findings and recommendations.
• Establish and convene a non-partisan National Parks Technical Panel to sort “fact from fancy” and determine what are the true budget and personnel needs of the National Park Service, evaluating what governmental processes stand in the way of success and what is required to overcome them. This panel will report its findings to the National Parks Blue Ribbon Commission.
• Revitalize our national park system by combining the recommendations of the National Parks Blue Ribbon Commission and the National Parks Technical Panel into a bold, multi-year “Keeping the Promises” Plan culminating in 2016, the 100^th anniversary of the National Park Service.

 

• Establish a National Parks Restoration and Conservation Corps similar to the celebrated Civilian Conservation Corps, to address the National Park Service’s maintenance backlog. The members of this Corps would be paid professionals. The investment of tax monies in this project will assure that the current young generation of Americans recognize the value of their national park areas and will signify their desire that these areas be passed onto their children in superb, not deplorable, condition.

 

 

 

 

Preface

America’s invention of national parks was termed by Wallace Stegner as, “the best idea America ever had.”[1] Its 388 areas comprise a living record of the areas that successive generations of Americans have considered worthy of protection in perpetuity. More than 60 percent of these areas preserve and protect sites important to us for their historical or cultural associations. In the System, we can hear the drums and cannons of the Revolutionary War at Minute Man or Colonial. We can sense the excitement of nation building at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. We can trace the bloody trail of General Grant as he clashed with General Lee at places such as the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Courthouse, Petersburg, and Richmond, ending, finally and mercifully, in the stillness at Appomattox. We can trace the contributions of individuals or groups of people at these sites. The contributions of Black Americans are celebrated at places such as Booker T, Washington, Frederick Douglas Home, or Martin Luther King, Jr. Sites with Hispanic associations are Castillo de San Marcos, De Soto, Coronado, El Morro, Chamizal, San Antonio Missions, and Cabrillo. We can think about the contributions of American artists at NPS sites such as Carl Sandburg, Eugene O’Neil, Longfellow, Poe, and St, Gaudens. American women are commemorated at Clara Barton, Susan B. Anthony, and Women’s Rights National Historic Site in New York, the scene of on early suffragist meeting. We can contemplate the genius of our American Indian ancestors at Mesa Verde or Chaco, or sense their pain at Little Big Horn or Canyon de Chelly. We commemorate presidents, some great such as Lincoln and Washington and some perhaps not so great like Hoover and Taft. We celebrate scientists such as Edison and inventors like the Wright brothers.

 

But that’s not the end of the system’s diversity. In 1936, the Congress ordered the NPS to study the impoundment behind Hoover Dam, Lake Mead, for its recreational potential. It was our first recreation area. In the public works days of the 1930’s, several parkway projects were authorized and begun. The NPS now manages such places as the Blue Ridge, Natchez Trace, and the George Washington Memorial Parkway in D.C. In 1937, Congress authorized the first national seashore, Cape Hatteras. In 1972, the first urban recreation areas were created and the NPS assumed management responsibilities at Gateway National Recreation Area in New York City and Golden Gate in San Francisco.

 

We have also protected our wild places. These wild lands have scientific value. Wilderness parks are reservoirs where natural processes still continue. Outside the parks, we have modified these processes, adapting them to the needs of civilization. Only in wild places do the forces of evolution still go on in a more or less unmodified way. Science has not yet found a way to duplicate or replicate these processes. Interrupt them and we interrupt the evolutionary processes responsible for all life, including our own.

 

Wild parks are like genetic warehouses. Aldo Leopold once observed that the first rule of successful tinkering is to save all the parts. That’s what we are doing in places like Denali, saving all the parts. If we want to be real practical about it, we could argue that natural parks might contain the next cure for cancer or for HIV. Who knows? On a more philosophical level, the scientific value of wilderness parks can be framed by considering them as control areas. More than 100 years ago, the American landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmstead, commented on this reason for preserving wild parks. He said that it is not that civilization is moving too rapidly. It’s just that if there were not places like national parks, we would have nothing against which to measure the speed and nature of the advance.

 

Our large natural parks are the last refuges in which modern people do not operate on a fixed schedule. A visit to one of these parks is one of the last things we do at our own pace. We discover things and perceive relationships based on our own rate of understanding. No one attempts to fill up our schedule and sell us a book of tickets that have to be used by 5:00 PM that afternoon. Natural parks, then, are very different. We live in a world of rigorous schedules, urgent meetings, and important meetings. In our wilderness parks, we can take off our watches, turn off the boom boxes and cell phones, and live life attuned to biological rhythms, not to the pace of human enterprise.

 

Natural parks are outdoor living laboratories for environmental education. One thing is crystal clear: the future of the planet depends upon the creation of an environmental ethic among its inhabitants. What better place to teach the lessons of the importance of biological diversity, stability, continuity and sustainability than in our natural parks?

For many visitors, wild parks have spiritual value. It is not uncommon to hear people talk about a park like Denali National Park in Alaska as a temple, a place where they find the clearest proof of the existence of a Creator. Aboriginal people long thought of such places as sacred. Even today, the Navajos speak of the 4 sacred mountains that sit on the edges of land they claim as their homeland.

 

Closely tied to the concept of wilderness with a spiritual value, is the argument that wilderness parks have an aesthetic value. People find beauty in raw, untamed landscapes, places that have not been modified by the works of humankind. This was one of the most compelling arguments for the establishment of the wilderness parks contained within the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA.) When one reads the reports of the Congressional debate about ANILCA, one finds repeated references to Alaska as “the nation’s last great wilderness.” Proponents of ANILCA called it “the last chance to save the best of the wilderness that our country still contained.” They talked about “the sublime beauty of the land.”

 

Finally, the last reason for preserving natural parks has really nothing to do with humans as a species. It has, instead, something to do with the deep ecologist’s point of view that wild ecosystems themselves have a right to exist. Our country’s Endangered Species Act is an example of this kind of thinking. We are extending the concepts contained within the Bill of Rights to nature. Even if a snail darter or a furbish lousewort has no recognized benefit to humans and even if certain desirable projects have to be put on hold, these species have a right to exist. Wilderness parks, in this context, then, are examples of our willingness to restrain or limit ourselves. Dr. Roderick Nash, the environmental historian, has called the creation of these parks “a gesture of planetary modesty,” a recognition that we are not the only passengers on the spaceship earth, that we share it with hundreds of millions of other species for whom we must find space on the ship.

Thus, national park areas are established because they are one of the most honest reflections of our culture. We have preserved outstanding examples of our landscape heritage. We have set aside areas where our people can recreate and re-create. We preserved the sites where great events of the nation’s history have occurred—the battlefields, the landing sites, the theaters. We have also kept the houses where great figures were born or raised, the homes and libraries where they did their greatest work, and, finally, as commemorative sites, the places where they were buried. These areas all help us understand who we are as a people and what past events bind us together. Our national park system is also an excellent representation of what each generation of Americans has considered important. As sites are added to the system, as chaotic and unpredictable as the process may seem, they are reflections of the people’s will, an indication of what the majority considers significant at that moment of the park’s establishment. This system is, therefore, a priceless legacy that we will pass onto future generations; one that they, too, will enrich by adding to it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER 1

national park service law, policy and history

 

 

 

 

Today, the founders of the national park system must be turning over in their graves at what is happening to their beloved National Park Service and to the incredible diversity of parks created over a century of enlightened and consistent progress, regardless of which political party was in control of the White House or the Congress.

 

Over the last few years, newspaper headlines across the country have repeatedly highlighted the declining state of the parks. Reporters, members of Congress and citizens ask the same questions, get the same non-responsive answers, and write or read the same stories. These headlines scream out about threats to the ecological integrity of parks, historic resources in disrepair, encroaching obeisance to private interests, declining budgets, low staffing levels, deteriorating facilities, destructive political ideologies, contentious public policy issues, and worsening visitor experiences. The major lesson to be learned from this repetitive recitation of headlines year after year is that our national parks are in peril. At no time in the past has the fate of the National Park Service and our system of national parks been so threatened. One thing seems certain: Unless we find a way to make the management of America’s natural and cultural heritage areas less subject to political whim and short-term thinking and decisions, our future generations—those for whom we are charged with conserving unimpaired these precious resources—will not have them to enjoy. Moreover, we will have reneged on our debt to previous generations of Americans who have built our heritage system – not because we couldn’t pay that debt but because we consciously and deliberately chose not to honor it.

 

 

 

 

 

“Beginning with Yellowstone, the idea of a national park was an American invention of historic consequences. The areas that now comprise the national park system, and those that will be added in years to come, are cumulative expressions of a single national heritage. The National Park Service must manage park resources and values in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”[2]

 

The American national park system is unique among the world’s systems of government preserves, most of which used the American model in creating their own national preserves. Because of their uniqueness, reference to legislative or management practices elsewhere in the world is of little help in truly understanding American national parks. Certainly, comparing the American system to others can be instructive and informative but one is left with the reality that those comparisons only underscore the uniqueness of the American national park system.

 

The national park system of the United States is the world’s largest, both in number of units (388 as of July 2004) and in total land area (just over 84 million acres as of September, 2003). The system is the most complex, the most carefully described and the most specific system in the world with at least twenty-one designations of units administered by the National Park Service. Although these units may vary in their designations according to the specific legislation that established each, all are governed by the National Park Service Organic Act.

 

Professor Robin W. Winks, noted author and historian of the American national park movement, addresses its uniqueness in his studies of the parks,[3] opining that “the national park system of the United States is genuinely national, for there are units in all but one state and in all dependencies.” Further, Winks notes that the system enjoys “the warm support of the American people, who clearly cherish the system even when they do not fully understand it,” and “there can be no doubt that by the 1970’s the system was embedded with a vigorous, growing, wide-spread public sentiment for conservation and protection of the environment. This sentiment has not abated, and the public brooks little compromise with what it understands to be the System’s mission. The same may be said of national park systems in few if any other countries.”

 

On August 25, 1916, the Congress established the National Park Service and its purposes were codified in Title 16, the United States Code. The key management-related provision of the Organic Act is:

 

“[The National Park Service]shall promote and regulate the use of the Federal areas known as national parks, monuments and reservations hereinafter specified…by such means and measures as conform to the fundamental purpose of the said parks, monuments, and reservations, which purpose is to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”[4]

As the national park units increased in number and diversity, Congress clarified the overall mission by amending the Organic Act in 1970 through P.L 91-38, with language that tied all the variety of units back to the purposes stated in the Organic Act. Thus, while each unit is to be administered according to its specific enabling legislation, each is also to be managed following the directives of the Organic Act. This amendment known as the General Authorities Act of 1970 stated that:

 

“The national park system shall include any area of land and water now or hereafter administered by the Secretary of the Interior through the National Park Service for park, monument, historic, parkway, recreational, or other purposes. That, Congress declares that the national park system, which began with the establishment of Yellowstone National Park in 1872, has since grown to include superlative national, historic, and recreation areas in every major region of the United States, its territories and island possessions; that these areas, though distinct in character, are united through the inter-related purposes and resources into one national park system as cumulative expressions of a single national heritage; that, individually and collectively, these areas derive increased national dignity and recognition of their superb environmental quality through their inclusion jointly with each other in one national park system preserved and managed for the benefit and inspiration of all the people of the United States; and that is the purpose of this Act to include all such areas in the System and to clarify the authorities applicable to the system.”[5]

Responding to a widely perceived need to provide better legislative direction strengthening the National Park Service’s protective function, in 1978 Congress passed another amendment to the Organic Act and the General Authorities Act. Known as the “Redwood Expansion Amendment,” contained in the Act expanding Redwood National Park, it added two key sentences:

 

“Congress further reaffirms, declares, and directs that the promotion and regulation of the various areas of the national park system, as defined in section 1c of this title, shall be consistent with and founded in the purpose established by section 1 of this title [the Organic Act amendment in the General Authorities Act], to the common benefit of all the people of the United States. The authorization of activities shall be construed and the protection, management, and administration of these areas shall be conducted in light of the high public value and integrity of the national park system and shall not be exercised in derogation of the values and purposes for which these various areas have been established, except as may have been or shall be directly and specifically provided by Congress.”[6]

Professor Winks states that “clearly here Congress was holding National Parks to an ‘increased’ or higher standard of protection, this higher standard was based on the maintenance or achieving of superb ‘environmental quality,’ and each park benefited by being included in a system that benefited all: that is, a threat to one was a threat to all. Further, Congress now called for preservation and management that would benefit and inspire ‘all the people,’ thus by implication ruling out management decisions that would redound to the benefit of only ‘some of the people’: interest groups, local parties, one might argue even historically vested bodies that lacked clear national significance… [With the 1978 amendment] Congress appears to have instructed the National Park Service to manage parks in relation to public sentiment and, in effect, sociological jurisprudence. By this standard in 1978 Congress gave a powerful mandate to the Park Service, a mandate which would prohibit actions that could have the effect of ‘derogation’ of park values.”[7]

 

Examination of these important pieces of legislation provides an imperative context in which the people of the United States have expressed, through their Congressional representatives, a clear intent and set of criteria as to how the parks will be managed. They further elaborate the “uniqueness” that sets our park system aside from our other American public lands. Congress has clearly intended the National Parks to be special—places of the highest public interest as “cumulative expressions of a single national heritage.” While they certainly are part of the important context of American public lands, they are also something more. They were intended to be something more, enjoying higher levels of protection than other public lands.

 

To assure total clarity, the Senate even went further in elaborating that “specialness” in Senate Report 95-528, stating the reasons for these amendments is “to refocus and insure that the basis for decision-making concerning the national park system continues to be the criteria provided in 16 U.S.C. 1.” For added clarity, the duty of the Secretary of the Interior was elaborated in this same report setting a clear standard of decision-making: “The Secretary is to afford the highest standard of protection and care to the natural resources of Redwood National Park and the national park system. No decision shall compromise these resource values except as Congress may have specifically provided.”

 

 

chapter 2:

Chronic Problems and Disturbing Trends Threaten Long-term Sustainability of Our national Park system

 

 

 

It seems that the “organic” evolution of park protection law over the history of the National Park Service is increasingly forgotten or discarded by those who would seek to tear down this legacy of the thoughtful and democratic expression of the American people. Until now, National Park Service Directors, and most Department of the Interior leaders, have honored and perpetuated this legacy, incorporating it effectively into the matrix of internal management policies that govern the actions of the Service in carrying out its mission. But now, there are those who would seek “homogenization” of the mission of the National Park Service with other public lands agencies.

 

There are those who faithfully interpret law according to their ideological political viewpoint rather than the affirmative manner that the law requires to protect parks. There are those who try to find ways to tear down the “uniqueness” of parks rather than recognize and celebrate it. There are those who refuse to recognize that their affirmative responsibilities to ensure that the enjoyment, by future generations, of national parks can be accomplished only if the superb quality of park resources and values is left unimpaired. Even when faced with law and a strong record of court judgments, there are those who continue to deny that when there is conflict between conserving resources and values and providing for enjoyment of them, conservation is to be predominant. Our nation’s courts have consistently interpreted the Organic Act, in decisions that variously describe it as making “resource protection the primary goal,” or “resource protection the overarching concern,” or as establishing a “primary mission of resource conservation,” a “conservation mandate,” an “overriding preservation mandate,” “an overarching goal of resource protection,” or “but a single purpose, namely conservation.”[8] What parts of these legislated mandates and legal interpretations do they not understand?

 

Frequent attempts to effectively rewrite law through policy and administrative procedure require continuing vigilance and an excellent grounding in the mission of the National Park Service and its legal foundations. One current Assistant Secretary of the Interior has consistently insisted that “you have a national park statute that requires that parks are managed to both protect the resources of the park and, on an equal plane with that, provide recreational opportunities and visitor enjoyment of the parks.”[9] This requires a strong response. In fact, there is no “equal plane” between resources protection and providing recreational opportunities. Yet, there seem to be broad and deep efforts to practice revisionist history in trying to explain the imaginary contradictions in the Organic Act. There is no contradiction in the Organic Act; the intent of Congress across the history of related acts is clear. Professor Winks, after exhaustive historical research into the derivation of the Act, firmly declares that:

 

“The National Park Service was enjoined by that act, and the mission placed upon the Service was reinforced by subsequent acts, to conserve the scenic, natural and historic resources, and the wild life found in conjunction with those resources, in the units of the national park system in such a way as to leave them unimpaired; this mission had and has precedence over providing means of access, if those means impair the resources, however much access may add to the enjoyment of future generations.”[10]

 

The most recent judicial support for Professor Winks’ assertion was articulated by U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Civil Action No. 02-2367, plaintiffs v. Gale Norton, et al, on December 16, 2003, where the Interior Department decided to scrap the phase-out plan for snowmobiles in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. Sullivan issued an overdue reminder: “The NPS is bound by a conservation mandate, and that mandate trumps all other considerations.”[11]

 

A major contributing factor to the malaise the parks now find themselves in is the failure by those whose responsibilities include overseeing the national park system to consistently reaffirm the fundamental principles upon which parks are created: that they are part of a national system of parks and that they enjoy a unique mission created by a robust body of law. Disregarding these fundamental principles has created a national leadership void in how we care for our heritage resources and provides ample opportunity for chronic mischief whenever the opportunity presents itself. So, progress is rarely made and certainly not enough of it to retire repetitive negative headlines. It is a “herky-jerky” process that tugs and pulls at the National Park Service and the collective interest of our nation’s citizens. It creates much activity but little true progress, and has caused stagnation in the management of our nation’s most cherished heritage resources. Citizens don’t understand…wondering what to believe from the headlines, the politicians, and Service professionals. Most especially, they wonder why this is happening to a national park system that “has the warm support of the American people, who clearly cherish the system even when they do not understand it.”[Winks].

 

Teddy Roosevelt once said, while standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon, “Keep it for your children and your children’s children, and for all who come after you.” As we look forward to this new century, having inherited this national park system from our forefathers, there are grave warning signs that we will not be able to carry out the admonishment that TR laid before us. David Rockefeller, Jr., who continues to carry on the conservation traditions of his renowned family, asks “what greater gift could we be given than to work on behalf of our great-grandchildren? And to do so recognizing that every human impulse (institutional impulse, too) is working against us.” He goes on to say:

 

“...we are little concerned about a year from now, or ten, or a hundred. That’s just human nature. And our corporate and political systems also create strong biases toward short-term thinking: the next quarter, the next fiscal year, the next election. This is also very natural, when the operative incentive systems (bonuses, shareholder satisfaction, and victory at the polls) primarily reward success in the short-term. But, those of us in the business of protecting public lands, places that ‘restore our soul,’ must do so with the long view in mind.”[12]

 

Our system of governance is increasingly based upon offering short-term solutions to long-term problems. Long-term thinking and sustained long-term investment based upon a solid foundation of fundamental principles is the key element now missing from effectively taking care of our park system.

 

Long-term strategic thinking is nearly impossible when the National Park Service is regularly whipsawed every election cycle by competing political ideologies. Management systems based on well-considered priorities are ineffective and failing. Federal budget cycles respond only to short-term considerations, and out-year planning is a constantly-shifting political target for all levels of our governance system. “Park-barrel” decisions in Congress often lead to funding allocations that do not come even close to reflecting the highest priorities of the NPS, often leaving the real needs deferred or unfunded. Strategic plans become political statements for whatever party is in office rather than effective tools for agency governance of our precious heritage resources. Non-partisan politics that consistently characterized the early traditions upon which our national park system was founded are being replaced by divisive political ideologies that inject shameful political partisanship down to the lowest level of staffing and the most routine park management issues, destroying agency discretion and marginalizing the nation’s best career park professionals. Routine park management decisions, once the discretion of seasoned career professionals, are now managed upward to political appointees who make political decisions rather than reasoned or science-based resource decisions that are in the public interest.

 

Federico Cheever, Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Denver, College of Law, in a thoughtful essay about the evolution of agency discretion in managing our public lands, states: “To take management discretion away from an agency like the Forest Service or the Park Service also has a negative effect on agency culture. The effectiveness of law, any law, on the public lands depends completely on a healthy agency culture. Neither industry representatives nor environmental activists will ever manage the public lands, staff the regional offices, collect the data, inspect the range, control the run-off, welcome and manage the visitors. Legislation which furthers ideological goals at the cost of destroying the agencies which might effectuate them is a victory for no one.”[13]

 

Going one step further than just “legislation,” the incremental and cumulative effect of the whittling away done by government in the act of being governmental can accomplish the same kind of agency destruction. It is alarmist to contend the parks are being torn apart by inadequate legislative mandates that need revision for further clarification of the mission of the National Park Service. These are nothing more than “code words” to disguise hurtful intentions to align an agency mission with a specific political ideology. Quite to the contrary, the record is abundant that the broader public interest is well served by existing legislation and resulting judicial decisions. What is required is a national reaffirmation of these progressive principles and the return of agency discretion to manage these nationally significant resources.

 

Well-intentioned efforts by Congress and different Administrations to hold agencies accountable have created a plethora of documents and frenetic agency activity to document performance, success or failures. More frequently than not, these documents are bound together and stacked in corners of offices, where they gather dust because they are too confusing, lengthy and irrelevant—or the next change makes them irrelevant before they can be effectively used. Well-considered national park business plans that link with performance documentation and budget needs are frequently received by political appointees with suspicion and sometimes even outright hostility because they do not mirror a particular administration’s political agenda. They are considered as “sniveling documents” from overly protective park professionals who are not sufficiently “sensitive” to Administration political ideologies. The positive attributes of politics—”how we do business in America”—are being diminished, trivialized and polarized, disenfranchising the public from exercising their affirmative rights as citizens to determine the future of their national park system.

 

It is time—before it becomes too late—that the park political debate includes the opportunity for the public to once again claim some of the responsibility for determining whose job it is to conserve America’s heritage values rather than continue the negative and cynical political manipulation that characterizes the decisions of today.

 

National environmentalism, in response to a barrage of threatening ideological conservation values, has become increasingly shrill, partitioning and polarizing communities, governmental officials and citizens who yearn to see the debate focus on quality of life approaches that encourage reasoned public negotiation and consensus. The “lightning rod” issue of viewing parks as essentially “cash cows” for local and regional economies increasingly skews interpretation of law suggesting or insisting that recreation and visitor use are as important as, if not more important than the protection of the resource. The increasingly overwhelming attention that is placed on a park’s revenue-generating capabilities creates a dilemma that often threatens long-term ecological health. It diffuses “large scale” core resource protection duties into smaller incremental reactions subjected to a continual barrage of park development plans and threatening visitor use scenarios that seem to prevail more often than not. In other words the national park system is being killed by a thousand small cuts rather than one massive slash.

 

“The dilemma is this: When our national parks are viewed solely as a source of revenue, shallow financial considerations and short-term solutions begin to shape park policies. Moreover, the parks’ most convincing supporters become those who believe that the parks’ principal purpose is to help businesses, communities, and people make a buck. As a result of these trends, the role of environmental stewardship in many of our national parks is in danger of being overrun by a desire to maximize revenues over the short-term.”[14] The ability of park managers and their staffs to carry out core resource protection missions is systematically being diminished across the country as agency decisions, with increasing frequency, defer instead to gateway communities and special interest groups.

 

The ultimate goal should be to regard the priceless attributes of our national parks as valuable unto themselves and not as adjuncts to the parks’ ability to generate revenues or to be self-supporting through devolution of inherent federal responsibility with non-federal entities. Simply put, the priceless qualities of our national system of parks are beyond value. It is the job of our nation to keep these qualities from becoming nothing more than memories sold on an auction block forged from short-term economic gratification.

 

Of course, the national park system, as a microcosm of our nation’s present state of affairs, does not suffer alone in trying to carry out the grand democratic ideals of our nation’s way of life under increasingly difficult circumstances. Just balancing the federal budget is daunting, much less coping with the myriad other problems of leading and managing our democracy. But, it would seem that affirmatively responding to the problems and issues—tackling them head on with the fervor and dedication our forefathers consistently demonstrated in times of difficulty—is far more likely to maintain the values and integrity of the national park system than the present course.

 

This paper intentionally focuses on just one segment of our great society—our national park system. It is the responsibility of our generation to now respond to the challenge previous generations passed to us. The national park system Advisory Board, in July 2001, presented a thoughtful report to the Secretary of the Interior, eloquently capturing our generation’s challenge: “The Creation of a National Park is an expression of faith in the future. It is a pact between generations, a promise from the past to the future. In 1916, Congress established the National Park Service ‘to conserve the parks unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.’ This act and the many others that have created the national park system and related programs echo the promise of the Constitution ‘to secure the Blessings of Liberty for ourselves and our Posterity.’ We are that future, and we too must act on behalf of our successors. We must envision and ensure a system of parks and programs that benefits a new generation of citizens in a changing world.”[15] Sadly, the challenge articulated by the Advisory Board was not responded to and the report was relegated to a dusty shelf of “has-beens.”

 

The founders of this great legacy created the world’s first national park at Yellowstone in 1872, preserving the watershed of the Yellowstone River “for the benefit and enjoyment of the people.” The place was to be administered by the federal government for the broader national public interest. Put under the exclusive control of the Secretary of the Interior, the land was “reserved and withdrawn from settlement, occupancy, or sale under the laws of the United States, and dedicated and set apart as a public park or pleasuring-ground…[that would] … provide for the preservation, from injury or spoliation, of all timber, mineral deposits, natural curiosities, or wonders within said park, and their retention in their natural condition… [and] …provide against the wanton destruction of the fish and game found within said park, and against their capture or destruction for the purposes of merchandise or profit.”

 

Before there was ever a National Park Service, other great places and archeological treasures were set aside in those early years because of the unique vision of protecting and passing on our country’s legacy to future generations.

 

The prescience of our founders must not be squandered. Through generations of citizen leaders, Congressional activists and Presidential action our system of national parks stands today as an essential component of how our culture defines itself. It took courage and vision to respond to the real danger that our lands and history could be lost by taking special care of them – indeed, placing them on a special pedestal in our society. The challenge is no less daunting today than it was then. Key components of ecosystems are being lost. Sustained vision is being replaced by short-term convenience. The threats to our special places are as real today as they were a hundred years ago.

 

Retired National Park Service Director Roger G. Kennedy eloquently repeats the challenge before us and the call we must respond to: “It is time to join in a concerted, non-partisan endeavor to restore the health of the national park system and to encourage the people of the National Park Service to continue to share in a national reaffirmation of our national community—in real places. The National Parks are important in themselves. Beyond themselves, they provide a Call to Conscience, a call to preserve America at its best, where we can be our best selves. Thus they can be—and we can be—a ‘saving remnant.’”[16]

 

chapter 3:

current manifestations of the chronic problems: the bush/norton/mainella record

 

Recent decisions and new directions in policy have given many of us who proudly wore the National Park Service uniform in leadership positions grave concern that the National Park mission is being forsaken at enormous potential cost to future generations.

 

Many national parks are currently threatened by decisions that are being made not by professional staff in the national parks but by political appointees in the Department of the Interior. These appointees are frequently ignoring science and public preference in favor of special interests in making decisions that are harming the health of national parks, including the park where it all began—Yellowstone. These decisions are ignoring, shortchanging, or violating legislative and policy mandates established by previous generations of Americans who built and maintained the national park system we all enjoy.

 

As the highest appointed official answerable for the national park system, Secretary Gale Norton is shirking her responsibility. In passing the Redwood Expansion Act[17], which amended the National Park Service Organic Act, the House committee report described the Redwood amendment as a “declaration by Congress” that the promotion and regulation of the national park system is to be consistent with the Organic Act. The Senate committee report stated that under the Redwood amendment, “The Secretary has an absolute duty, which is not to be compromised, to fulfill the mandate of the 1916 Act to take whatever actions and seek whatever relief as will safeguard the units of the national park system [emphasis added].” Secretary Norton is abdicating this absolute duty.

 

Decisions are being made and actions being taken by Secretary Norton and others in the Department of the Interior, including NPS Director Fran Mainella, that are in contradiction with the stated mission of the National Park Service, and that many consider to be in violation of the Organic Act of 1916, as amended.

 

 

 

The Bush Administration has revived controversial “wise use” policies from the James Watt-era to erode the protection of parks. Throughout the western United States and in Alaska, the Administration is reinterpreting the 1866 Mining Law known as Revised Statute 2477 to invite states and counties to make legal claims that long-abandoned trails and roads on federal lands should be opened up. On January 6, 2003, the Interior Department issued a revised regulation (known as the “disclaimer of interest” rule because the government “disclaims” its interest in the land). In addition to inviting local jurisdictions to make these claims, the Administration has established a new process to facilitate the approval of such claims, and has made it clear that it will be inclined to open up these long-closed “roads,” regardless of negative impacts on the public lands that all Americans are entitled to enjoy. In Mojave National Preserve and Death Valley National Park (CA) alone, the new policy could open protected lands to more than 3,000 miles of road building, along alleged routes to old mining claims. In Denali National Park (AK), another 405 miles of roads could be built through the park’s pristine wilderness. Colorado’s Moffat County would construct another 240 miles of roads through Dinosaur National Monument (CO). Secretary Norton is in the process of cutting deals with state governments to facilitate R. S. 2477 claims across federal lands, many of which could fall within the boundaries of areas of the national park system and about which the BLM could issue disclaimers of interest.

 

Although Norton’s “model” agreement with the State of Utah provides that these claims will not be entertained for lands in national park areas, this has not stopped San Juan County, Utah from filing a claim for the “Salt Creek road” inside the boundaries of Canyonlands National Park (UT). Moreover, it now appears that, despite the April, 2003 agreement between then Governor Mike Leavitt and Secretary Norton, the State of Utah will join San Juan County in the claim for the “Salt Creek road.” Secretary Norton has been asked what the position of the DOI will be on this claim, but she has failed to respond.

 

 

The Administration is undermining a 100-year-old legal doctrine that grants the federal government water rights necessary to support public lands, whether they be Indian reservations, national forests, or national parks.

 

Through many years of scientific analysis, research has determined specific in-stream flows in the Gunnison River needed to serve the scenic, aesthetic, natural, environmental, and recreational purposes for which the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park (CO) was reserved and to preserve the environment of the park to a reasonable degree. Scientific analysis reveals that fulfillment of the purposes for which the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National park was reserved and protection of the environment of the Black Canyon require flow patterns resembling the natural hydrograph, including annual peak flows and shoulder flows.

 

As part of the Administration’s unrelenting effort to undercut the value of our public lands, Secretary Norton, on April 2, 2003, without prior notice or public environmental analysis, signed a document with the State of Colorado by which the reserved right to peak and shoulder flows for the Gunnison River in the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park are relinquished.

 

This action could have devastating effects on the ecosystem in the bottom of this unique canyon, in spite of a court decision in 1978 reserving water to the park for fish and wildlife populations that the park was created to protect.

 

 

 

Despite overwhelming public sentiment and scientific analysis supporting the Clinton Administration’s phase-out of snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park (MT, WY & ID) – the world’s first National Park – and Grand Teton National Park (WY), the Administration bowed to pressure from the International Snowmobile Manufacturers Association and reopened the park to their use. Studies conducted over ten years had established that snowmobile use caused air pollution harmful to park employees and visitors alike, and the air and noise pollution threatens the nation’s last surviving wild buffalo herd. The preferred alternative was to replace snowmobiles with snow coaches – a more efficient and less polluting form of transportation. Secretary Norton ignored this science and the over 350,000 public comments received, with over 4 out of 5 people in favor of the ban. The Secretary ordered a supplemental Environmental Impact Statement – at the cost of $2 million – during which the public overwhelmingly continued to favor the ban, yet the Administration approved continued use of snowmobiles. In December 2003, a Federal District Court found that the Interior Department’s decision to allow this continued use to be without scientific merit and ordered the Clinton rules restored. A second Federal District Court voided the Clinton rules. The Administration, of course, paid attention to the latter ruling and opened the park again to snowmobile use. After over $6 million has already been spent on studies, yet another costly environmental assessment was released on August 20, 2004 to determine how snowmobiles will fit into the winter use plan through the winter of 2006-2007.

 

The story is the same for motorized vehicles at Glen Canyon (UT), Bighorn Canyon (MT), and Lake Meredith and Amistad (TX) National Recreation Areas; Cape Lookout (NC), Gulf Islands (MS-AL-FL), Padre Island (TX), and Assateague (MD) National Seashores, where the Administration has pushed to allow personal water craft for the first time, sacrificing the solitude for which our National Parks are treasured.

 

The most recent action is a request by the Personal Watercraft Industry Association, which filed a petition on August 18, 2004 to allow jet-propelled vessels to return to Biscayne National Park (FL), one of a number of national parks where the NPS banned personal watercraft in 2000.

 

 

 

In December, 1999, on behalf of 70 environmental organizations, the Bluewater Network submitted a petition[18] requesting a ban on the use of off-highway vehicles on all off-road areas in the national park system. This petition cited the negative impacts of off-highway vehicle use, including threats and harm to wildlife, air quality, water quality, noise, soils, cultural resources, vegetation and safety. The petition specifies that: “Current legal off-road use of all-terrain vehicles, dune buggies, sand buggies, and four-wheel drive vehicles in 23 National Park units fails to leave parks ‘unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.’” Moreover, it indicates that, “18 of these 23 units allow use without any specific enabling legislation.”

 

In January, 2001, the NPS notified Bluewater Network that the petition raised “valid concerns,” and stated that the NPS was nearing the final states of its snowmobile rulemaking processes and “would evaluate the issue of off-road vehicle use next.” On August 27, 2003, Bluewater Network wrote NPS Director Fran Mainella reminding her of the NPS commitments made earlier regarding the petition. In what has become a typical pattern[19] for Director Mainella, no response to Bluewater’s August 27, 2003, letter has been received.

 

Cape Hatteras National Seashore (NC) has long been the scene of conflict regarding the management of the use of ORVs on stretches of the beach and the use of those same beaches for nesting purposes by birds protected by the either Endangered Species Act or the Migratory Bird Treaty.

 

Changes in the beach and dune structures caused by Hurricane Isabel, in September 2003, allowed scientists of the National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to rethink traditional management practices related to OHVs. The result was to reroute OHV traffic away from some areas to better protect the birds. Recently, this arrangement was overruled and the Superintendent was ordered to reopen areas previously closed to protect nesting seabirds. Political appointees in the Department of the Interior once again favored recreational use over resource protection, this time causing the deaths of several Least Tern chicks.

 

 

 

Since 1970 Congress has designated over 44 million acres of wilderness in 47 parks. Congress has yet to act on the nineteen parks for which Presidents from Nixon to Carter have recommended wilderness. The nineteen include Big Bend (TX), Glacier (MT), Yellowstone and Zion (UT) National Parks and comprise almost 6 million acres. In plain violation of the Wilderness Act and specific park enabling acts, the Bush Administration (as well as ALL previous Administrations) failed to transmit recommendations that Congress designate over 2 million acres of roadless areas as wilderness in eight parks in the lower 48 States. These parks include Grand Canyon National Park (AZ), Voyageurs National Park (MN), Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore (MI) and Glen Canyon National Recreation Area (AZ). Nearly 17 million more acres sit in limbo in Alaska’s national park areas.

 

During the second Clinton term, the NPS began to assess roadless areas for suitability as wilderness in a number of other parks. Among the parks, the NPS began studies in Big Cypress National Preserve (FL), Channel Islands National Park (CA) and Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore (MI). Based upon documents obtained by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) on May 23, 2003, the Bush Administration has quietly smothered or shortchanged these efforts.

 

High-ranking NPS officials have received the “word” that wilderness is a non-starter with the Bush Interior Department. Thus, the combination of administrative inaction in D.C. and the subtle but chilling “no new wilderness” message has frozen the NPS wilderness review process in its tracks. In all fairness to the Bush Administration, the NPS itself has an ingrained element of antipathy towards wilderness.

 

Scholars of wilderness history trace the agency antipathy to the very early debates over the Wilderness Act in the late 1950s. Nonetheless, whereas the Clinton Administration sought to spur the NPS to get on track, the Bush Administration has done the opposite.

 

A good example of Administration inaction is Guadalupe Mountains National Park (TX). On April 1, 2003, NPS Director Fran Mainella approved a wilderness suitability assessment for over 38,000 acres of land both in the additions and original boundaries of Guadalupe Mountains NP. The Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Fish and Wildlife and Parks, Craig Manson, a Bush political appointee, has yet to approve the publication of that assessment in the Federal Register, effectively strangling the process.

 

Other examples:

 

• Channel Islands National Park (CA). This park was proclaimed a national monument in 1938 and became a 125,000 acre national park in 1980, consisting of five islands off the California coast. The law that established the park required that the Secretary study Channel Islands for wilderness suitability and report his findings to Congress by October 1, 1983. The NPS never conducted the study and never developed a proposal or recommendation. However, on April 24, 2002, the NPS sent a wilderness suitability assessment memo to the Director. That assessment found over 68,000 acres of the park to be suitable as wilderness. To date, NPS Director Mainella has failed to act on the assessment and it remains “frozen” in her office.

 

• Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore (MI). The Congress created the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in 1966. The park contains 36,000 acres of Federal land. Congress established the park two years after the passage of the Wilderness Act and thus technically it was not subject to the requirement that the Secretary study its roadless areas to make a recommendation to Congress. However, the congressional report accompanying the enabling act proposed that Beaver Basin area of the new lakeshore be managed as a roadless area. On April 26, 2002, capping a process that began in 2000, local NPS officials sent to the Director an assessment for Pictured Rocks. The assessment found that 18,400 acres of Pictured Rocks were suitable as wilderness. The assessment left out a key roadless tract known as the Grand Sable Dunes, in violation of NPS Management Policies. Now, the NPS is proposing that only 11,700 acres—just 15% of the park—be considered for possible wilderness designation.

 

One brighter spot is Apostle Island National Lakeshore (WI). The Administration has allowed the NPS to proceed with a wilderness study, now out for public comment. Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) mandated funds for the study in 2001, so the Administration had little choice but to conduct the study. However, the NPS has produced a preferred alternative that fails to protect the wild character of three of the remote and roadless islands.

 

The NPS has had a “wilderness preservation” chapter in the official Management Policies since 1974. The latest version of the Policies was adopted at the end of the Clinton Administration, in December 2000. The December 2000 policies did not fundamentally alter the wilderness review requirements for park roadless areas, first spelled out in 1974, but they did make the wilderness review requirements more clear and explicit. The Bush appointees in the Interior Department are quietly seeking ways to soften those requirements and to do so in a manner that the public and press do not notice. That way, they may continue to fob off the image of being park-friendly while striking at protection for key park resources.

 

 

 

Secretary Norton, acting contrary to the evidence presented to the Department of the Interior by NPS scientists, successfully petitioned UNESCO[21] to remove Yellowstone (WY/MT/ID) and Great Smoky Mountains (TN/NC) National Parks from the list of endangered World Heritage Sites.

 

 

Insiders suggest that Secretary Norton is investigating the possibility of additional land swaps like the one recently completed in Great Smoky Mountains National Park (TN/NC) that failed to meet the normal criteria of swapping lands, that the lands be of relatively equal value and that the swap is in the interest of the United States. Some people are calling such swaps “staps,” a cross between “swap” and “steal.”

 

Perhaps now more than ever before, threats exist to the resources of national parks from sources and actions outside their boundaries. The general trend of reducing environmental protections that has accelerated since 2001 has put resources in many parks at increasing risk.

 

Among the most critical threats are:

 

 

 

The Bush Administration’s rollback of clean air protections is making already unhealthy air even worse in our parks. At the Great Smoky Mountains National Park on the North Carolina and Tennessee border, nearby coal-fired power plants led to more ozone alerts in 2003 than in Atlanta.

 

“The Cherokee called the lush Appalachian upheaval ‘the land of blue smoke,’ in homage to the steamy billows that roll up from the valleys of Great Smoky Mountains National Park after summer thunderstorms.

“The summertime haze that often swallows up the majestic views of forested ridges these days is something else entirely: a pollution-rich brew of sulfates that scatter light and small particles that obscure it.

“Not only can one often not see clearly in the park, the most visited in the nation, one often cannot breathe cleanly. Nitrogen oxide cooks in the sun with other chemicals to form ozone pollution, which discolors leaves and pains lowland lungs.

“On many summer mornings, the air above the asphalt in Philadelphia, New York or Washington is healthier than the air around Clingman’s Dome, where ridges rise to 6,643 feet.

“On many summer days, visitors on the ridges can see perhaps 14 miles, instead of the 77-mile range afforded the continent’s first settlers on a clear summer day. In 2002, the air in the park was unhealthy on a record 42 days.”[22]

 

“For the last 20 years we have known through visitor surveys that people come here to view the scenery,” says Jim Renfro, the air quality specialist at the park. “They expect clean air. Most of the time it’s not.”

 

By most accounts, Great Smoky Mountains NP is the most polluted national park in the system. Not far behind are Acadia National Park (ME), Shenandoah National Park (VA), Mammoth Cave National Park (KY) and Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Parks (CA). Over two-dozen national parks, all Class I areas under the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1977, have degraded air quality and haze. And, in most of them, it is getting worse.

 

Two proposed rules developed by the Environmental Protection Agency have been touted as improving air in parks. One, involving the interstate drift of pollutants, is part of a nationwide plan to reduce power plant emissions. The second—the haze rule—is aimed at improving air in national parks by requiring states to regulate power plants and many other sources of haze. The haze rule requires that sources of emissions, particularly power plants, use the Best Available Control Technology (BACT)—which is often the most expensive technology—to reduce emissions from plants built from 1962 to 1977. However, power plants may gain a 14-year free pass on complying with the engineering requirements called for in the haze rule if they comply with the proposed interstate rule’s directives on reducing emissions.

 

Some call these rules proposed by the E.P.A. a “regulatory bait-and-switch.” The 1977 law underlying the haze rule requires park air to be pristine by 2064. Regulations established under President Clinton established a decade-by-decade schedule for improvements so that parks would be haze-free. The new EPA strategy compromises that basic goal by allowing trading of pollution credits and averaging of air quality improvements among various parks.

 

In other recent developments:

 

• Secretary Norton’s Department withdrew its objections to the construction of a power plant near Yellowstone National Park (WY/MT/ID) despite evidence that the plant would degrade the park’s air.

 

• At Denali National Park (AK), the Administration has reversed federal opposition to coal-fired power plants just outside park boundaries, clearing the way for more air pollution in this crown jewel of the National Park system.

 

• At Mammoth Cave National Park (KY), the world’s most diverse underground ecosystem is threatened by a permit signed off on by the Bush Administration that would allow the Peabody Energy Corporation to build a large coal-fired power plant within 50 miles of the park. Aquatic organisms, including seven species of endangered mussels, are especially vulnerable.

 

As with other situations facing the NPS, the Bush Administration is misleading the American public about the current conditions in parks and about the future. Director Mainella, on several occasions, has stated, “We have had over a 50% improvement in the air quality in national parks.” When confronted, she admits that what she was “intending” to communicate was “…50 percent of the national parks we monitor have improving or stable air quality…” – hardly the same thing. She goes on to say, “A goal of improving air quality in national parks by 50 percent is a visionary and important one, and the 70 percent reduction in power plant emissions proposed in the President’s Clear Skies initiative would bring us closer to that goal.”

 

In fact, even park superintendents have been enlisted to support the political message aimed at downplaying the pollution problem in parks and playing up the purported benefits of Bush’s air policies and proposals. All superintendents were given “talking points” on April 14, 2004—one day before eight of the nation’s largest national parks were declared in violation of new standards for ozone pollution. Among the talking points were:

 

• “The air in our most visited park, the Great Smoky Mountain (sic) National Park, will be substantially improved by the strong new Bush Administration regulations.”

 

• “Clear Skies should do for visibility in the Great Smoky Mountain (sic) National Park what the Acid Rain Trading Program did for acid rain reductions in the Adirondacks; namely, 100 percent compliance with no lawsuits.”

 

The “Clear Skies” Initiative

 

Secretary Norton and Director Mainella have promoted the President’s so-called Clear Skies Initiative, even though it would seriously affect the Park Service’s ability to comment on additional pollution sources near the air sheds of Park Service areas.

 

Under this initiative proposed by President Bush, what appear to be additional concessions to the power industry are likely to result in weakened requirements to clean up air pollution. Air quality specialists for the NPS indicate:

 

• For existing sources:
• Original EPA analysis says it will reduce sulphur and nitrogen depositions by 60-70% by 2018, but the more recent EPA analysis reduces those probabilities.
• For visibility, a 1-2 deciview improvement is projected by 2018, but for Great Smoky Mountains NP, a 5 deciview improvement would be needed to stay on the “glide path” to reach the attainment of “natural conditions” required by 2065.
• For depositions, an 87% reduction in nitrogen depositions is required to reach attainment – clear skies will provide only a 40-50% reduction.
• There will be hardly any reduction of existing pollution in the West and “pollution creep” is expected to increase because of new sources.

 

• New sources:
• Because the BACT for NOx emission rates will almost double in terms of allowable emissions for new sources, the West is likely to suffer – it takes very little to “gum up” a pristine air shed, especially in terms of visibility.
• The 50km limitation for land manager comment could seriously affect new source review in the West.

 

The 50km limitation for land manager comment is particularly troublesome. Up to now, park superintendents have been effective, as a “party at the table,” in reducing the potential impacts of air emissions of proposed plants on nearby parks. In some cases, sources well over one hundred miles from a park could produce serious impacts on park resources. This arbitrary limitation seems designed to take managers of Class I areas out of the equation of reviewing applications for new sources. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to determine that, if this proposal passes, all new sources will be proposed at least 32 miles from park boundaries – in many cases not nearly far enough to effectively protect resources from emissions. Air pollutants travel thousands of miles. How else can one interpret Acadia’s dubious distinction of having the highest ozone measurement in the state of Maine’s history, when the park is an island in the Atlantic Ocean hundreds of miles from the nearest major stationary sources?

 

 

 

In an effort to find oil and gas, 50,000 pound trucks are hammering the ground between Arches and Canyonlands National Parks (UT), sending shockwaves into the earth, causing damage to fragile desert soils from which it may take decades to recover. The Bush Administration is pushing the acceleration of energy development, even within two miles of our national parks and in areas that have been considered for wilderness designation or inclusion in expanded park plans.

 

Expansion of extraction of oil has been allowed by the Administration in Padre Island National Seashore (TX), smack in the middle of the nesting areas for the endangered Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtle.

 

Early in 2004, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) auctioned off over 20 lease parcels in Utah, located in close proximity to Dinosaur National Monument (CO). Combined with over 25 companion lease sales in Colorado by the BLM—also near the Monument—these sales are likely to impact a number of the Monument’s resources. Notwithstanding this fact, the BLM has not analyzed the impacts of potential development of the parcels on Monument resources. Nor has it mentioned the cumulative impacts that the Monument’s resources will suffer as a result of the BLM’s decision to lease these parcels.

 

Dinosaur National Monument is located in the rugged but spectacular Colorado Plateau. Many of the spectacular views from the Monument’s numerous scenic overlooks stretch across unprotected BLM lands outside the Monument. Over 20 of the proposed lease parcels will be visible from within the Monument or from roads providing access to it. Development of these leases would detract from a visitor’s experience and be directly at odds with the Monument’s General Management Plan objective of protecting Monument resources and values from adverse external influences.

 

Other impacts affecting the night skies, natural quiet, wildlife habitat and migration routes and endangered species also would be highly likely.

 

BLM’s assessment of potential impacts on the Monument’s resources and values has been inadequate. For example, when BLM sold the leases at issue in Utah in February 2004, the agency conducted no analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA),^[23] but instead filled out a Documentation of NEPA Adequacy (“DNA”) concluding that the impacts of the proposed leasing of these parcels had been adequately addressed by the 1996 White River Resource Management Plan/Environmental Impact Statement.

 

 

 

 

The “Roadless Area Conservation Rule”

 

The Roadless Rule, finalized in January 2001, was the most popular rulemaking undertaken in U. S. Forest Service history. It was designed to protect our last wild forests from road construction and most logging. Despite the widespread public support for roadless area protection, the Bush Administration is now proposing to eliminate the Roadless Rule, leaving these special places with no more protection—and perhaps less—than existed before the rule was introduced.

 

There are two concerns about this proposed action relative to national park protection:

 

1)       An analysis released on July 28, 2004, by the Coalition and other concerned organizations, concludes that the proposed action jeopardizes at least 23 U.S. national parks and monuments in 16 states, raising the specter of serious harm being done to “crown jewels” that are visited each year by more than 40 million Americans—over a third of all visits to U.S. national parks, monuments and parkways. The potential harm to the parks could be substantial. The negative impacts of large scale timber-cutting or oil and gas development that begin directly on their boundaries or just a short distance away could include loss of habitat and migration corridors, destroyed viewscapes, vulnerability to disease, damage to river systems and fish populations, introduction of invasive species and noticeable disturbances of sound and smell.

2)       The proposed action allows greater influence by individual state governors as to the levels of protection afforded the areas currently protected under the Roadless Rule. It would diminish the concept of a nationwide plan for federal protection of roadless forests—in effect making “national” forests something less than that. This is one of several examples of proposed actions that seem to be designed to take the “public” out of public lands and give disproportionate authority or influence to state, local or private interests. National parks may not be immune to such tinkering.

 

Chipping Away at the Endangered Species Act

 

On December 8, 2003, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) published the “Joint Counterpart Endangered Species Act Section 7 Consultation Regulations [for the National Fire Plan]” in the Federal Register.

 

The Counterpart Regulations allow Action Agencies to independently make a determination that a project is “not likely to adversely affect” federally listed species and/or critical habitat without getting concurrence from either the USFWS or NOAA-Fisheries. This means that bureaus could make independent “Section 7 decisions” as they relate to fire projects and not be second-guessed by any other agency. Although the consequences might be limited, this seems to be one more step toward loosening the restrictive grip of the Endangered Species Act.

 

Professional NPS natural resources staff advised that the traditional consultation processes seemed to be working well for the NPS and that a switch to the Counterpart Regulation processes could require additional training and travel, and the establishment of a monitoring program (with additional costs). This change could also increase the likelihood of NPS determinations being successfully challenged in court.

 

Evidently bowing to pressure from above, and, once again, against the recommendations of her professional natural resources staff, Director Mainella is moving forward to adopt this consultation alternative for the NPS.

 

 

Under the Guise of National Security

 

A new directive proposed by the Bush Administration would grant broad environmental exemptions to numerous government agencies under the guise of national security. While these agencies would still have to conduct environmental reviews before taking action, those reviews would not be subject to public scrutiny or public comment.

 

Such authority, for instance, could authorize the U. S. Border Patrol to blaze new roadways into border parks, such as Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument (AZ), or Big Bend National Park (TX), causing serious damage to sensitive natural resources, or even to threatened species of plants or animals.

 

While we fully recognize the need for additional flexibility during emergency situations, this kind of broad-based administrative exemption from environmental laws would clearly weaken those laws, thus potentially having an adverse effect on the national park system.

 

 

One of the most devastating trends in national park conservation is the trend toward privatizing national parks. Among advocates, the argument goes that private sector involvement is in the ‘public interest’ because the cash-strapped National Park Service lacks the necessary funds to manage park resources and visitor facilities to accommodate growing public demand. The Bush Administration’s budget decisions regarding domestic programs such as the management of the national park system have paved the way for policy initiatives that claim to offer relief to the National Park Service from its operational deficits and from its enormous backlog of maintenance projects, now projected to be somewhere between 4 and 6 billion dollars. Every one of these initiatives threatens to place more power in the hands of non-government entities and favors commercial or local interests over those of the general public.

 

This change in policy direction is being actively supported and promoted by the recreation industry through the American Recreation Coalition (ARC). ARC includes more than 100 private sector organizations representing the vested interests of nearly every segment of the nation’s $400 billion outdoor recreation industry and of motorized recreationists. Some examples of the ARC membership include:

 

American Motorcycle Association, American Resort And Residential Development Association, Motor Corp., Experimental Aircraft Association, International Association For Amusement Parks and Attractions, International Snowmobile Manufacturers Association, Kampgrounds Of America, National Marine Manufacturers Association, National Ski Areas Association, Personal Watercraft Industry Association, Recreation Vehicle Industry Association, United Four Wheel Drive Association, Walt Disney Company, Yamaha Motor Corporation, USA, National Park Hospitality Association, National Alliance of Gateway Communities, Western States Tourism Policy Council. In addition, major National Park Service concessionaires are affiliated with ARC, including Xanterra, Delaware North and Forever Resorts.

They are the voice of industrial recreation and exert enormous pressure on the Bush Administration to privatize, commercialize and motorize recreation on America’s national parks and other public lands and waterways. The importance of the ARC to the future of national parks, indeed all public lands, cannot be overemphasized. The ARC is powerful, moneyed, focused, articulate, influential and entrenched in the Bush Administration.

 

 

 

Secretary Norton and Director Mainella have aggressively pursued the Administration’s “competitive sourcing” initiative, despite widespread opposition in Congress and repeated warnings from park officials that additional competitive sourcing—the NPS already outsources concessions, with annual revenues of $800 million, public health, and some visitor information operations—would seriously compromise the Service’s ability to perform its three core functions: protect resources, provide for quality visitor services, and maintain productive relations with surrounding communities. These studies are expensive, coming in at an astounding $3,000 per position, or more. The NPS has plans to study approximately 1,500 positions. This expenditure does nothing to further the mission of the National Park Service. Instead, it creates employee anxiety and saps morale. Moreover, the Administration’s continuing push to implement the competitive sourcing initiative is targeting not just maintenance but resources management and research employees as well.

 

Outsourcing focuses on whether a particular job can be done more economically by a non-governmental entity, but fails to place any value on the expertise and institutional knowledge of Park Service professionals, such as archaeologists and paleontologists who are responsible for preserving civil war battlefields, prehistoric ruins and artifacts, dinosaur bones, fossils and other relics of American history. Moreover, outsourcing fails to take into account the multidisciplinary nature of many positions in parks. Often, maintenance employees are part of the park’s firefighting (structural and wildland) and search and rescue teams; are emergency medical qualified; and provide a valuable service to visitors by interpreting the resources and providing information. It is hard to imagine being able to write a contract with a private vendor to provide all of these needed functions in parks. As a result, shifting worker duties to private industry can actually increase costs over retaining Park employees because of the loss in productivity and training time, not to mention the loss of educational benefits to visitors. Privatization would also further open National Park management to private influence, rather than retaining direct government oversight and at least the veneer of objectivity when weighing the public interest.

 

By not designating the National Park Service’s professional science and resources management positions as ‘inherently governmental,’ as the other Bureaus in the Interior Department have done, the Bush Administration is attempting to ‘outsource’ many of the Park Service’s critical functions, including biological science and archaeological survey and assessment activities, which would replace NPS workers with low-bid private contractors.

 

Moreover, the scientists and resources management specialists are the people who furnish park managers with the resource information upon which they depend to make wise decisions. The quality of the information is enriched by the institutional knowledge that these NPS specialists possess. Private contractors would not be able to duplicate this expertise, which we are afraid is exactly what the Administration has in mind.

 

After being somewhat quiet for the past year or so, the competitive sourcing issue seems destined to ‘heat up.’ The DOI is actively pursuing the ‘Green Plan’[24] and is expecting Bureaus to prepare a plan for FY04 to FY08. Over 7000 NPS positions are on the ‘commercial’ list and will be included in the ‘Green Plan.’ It seem likely that the DOI will require an increasing number of positions to be studied and that they are considering consolidation of organizations—such as taking smaller parks located closely together and studying them as one unit.

 

 

 

HR1014, the Gateway Community Act, introduced in the House of Representatives, and vigorously supported by the National Alliance of Gateway Communities and the tourism industry, appears to be an attempt to subvert the public’s role in park planning by giving interests in so-called gateway communities—communities at or near park boundaries—unprecedented influence over the planning and decision-making processes in the adjacent parks. The bill has passed the House. It creates additional unfunded mandates for the National Park Service, an agency already seriously under-funded. The bill would grant local communities special status as participants in park planning and management, something not accorded to any other citizen. This special status is further enhanced in the bill by requiring, not simply authorizing, federal land management agencies to provide training to local officials, to participate in planning activities, to provide technical assistance to them, and to make them eligible for grants from land managing agencies. These are national parks, not local parks where local citizens rightly deserve special status. National parks belong to all Americans, not just to the citizens of nearby communities.

 

The bill appears to guarantee local communities the status of cooperating agencies under NEPA. While some local communities have already been named as cooperators when they have special expertise, it is unwise to extend that status routinely to all communities. It should be done on a case-by-case basis and be governed by whether they exercise jurisdiction by law over the issues being discussed in the planning or decision-making process. Once again, the bill appears to extend rights to local communities that other Americans cannot exercise.

 

It should be remembered that gateway communities already derive enormous benefits from being located adjacent to NPS units. In fact, some owe their very existence to the nearby parks.

 

Certainly, there is a need for parks and local communities to cooperate. This bill, however, suggests that all the problems in cooperation stem from failures on the part of Federal managers to consider the interests of local communities. Cooperation is a two way street. Local community residents have to remember that national parks were not created solely for their benefit but for the benefit of all Americans, including those yet unborn. The planning process should provide equal opportunity for all Americans and should not single out local interests for special privileges.

 

 

 

It is increasingly rare for a park visitor to enter a national park visitor center and find a uniformed national park ranger. The use of volunteers and “friends” of parks has, for years, been extraordinarily helpful to the national parks. When originally conceived, the Volunteers in Parks (VIP) initiative was intended to augment, not supplant, the services provided by NPS employees. In fact, the NPS Guidelines for VIPs still make that distinction. It is clear, however, that volunteers now are no longer supplementing the work of uniformed, full-time employees; they are replacing them through programs such as Take Pride in America and Volunteers in Parks. In many parks, the volunteers have increasingly become the front line people most often providing visitor services, including interpretive and educational programs. Park interpreters receive special training to acquire the knowledge, skills and abilities to deliver these kinds of services to park visitors. While no one questions their motivation, volunteers are not necessarily as well trained, which may clearly affect the quality of interpretive and educational programs. Volunteers are also increasingly performing resources management work, the very heart of the NPS mission. This is not supplemental work. It is crucial to the long-term preservation and protection of the resource values for which America’s parks were established.

 

The role of Take Pride in America deserves special attention. The revitalization of this program by Secretary Gale Norton in 2003 was vigorously supported and endorsed by the American Recreation Coalition, which represents many special interest user groups, most of whom are motorized recreationists. ARC was, in fact, “centrally involved” in the original design of the TPIA campaign in 1985. The danger this poses is that such groups could demand excessive influence by offering to pursue projects that will benefit its members. Park managers, facing diminished operating funds and with an Administration favoring partnerships, might come under excessive pressure to accept volunteer projects that are not appropriate for national park lands and facilities.

 

There is one interesting corollary in relation to volunteers and the competitive sourcing initiative. Many volunteers are now reacting to the prospects of private enterprises assuming the role previously played by NPS employees by stating that they do not intend to continue to volunteer their time and energy to help a contractor make a profit.

 

 

 

One of the hallmarks of American democracy has been the concept of public funding of programs that are in the public interest. The public funding of the preservation and protection of the national park ystem has traditionally been financed through government appropriations, an example of this concept. After years, however, of chronic under-funding, plus the current Administration’s failure to seek supplemental funding to offset NPS expenditures for repairs to park facilities caused by Hurricane Isabel and for providing rangers for homeland security details—and other unfunded mandates—has caused park managers to become increasingly aggressive about seeking funds from outside sources.

 

The Bush-Norton-Mainella team has promoted this idea by moving the partnership agenda to the front of the list of priorities for park managers. A recent example of the zeal with which the Administration is pursuing partnerships has been demonstrated by the decision to engage a large Foundation to provide funding to reopen the Statue of Liberty National Monument (NY) following the September 11, 2001, terrorism strikes. Questions arise about why attempts were not made to reprogram existing NPS funds or seek a supplemental appropriation to carry out what is wholly a public responsibility. Moreover, there now appear to be irregularities in the ways the Foundation operated:

 

“A nonprofit charity that solicits donations for the Statue of Liberty pays its executives excessively high salaries, has done a poor job overseeing the millions of dollars it collects and has tried to undermine the efforts of other organizations to raise money for the preservation and operation of the national monument, according to Congressional investigators.”[25]

 

Another example of a partnership that threatens to degrade the concept of public funding for public purposes is that of Fort Hancock on Sandy Hook in Gateway National Recreation Area (NY). In this case, the National Park Service has been directed to enter into a lease agreement with a private developer to renovate 36 historic buildings at the Fort. The restoration would be partially underwritten by historic preservation tax credits and the renovated buildings would be leased to private entities. The developer has had difficulty securing the necessary funding guarantees to trigger the go-ahead from the NPS to begin renovation. Yet, the NPS has granted the contractor three six-month extensions to deliver the funding assurances. While 200 or so people have come out in support of the redevelopment, close to 3,000 citizens have signed Save Sandy Hook’s petition opposing the give-away of Sandy Hook to private, for-profit interests.

 

Another disturbing factor related to these kinds of partnerships is the extent to which those who contribute heavily to support National Parks expect or are promised some benefit as a result. Concerns have been raised about inappropriate “advertising” on parklands by contributors, and even about the possibility of contributors having inappropriate influence on policy related to the management of national parks. These are real problems that pose a threat to the values and management of the national park system.

 

For instance, local snowmobile interests in Montana and Wyoming had long supported park management in Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks as long as these parks permitted unlimited snowmobile access to the parks. However, when the parks announced that new winter use rules would go into effect that would phase out snowmobile use in the parks and phase in the use of snow coaches, the snowmobile industry and local snowmobile interests quickly enlisted the aid of newly-installed Bush appointees in the Department of the Interior and engineered a reversal of the winter use rules. The Interior decision shows the extent to which the interests of the public at large are sacrificed on the altar of local influence.

 

Some of the NPS’s most loyal and long-standing partners, the so-called friends groups, are having second thoughts about the role that they are increasingly asked to play in funding parks. In a letter to Director Fran Mainella, the National Parks Friends Alliance’s Executive Committee pointed out that “the resulting shortfalls mean that some charitable funds may be slipping into park operating budgets,” crossing a “bright line,” as David Rockefeller, Jr. called it in his L.A. Joint Ventures Conference keynote address: “Namely, the government is responsible for park base budgets, and park philanthropies voluntarily add margin of excellence with supplementary charity. Any line-crossing threatens to undermine donor motivations in the long run, a deep concern of many friends groups. I’m sure you agree that the private charitable sector should not be providing a margin of survival for the National Park Service.”

 

 

As Scott Silver, a long-time opponent of the commercialization of parks observes in a new article:

 

“A visit to the Grand Canyon starts with a drive, often one of many miles. Once past the fee booth where $20 was handed over to get into the park, most visitors head directly to the South Rim overlook. After finding a parking space, which can be a real challenge, few spend more than a couple of minutes admiring the view. The remainder of the visit will be spent in the gift shop, restaurant, motel or other facilities operated under contract by park concessionaires. During one’s brief stay, one can expect to see and hear dozens of commercially operated helicopter and small aircraft tours flying low above the canyon rim. The drone is unrelenting and can be heard from the Colorado River, 6000 feet below.

 

“Should the visitor want to float the Colorado River in her own boat and with her own friends, she will have needed to plan far in advance. The waiting period for recreational boaters wishing to take a self-directed trip is nearly 20 years because the demand is so high. But if he/she doesn’t mind being herded down the river as a paying passenger on a commercial tour with dozens other people piled atop motorized pontoon boats, he/she can do that trip tomorrow. The National Park Service has privatized access to the Colorado River and 80% of all use has been contracted out to commercial service providers. For those tourists with more money than time, there’s no need to even run the entire river. Several commercial trips divide the river into upper and lower runs with tourists being delivered to, or picked from, the river by helicopter.

 

“Looking at this example more deeply, one sees that the gift shops, restaurants, campgrounds and other concession facilities are all operated under contract by Xanterra, that the air tour operators are member of the US Air Tour Association, and that the river outfitters are members of America Outdoors.” [26]

 

Grand Canyon National Park (AZ) is already heavily commercialized. While Grand Canyon may be an extreme example, the pattern certainly exists in many of our nation’s national park areas. Several decades ago, Ed Abbey called this kind of visitation “industrial tourism” and predicted that it would slowly overtake more traditional tourism. His words seem eerily prophetic now.

 

Compounding this problem, the Administration has conjured up an irresponsible initiative to promote increased tourism at a time when parks can barely manage the status quo. With great fanfare, the Administration recently announced the signing of a formal agreement with the Travel Industry of America, once again heavily influenced by the American Recreation Coalition, to promote tourism to national park areas. It is absurd to promote tourism while budgets and personnel are stretched dangerously thin at parks across the nation. This agreement proves that Department of the Interior and National Park Service political appointees are increasingly out-of-touch with the realities that exist in most parks and are ready to sacrifice the parks’ values in their zeal to promote cooperation with private industry.

 

 

 

Ever since the Congress, under intense lobbying from the American Recreation Coalition, authorized the Recreation Fee Demonstration Program in 1996, the National Park Service has collected a wide assortment of entrance and user fees. While there is certain logic to the concept of “the user pays,” there is a danger that such fees will mean the end of the idea that national parks are for everyone. These fees are a step toward bringing the profit motive to the national parks. If the park can increase visitation, especially the kind of visitation that arrives in RVs, towing boats, and to some recreation areas, PWCs, the amount of fees that are returned to the park substantially increases. This means that there is an incentive for park managers to be very aggressive about collecting such fees. Taken to its logical conclusion, the family that enters the park to backpack, to attend a few interpretive programs, and leaves without visiting park concessions or availing themselves of for-fee services will slowly become less desirable visitors as park budgets continue to shrink and fee money must be used to cover operational shortfalls.

 

 

 

On June 3, 2004, Bill Moyers delivered the keynote address at the Inequality Matters Forum held at New York University. In part, he said:

 

“I don’t have to tell you that a profound transformation is occurring in America: the balance between wealth and commonwealth is being upended. By design. Deliberately. We have been subjected to what the Commonwealth Foundation calls a ‘fanatical drive to dismantle political institutions, the legal and statutory canons, and the intellectual and cultural frameworks that have shaped public responsibility for social harms arising from the excesses of private power.’ From land, water, and other natural resources, to media and the broadcast and digital spectrums, to scientific discovery and medical breakthroughs, and to politics itself, a broad range of the American commons is undergoing a powerful shift toward private and corporate control (emphasis added). And with little public debate. Indeed, what passes for ‘public debate’ in this country has become a cynical charade behind which the real business goes on—the not-so-scrupulous business of getting and keeping power in order to divide up the spoils.”

What this section of this report deals with is just that—the creeping shift toward private and corporate control of the management of our national parks, a magnificent example of the American commons. The shift is incremental and is motivated by the desire of powerful political forces in our country to deprive public institutions of their ability to manage public resources and to deliver these resources into the hands of interests who can profit from their management. But as the noted environmental writer, Michael Frome, has stated, “… public parks are like art galleries, museums and libraries, meant to enrich society by enlightening and elevating individuals who come to them. There is no way to place a dollar value on a ‘park experience’ or a ‘wilderness experience’ and yet the simple act of visiting the natural world has become a commercial transaction. Worst of all, the agencies in charge, the National Park Service and Forest Service, make ‘partnerships’ with profit-driven entrepreneurs bent on introducing motorized forms of recreation and commercializing wilderness.”[27]

 

This is a process that must be slowed, then halted and reversed.
IV. parks are on a starvation diet

 

 

 

 

The Bush Administration has continually misled Americans, and the U. S. Congress, about the truth with regard to funding issues in the national park system, both from an operational point of view and from the perspective of the deferred maintenance problem.

 

 

Annual Operating Capability at the Park Level

 

The Coalition conducted a survey of selected parks late in May, 2004. The intent of the survey was to verify what NPS Director Mainella had told the House Appropriations Committee: that “our parks will be open, which they will be; resources are protected, which they will be; and outstanding visitors services will be provided, which they will be. And, we will get that job done.”[28] Our survey reveals an entirely different picture. The NPS’s own budget data show that the amount of money actually reaching nearly 85% of the parks in 2004 is less than what they got in 2003. And the “discretionary budget” in parks—that which is available after all the fixed costs are provided for—is shrinking at an even greater rate. This is because of increasing costs of employee salaries and benefits and such things as utilities; and because the Congress doesn’t appropriate the full amount to cover pay increases approved for all federal civilian employees. Despite the rhetoric about “more employees than ever before,” information received under the Freedom of Information Act on July 16, 2004, indicates that the NPS staffing picture is materially different than portrayed by Norton, Mainella and others. At the end of Quarter 2 (June 30), 2001, there were a total of 25,939 employees (permanent and temporary) on the NPS rolls. At the end of Quarter 2, 2004, there were 25,884, 55 fewer. Anecdotal information received from many parks in the system validates the fact that, at the park level, staffing has declined—they have more vacant permanent positions and fewer seasonal employees than in past years.

 

All this translates into a reduced capability to monitor and protect resources, meet the needs of visitors and support Service-wide responses to homeland security and wildland fire needs.

 

Some widely reported examples:

 

n         At Everglades National Park (FL), ranger-led education programs have been cut this year from 115 per week to fewer than 40 per week. Of its 210 permanent positions, 48 are vacant.

n         At Shenandoah National Park (VA), interpretive programs have been reduced from 90 per week to 50 per week and visitor center hours have been trimmed. Despite being one of the most polluted parks in the national park system, it cannot afford to fill the staff Air Quality Specialist position.

n         At Olympic National Park (WA), interpretive programs have been cut by 50%, the number of seasonal employees has been reduced from approximately 120 to under 30, and visitor center hours reduced.

n         At Great Smoky Mountains National Park (TN/NC), a volunteer group gave the park $41,000 to renovate the Chimneys Picnic Area. The money sits unspent, and repairs go unmade, because the park lacks crews to plan and do the work.

n         At Gettysburg National Military Park (PA), which eliminated six permanent positions last year, park management will eliminate or leave vacant three more and eliminate five seasonal positions for visitor information and historical interpretation. Twenty-five percent of school groups’ requests for ranger-let tours are rejected for lack of staff.

n         At Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area (WA), public restrooms have been closed.

On March 17, 2004, the Coalition released an internal memorandum from the Northeast Region of the National Park Service, which said, in part:

 

“The DRDs [Deputy Regional Directors] had an opportunity to discuss this very issue with Deputy Director Randy Jones on our teleconference on Tuesday. He has asked each region to review the ‘service level adjustments’ of each of their parks and then communicate to him those that are the most sensitive. We will need to be sure that adjustments are taken from as many areas as is possible so that it won’t cause public or political controversy. If you think that some of your specific plans will cause a public or political controversy, [we] need to know which ones are likely to end up in the media or result in a congressional inquiry.

“We also discussed how each park would communicate with and inform your local constituents about your plans. Randy felt that the issuance of a press release was the most problematic. He suggested that if you feel you must inform the public through a press release on this years hours or days of operation for example, that you state what the park’s plans are and not to directly indicate that ‘this is a cut’ in comparison to last year’s operation. If you are personally pressed by the media in an interview, we all agreed to use the terminology of ‘service level adjustment’ due to fiscal constraints as a means of describing what actions we are taking.”

 

Although the fallout from this memo has unfairly fallen on Northeast Region Deputy Regional Director Sandy Walter, the author; the content clearly shows that the attempts to misguide the public and the media emanate straight from the office of Director Mainella.

 

The overemphasis on attempting to eliminate cuts affecting visitor services raises other worries. Several park spokespersons have made statements to the media indicating that they are doing everything they can to “make the necessary cuts in places where they don’t show.” This suggests that cutting efforts to monitor and protect the resources—actions that are unlikely to result in immediate obvious consequences—are more pervasive than reported. Once again, the impacts of these actions to the natural and cultural resources of parks should be a significant concern.

 

The continuing decline in annual operating dollars at the park level also is having long-term effects on facilities. “Today’s operating deficit is tomorrow’s maintenance backlog,” says John Latschar, Superintendent of Gettysburg National Military Park (PA). So, despite the current Administration’s emphasis on reducing the maintenance backlog, its top Interior and NPS officials are contributing to it by starving the parks’ operational budgets.

 

 

The FY2005 Budget – Add Some and Take Some Away

 

Despite the modest increases proposed by the Administration and promised increases by the Congress, implementation by the Department of the Interior now calls for a Service-wide cut of $2.3 million in funding for the vehicle fleet. This cut will be passed on to the Regions to figure out how to absorb or pass on to parks—or make up elsewhere. If passed on to the parks it could result in additional reductions in personnel since many parks have already made the cuts in fleet management necessary to balance their budgets (such as eliminating GSA-leased vehicles and using “soft money,” in the form of project leases, for the term of the project; commercial leasing of hybrid vehicles since they aren’t available through GSA and use of electric carts in campgrounds to reduce needs for larger, gas-operated vehicles). In many parks, a large part of their fleet now ranges from over-the-road 18-wheelers and heavy dump trucks to graders and loaders to light pickups and sedans, and are Interior-owned. In many parks it will be difficult or impossible to reduce fleet size or usage, and they will have to compensate with more “belt tightening” in areas such as reducing personnel and supplies and materials needed to support of park operations.

 

Some regions are considering using the dwindling Equipment Replacement fund to absorb their shares of the anticipated cuts, rather than impose prorated reductions in park bases across the region. If this option is chosen, it will guarantee a further deterioration of an already aging fleet, possibly compromising the safety of employees and visitors.

 

This ill-advised “across the board cut” initiative by the DOI will disproportionately affect parks, especially those in remote locations. A significant consequence of this action could be to reduce visitor safety and enforcement patrols and efforts to monitor and protect natural and cultural resources in the parks.

 

 

The “Maintenance Backlog” Issue – a Weapon of Mass Distraction

 

Equivocation and disingenuousness by Interior and NPS officials on the “maintenance backlog” has been especially egregious. Consider this series of public promises:

 

Gale Norton said in a press release on April 9, 2001: “The FY2002 budget makes good on the President’s pledge to eliminate the maintenance backlog over five years [emphasis added].”

 

Then, in the “FY2004 Interior Budget in Brief, p. BH-66,” she said, “In order to support the President’s commitment to manage the maintenance backlog... [emphasis added].”

 

Then, in a DOI press release on February 3, 2003, she said, “The President’s 2004 budget request proposes...to fulfill the President’s pledge of addressing the maintenance backlog in the parks [emphasis added].”

 

Then, in the “FY 2005 Interior Budget in Brief, February 2004, p. DO-4,” she says: “The budget will...continue the President’s commitment to provide $4.9 billion over five years for the National Park Service maintenance backlog [emphasis added].”

 

Finally, from a press conference on July 8, 2004, as reported by the Associated Press: “Eliminating a maintenance backlog in the national parks, as President Bush promised in his 2000 campaign, is impossible, Interior Secretary Gale Norton said Thursday.”

 

In the July 2, 2003 Partnering & Managing for Excellence Report, Interior officials say, “Two years into the Bush Administration, the NPS has made tremendous headway in addressing the President’s commitment to reduce the deferred maintenance backlog. Since FY 2002, nearly $2.9 billion has been provided to address the $4.9 billion backlog.” But, to get this figure, they are using creative accounting and including the following:

• The entire facility maintenance funding package
• The entire construction program
• The Federal Lands Highway Program funding for park roads through TEA-21
• Recreation fees for maintenance

Little of this can be considered “new” money. In fact the NPS’s numbers show that cumulative new funding (above baseline 2001 levels) to address the maintenance backlog in the national parks is only $662 million, or only 13% of the $4.9 billion pledged (four years in to a five-year pledge).

 

Moreover, the Bush Administration has declared that the problem was inherited because previous Administrations “failed to act” resulting in the mounting backlog. However, comparing funding levels for programs to address the maintenance backlog (facility maintenance, construction, Federal Lands Highway Program, and recreation fees for maintenance), this is the picture:

• Average annual increase for backlog funding during last four years of Clinton Administration (FY98-01) was 12.8%
• Average annual increase for backlog funding four years into Bush Administration (FY02-05 request) will be 7.4%

 

And finally, NPS Deputy Director Don Murphy admitted to the oversight hearing of the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources on July 8, 2003, when questioned about how much of the claim being made for money for backlog maintenance was new money, that the amount was “roughly $200 to $300 million,” rather than the $2.9 billion being touted.

 

Meanwhile, the General Accounting Office reports that the maintenance backlog in the national park system now may be as much as nearly $7 billion.

 

 

Sadly, the past 3-1/2 years have seen the National Park Service slide toward becoming a mediocre bureaucracy at a rate far more evident than ever before. Some suggest the political leaders of the Department of the Interior are involved in a “conspiracy” to bring the pride and professionalism of the Service to its knees. Certainly Director Fran Mainella hasn’t taken Albright’s counsel to heart and is doing nothing to avert this trend. She will likely go down in history as the most ineffective Director the NPS has ever had, in terms of defending the Service’s legislated mission and leading its proud, professional employees.

 

 

 

 

 

Notwithstanding President Bush’s interpretation, there is a clear record of legislation, court decisions and policy that protection of resources is the highest responsibility of the National Park Service. As provided by the Congress in the NPS Organic Act of 1916, the NPS mission is to:

 

“…conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”

 

Management policies of the National Park Service are mandatory procedures to implement statutes, regulations and executive orders regarding the national park system and its resources. Management policies provide the direction that parks must follow unless there are specific exemptions approved by the Director or the Secretary of the Interior. Management policies are further refined and explained through Directors Orders which mandate how specific functions or activities of the NPS will be implemented and by Reference Manuals which are the “how to” processes for implementation.

 

The Management Policies of the National Park Service of 2001 (adopted December 2000) were subjected to substantial public input in their development and, by notice in the Federal Register, are regarded as the official interpretation of the Organic Act, as amended. These Management Policies state:

 

“Congress, recognizing that the enjoyment by future generations of the national parks can be ensured only if the superb quality of park resources and values is left unimpaired, has provided that, when there is a conflict between conserving resources and values and providing for enjoyment of them, conservation is to be predominant. This is how the courts have consistently interpreted the Organic Act, in decisions that variously describe it as making ‘resource protection the primary goal’ or ‘resource protection the overarching concern’ or as establishing a ‘primary mission of resource conservation,’ a ‘conservation mandate,’ ‘an overriding preservation mandate,’ ‘an overarching goal of resource protection,’ or ‘but a single purpose, namely, conservation.’”[29]

 

In one of the most recent court decisions, U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan stated, “…[the] NPS is bound by a conservation mandate, and that mandate trumps all other considerations.”[30]

 

Despite this clear record, Secretary Norton and her politically-appointed subordinates have set about to deviously change the mission of the National Park Service. Clearly, they are attempting to increase various types of access to parks and to build support for increased recreational uses (especially motorized recreation) of parks.

 

Reflecting the Administration’s view of the mission, Ms. Lynn Scarlett, Assistant Secretary of the Department of the Interior, recently stated, “You have a national park statute that requires that parks are managed to both protect the resources of the park and, on an equal plane with that, provide recreational opportunities and visitor enjoyment of the parks.”[31]

 

Director Fran Mainella has flip-flopped on the question of priority. In testimony before the House Subcommittee on National Parks, Recreation and Public Lands on April 25, 2002, she responded to a question by Chairman Radanovich on the Southern Utah Wilderness Association v. National Park Service suit, by stating, “…in all honesty, if you go back to reading the 1916 Organic Act, as I read it, it always has been existing that the enjoyment was always under the contingency of the fact that it had to be that the resources were still always protected, or go unimpaired (emphasis added).” Later in that same response, she said, “…and if you are going to err, you will err on the side of the resource…” and still later she said, “…your erring always has to be on the side of the resource.”

 

In a letter dated September 24, 2003, to Chairman Radanovich of the Subcommittee on National Parks, Recreation and Public Lands, responding to questions he posed during the April 25, 2002, hearing, Director Mainella then said, “We do not believe that Congress has ever placed resource protection on a ‘higher plane’ than public enjoyment.” In responding to the question in the letter asking, “… what is the legal basis for concluding that the Organic Act requires that ‘when there is a conflict between conserving resources and values and providing for the enjoyment of them, conservation is to be predominant?’” her answer was, “We believe this statement is an inaccurate interpretation of the law.”

 

If this had been an episode of the TV show, “Law and Order,” Assistant District Attorney Jack McCoy might well have asked Director Mainella: “Were you lying then or are you lying now?”

 

Moreover, in the September 24, 2003, letter, Mainella states, “We believe there may be some areas of the 2001 Management Policies that may be inconsistent with the President and Secretary’s position regarding access by Americans to enjoy their national parks. We are in the process of reviewing and updating the Management Policies to eliminate these inconsistencies [emphasis added].”

And in the cover letter to Chairman Radanovich, she states, “Finally, I have already begun a systematic review of the NPS Management Policies of 2001. The purpose of this review is to assure they are in alignment with both the Organic and General Authorities Acts, and with Secretary Norton’s 4 C’s – Consultation, Cooperation and Communications, all in the service of Conservation.”

 

Clearly, these statements and interpretations are intended to modify, by policy interpretation—and subsequent decisions and actions—a mission and legal interpretations there from that are deeply and appropriately imbedded in law.

 

Insiders indicate that the Interior Department leadership is poised to make a major overhaul of the NPS Management Policies of 2001, considered to be the legal interpretation of the NPS Organic Act. If such a move were to occur, it can be expected that the revised policies would relegate the priority for protecting resources to a lower level and water-down or eliminate language relating to the prohibition on impairment of park resources and values. Further, it can be expected that, based on past patterns of decision-making, new policies for the NPS would not undergo the scope of public involvement appropriate to this important document.

 

 

 

 

August 25^th is the anniversary of the National Park Service. Traditionally, on that day—often referred to as “Founder’s Day—parks were encouraged to celebrate the anniversary with events. Additionally this day was designated as the “NPS Fee Free” day—allowing visitors to enter any NPS area without having to pay the entrance fee. Now the Department of the Interior has rallied around Public Lands Day, designating it as the time when visitors may enter national parks without charge, and discouraging focus on August 25. This denigrates the uniqueness of the national park idea and the traditional celebration of the establishment of the National Park Service.

 

On Founder’s Day, 2004, there was almost no official acknowledgment by Administration Officials of the importance of the date, although at nearly the last minute—as if suddenly reminded—a half-dozen DOI and NPS officials fanned out to various NPS areas (at NPS expense) to “show” their support for the NPS. However, as with most other recent visits to parks by these political leaders, their speeches were heavily-laden with the message of political support for President Bush’s re-election.

 

 

 

Recently, supervision of criminal investigators in the National Park Service has been removed from the responsibility of the park superintendent or regional director, who supervises all other functions in his/her organization. Criminal Investigators are now supervised by an individual Special Agent in the Washington office, who is under the direct authority of the Department of the Interior’s Office of Law Enforcement. This effectively eliminates a park or region from being able to set strategic priorities for the criminal investigation function, including making that function an integral component of the larger park mission. This tendency to centralize control over park management functions is a disturbing precedent.

 

 

 

The Secretary’s Advisory Board was established in 1935 to provide advice on matters relating to operations in the parks and management of the National Park Service. The Advisory Board has provided those services effectively over time.

In 2001, the Advisory Board issued a report entitled “Rethinking the National Parks for the 21^st Century.” Many senior leaders in the NPS at the time believed that this report was one of the most thoughtful approaches to national park issues ever written and could have served as an excellent “strategic plan” for the NPS to follow. Unfortunately, Interior officials and the NPS Director have ignored this report, most likely because it supports the concept that resource protection takes precedence over visitor use of national parks.

 

Moreover, the Department of the Interior developed a strategic plan for the entire agency, requiring each bureau to support the broader plan and abandon bureau-specific strategic plans. Once again, this is a blatant effort to “homogenize” the bureaus in the DOI and reduce the unique responsibilities and traditions that each enjoys.

 

 

 

 

Feedback from a substantial number of senior NPS leaders indicates that their experience, professional expertise and advice is not sought by the current NPS and Departmental leadership and, if that expertise is offered, it is largely ignored. Their leadership talents are consistently marginalized and their decision-making prerogatives are restricted by professional politicians above them who are more interested in party ideology and loyalty, and in serving special and corporate interests, than they are in carrying out the NPS mission. This marginalization of leadership is the best example of agency discretion being managed upward—away from career professionals and into the hands of political ideologues who are heavily influenced by special and corporate interests.

 

The NPS National Leadership Council was established a decade ago to serve as the “Board of Directors” of the NPS. Consisting of the Director, Deputy and Associate Directors and Regional Directors, its role was to make the strategic decisions and engage in strategic planning for the NPS. Because of the devaluation of the career leadership in the NPS, the NLC now acts as a receiver of information delivered by the political leadership, depriving the Service and its parks of the accumulated wisdom and expertise of Associate and Regional Directors.

 

As indicated by Mr. Arnberger’s statement, there has been a recent exodus of senior career NPS leaders because of frustration and pressure. Several simply retired rather than face the continuing frustration. Some were reassigned into less desirable positions, or their positions made less consequential—leading to the retirement of several others. Although Director Mainella seems especially proud of her skill at evaluating managerial talent, insiders tell the Coalition that she’s created a precedent for change based on personality and not skill. One insider describes this process “the rise of the manipulators.” Often these appointees are young enough that they’ll be hard to displace readily.

 

The fact that the NPS has had a very weak leadership development/succession program for a number of years isn’t helping. Coupled with the predictable reduction in all kinds of training—including leadership training—from budget deficits, this does not bode well for the future leadership of the NPS.

 

 

Sources inside the NPS indicate that the political appointees within the DOI and the Bureaus in Washington DC have established their own “chain of command” and meeting protocols. These meetings occur frequently and totally exclude career employees from the Bureaus. Often decisions are made that favor the political interests of those involved and not in the best interests of the missions of the Bureaus. Generally there are no records of the meetings or decisions, and decisions and actions are carried by “word of mouth.” One recent “order from on high” required daily reports from the NPS political leadership about what actions were being taken to benefit the re-election of President Bush.

 

 

 

One of the most significant, and widely-held, concerns is that science and professional resource management expertise is being overruled by political decisions that favor special and corporate interests, rather than the mission of the National Park Service. Among the examples already cited in this report are:

 

• Continued push to allow snowmobiles in Yellowstone (WY/MT/ID) and Grand Teton (WY) National Parks.
• Overruling of NPS air quality specialists in air quality permit for power plant outside Yellowstone National Park.
• Removal of NPS areas from the UNESCO list of endangered World Heritage Sites

 

This trend is felt most at the park level. In a survey[32] of NPS employees conducted in October, 2003, with the assistance of the Coalition, nearly nine out of ten (88 percent) respondents said they have a “great deal of concern” about “decisions influenced by politics rather than professional experience/science.” Almost three in four (72 percent) said that things are now “worse” in terms of “special interest influence on park policies/decisions,” than they were a couple years ago.

 

The survey also showed that NPS employees are worried about the health of park resources. More than four in five (84 percent) of those surveyed expressed a “great deal of concern” about their ability to protect park resources. A full 70 percent said that the weakening of environmental protections had grown worse in the last couple of years. Majorities also expressed strong concern about the rise of air pollution in the parks (58 percent) and the use of “recreational vehicles” (52 percent).

 

 

 

In 1991, on the occasion of the National Park Service’s 75^th anniversary, the Service assembled conservation leaders, industry chiefs, and its own employees to chart a course for the future. The meeting was held in Vail, Colorado; the subsequent report came to be known as the Vail Agenda. During the course of the proceedings, one of the keynote speakers, Alvaro Ugalde, then Director of the Costa Rican National Park Service, noted that the US National Park Service was losing its role as a world leader in conservation. The participants of the Vail symposium developed recommendations to correct this drift away from international cooperation. They recommended, for instance, that “The National Park Service should reinforce its role as a world leader in park affairs through agreements and actions which facilitate the exchange of information, development of environmental and cultural resource preservation strategies, and protection of critical world resources.”[33] Despite this call, the international leadership of the National Park Service for protected area management has slipped substantially under this Administration. This is exacerbated by the recent cancellation of all foreign travel, even though the majority of that travel was funded from sources other than the NPS. It is apparent that this Administration has chosen a policy of “international isolation” from the world conservation movement, thus diminishing the gains both the United States and other nations can achieve from each other regarding protecting national park resources.

 

 

 

Efforts by the NPS Director (and therefore presumably by the Department of the Interior and the White House) to exert control over what park superintendents say and don’t say is unparalleled. Several examples have already been mentioned earlier in this paper. However, this became much more apparent when the Coalition initiated a survey of NPS areas in April, 2004, to validate the extent to which cuts in services were occurring. The original intent of the survey was to obtain data from 25 park units, representing diversity in terms of geography, park size, and park type. Also guiding the determination of which parks to include was the extent to which Coalition leaders had personal relationships with senior officials in those parks.

 

Contacts were made with the identified representatives in the selected parks. In over half the cases, the representatives declined to participate or declined to provide the requested information. Cited as the primary reason was “concern or fear” of retribution by higher NPS leadership, or what has become known as the “Chambers treatment.”[34]

 

Subsequent contacts with those park representatives who did provide data to the Coalition indicate that they have detected that they have been “snubbed” by NPS Director Mainella and that they recognize that they are “on her s—t list.”

 

Veteran NPS career leaders tell the Coalition that they have never before experienced the extent to which field park leaders are currently being pressured to “toe the line” and to regurgitate the political rhetoric provided in the form of “talking points.” Nor, they say, have they ever experienced the extent to which a culture of fear rules the way the political leadership of the NPS and above manages.

 

Their concerns seem to be supported by a “Conduct and Discipline Survey” released by the USDOI Office of Inspector General late in July, 2004. This survey corroborates the perception that this “culture of fear” is widespread in the Interior Department.[35]

 

 

 

Sadly, NPS employees are seriously feeling the impacts of the past 3-4 years on the values, purposes and mission of the National Park Service. Additional findings from the employee survey cited earlier show:

 

·         Two-thirds of NPS employees believe that the NPS is moving in the wrong direction. A total of 67 percent of employees said they think “the current policies and procedures in place at the NPS” are the “wrong direction.” Fewer than one in five (19 percent) said NPS is headed in the right direction. A smaller group (14 percent) said they didn’t know or had no view on the question. Concerns about the NPS being on the wrong track cut across all key demographic groups (type of position, region and length of tenure), with the most senior employees taking the dimmest views of NPS and Interior Department leadership.

 

·         Morale at the National Park Service is in a freefall. In responding to the question: “Would you say employee morale at NPS is higher, lower, or about the same as it was a couple of years ago?,” 79 percent said morale was lower, 16 percent about the same and only 2 percent higher.

 

·         Current NPS leadership gets extremely low job approval marks. A total of 76 percent of survey respondents rated the National Park Service leadership “poor” or “fair,” with only 20 percent giving the agency’s management “good” or “excellent” marks. This response is in keeping with the finding that 74 percent of respondents have a “great deal” of concern about the leadership losing sight of the NPS mission.

 

·         Gale Norton’s Interior Department is rated even lower than NPS administrators. An overwhelming 85 percent of the survey respondents graded Interior Department leadership as doing a “poor” or “fair” job in “supporting NPS in fulfilling its mission.”

 

·         The rise of private contractors is a major concern for NPS employees. A total of 80 percent of employees expressed a “great deal of concern” about “turning over important functions to private contractors” of key park system jobs. Over half (57 percent) said that fear of job loss had grown worse in last few years.

 

·         Most employees feel it is now more difficult to perform their job. When asked about “your own ability to carry out the NPS mission,” 66 percent said it was now more difficult, 27 percent about the same and only 4 percent easier. Concerns about frustration on the job cut across all key demographic groups (type of position, region and length of tenure).

 

·         NPS employees are not a disgruntled group. Nearly three in five (59 percent) said they were satisfied with their job. As one employee said: “I continue to believe in the mission and goals of the NPS. I love my job and can’t think of a better way to spend my life than protecting and preserving the natural and cultural resources that have been entrusted to me.”

 

The survey also provided open-ended opportunities for respondents to express their concerns in their own words. Here are some highlights from the hundreds of comments submitted in the survey:

 

·         “I have been in the NPS for 25 years. Sadly, over the past two years I have seen a once proud agency being driven into the ground by an Administration that has contempt of our work, our ethic and our pride as Park Service staff. “

 

·         I cannot deal with what looks like the demise of everything the NPS was established to do. I can see it now: ‘Welcome to Yellowstone, a subsidiary of the Disney Company.’ Hell, what do I know? I’m just a Facility Manger!”

 

·         “NPS employees are dedicated to an idea and an institution – clearly, the latter is under attack from the Administration. Whether it’s privatization/outsourcing, weakening environmental protection regulations or reversing previously approved measures, I feel my institution and my values are under attack. My colleagues feel the same way.”

 

·         “Our parks are being threatened by special interest money and politics which are serving to undermine a lot of our environmental protections. I think that if the American public really understood what was going on they would be outraged, but by the time the damage is realized it may be too late.”

 

·         “An administration and their political appointees who seem bent on making one of America’s finest ideas of public service some moneymaking cash cow for business interests. For example, making more public lands open to increased logging to ‘reduce the danger of wildfire.’”

 

These depressing and gloomy anecdotal comments continue to be sent to the Coalition. The most recent was from a current NPS mid-level manager who summarized for many how they feel about what is happening to them and to the parks to which they have invested their hearts and souls: [36]

 

I was just driving home yesterday evening, after a 10-hour workday that included 4 hours driving, and heard a report on NPR’s Marketplace Report about the NPS, the Coalition of Concerned NPS Retirees and the state of the parks. In it, the reporter said that DOI is alleging that park managers are misspending their discretionary funds.

I could have screamed. I am down to minimal levels of employees at visitor centers around the park--we are so low, that if someone calls in sick, or some unexpected problem arises, we have closed facilities until we can find someone to drive 1+ hours to the site to staff it--oftentimes in their personal cars because we have turned in most of our government cars to save money.

I have staff who are traveling to training on their own nickel, and then we use cooperating association funds to pay their per diem and tuition while they are attending government sponsored training classes.

I have employees who are driving over 1 hour from their normal work station each way to new work assignments to fill in behind vacant positions. I have employees who can’t get to many of their “other” duties, such as web site development/improvement, site bulletin translations and design completed because they are fully committed to front line duties. We cannot participate in many wonderful partnership efforts in local communities because we don’t have the staff. We are down 30% of our permanent employees in my division, and more than that of our seasonal positions. 

We have employees who are considering taking voluntary furloughs to help the park budget. We can’t afford to give monetary awards anymore to excellent employees-so we give them trinkets: pens, watches, umbrellas, and a handshake, or maybe a time off award, but we shoot ourselves in the foot when we do that because we don’t have anyone to fill in behind them. We can’t afford to pay moves for the few employees that the park does hire. I use my personal cell phone for government business.

We are tired, we are cranky, and we are fed up. Employees are moving on--going to grad school, to find other opportunities, because morale, quite frankly, stinks.

Who loses in this? The visitor, the taxpayer (who loses their investment in good people), and ultimately, the precious cultural and natural resources that comprise the heritage of our Nation--the things that we are supposed to be protecting.

Park Service employees work damn hard. We open our homes to visitors in distress. We don’t watch the clock. We are proud of what we do. We care.

So, where has this “discretionary” money gone that we are frittering away?

- year after year of mandatory pay increases that Congress gives to federal employees without the commensurate budgetary increases. In FY04, federal employees received a 4.1% pay increase with less than a 1% park budget increase. Last year, it was 4.2%, with only a 1.5% budget increase. (These numbers might be slightly off, but they are pretty close). As managers, we groan when we see proposed salary increases because we know it will diminish our ability to fulfill our mission--and at the same time, we are happy for our staff who work so hard.

 

- the conversion almost 20 years ago in the federal retirement system from Civil Service to FERS. With the federal match of retirement accounts, overhead for employees has skyrocketed, from about 11% to close to 50% in some cases. As the Civil Service employees retire, and the FERS employees move up the ranks to replace them, the salary overhead for parks increases. Have budget increases been factored in to accommodate this easily predictable demographic trend? Nope.

We get millions in special construction dollars (line item) to build sewage treatment plants, but inadequate funding to purchase supplies, chemicals, filters, hire staff and on-going training so they can maintain their licenses--the operational stuff.

 

Every year, every operational budget in a park is hit by assessments. Here is what we incurred in FY04:

·         an across-the-board reduction (I assume from Congress, but maybe the Administration)-next year it looks like it will be 2%

·         a .646 % Department of the Interior reduction

·         a .59% reduction called for in the Omnibus bill

·         a uniform assessment

·         an assessment for computer software licensing

·         and a 2% assessment from our Regional office

And each year, it costs us more to run parks. In short, we have been sucker-punched, and it seems that our own leaders have thrown the punch.

And I am sick of hearing “temporary employees” like Ms. Norton weigh in things she knows nothing about--when she should know all about them!

Sorry for the rant. It is heartbreaking to see what is happening to our precious parks and the best damn federal employees in the world.

Chapter 4:

A Call to Action:

Saving Our

national park system

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dr. Shirley Malcom, serving on the National Park System Advisory Board, once stated:

 

“The act of creating a park is really an act of faith in all of the grand possibilities of the future. It is a contract with the future.”[37]

 

Indeed, parks represent one of the greatest manifestations of our citizen democracy and we have deliberately built a system of parks to pass on to our future citizens as a fundamental ingredient of our American way of life. The National Park Service serves the country through serving the parks and in doing so, contributes to a more perfect American Union and a more perfect society. Parks are held in common, committed to common purposes in protecting a nation’s common heritage. They offer “the right of all Americans to come together into their common land, to celebrate their unity in the presence of their best landscapes and their proudest shrines, without being demeaned or degraded or turned away.”[38]

 

Parks can serve as a foundation of civic inspiration to care for all special places, no matter where they are, for these places serve as the most basic underpinning of our American way of life. They translate into place and living idea what freedom and equality represent in our society. They are patriotic places and patriotic ideas in the most fundamental American expression of pride in our land and who we are as a people.

 

Retired National Park Service Director, Roger G. Kennedy, reminds us that:

 

“The American people chose their best places for their parks because they felt themselves at their best in them. The parks are landscapes and shrines, places of wonder and reverence, but they are more than places – they have been and they are containers of experience. At Valley Forge and Ellis Island and Gettysburg we remind ourselves how proud we are to be Americans together; at Yosemite and beside the Grand Canyon we feel a thrill at being the common owners of magnificence.”[39]

 

These places—all 388 of the national park units—are landscapes and historic shrines in which we feel wonder, reverence, and respect. Americans take pride in those things that demonstrate America at its best such as the grandeur of Yosemite or the Grand Canyon National Parks or to the battlefield shrines of our war of freedom such as Valley Forge National Historical Park, and those that marked our own American civil war such as Gettysburg National Military Park.

 

They are also sites of shame such as Manzanar National Historic Site and Washita Battlefield National Historic Site marked by actions and events we are not proud of and through their commemoration we can atone and learn the vital lessons of history. Americans trace their history through presidential birthplaces, monuments to greatness, and memorials that dot our national capital. We take pride in preserving archeological ruins and features that mark the passage of peoples who occupied our land long before the first European ever arrived.

 

As our society and unique American culture has evolved, our parks have mirrored the interests of our people. Americans are proud of distinctly American ideas and values, and in response, protecting living ideas has gained national prominence in places such as Women’s Rights National Historical Park, Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site and the building that commemorates the historic legal case of Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site. The national park system is a system that protects not only places but also our great American ideas. Director Roger G. Kennedy has stated, “The American people wanted to save these places, not because they brought money. We knew they would cost money. We saved them because they were worth money. They are precious. That is why we preserve them.”[40] All of these places represent our national “crown jewels.”

 

 

 

The fundamental principles of our national park system as “cumulative expressions of a single national heritage” must be nationally invigorated by citizens, organizations, our politicians and our government as a concerted national endeavor led and fed by enlightened leaders in all communities and in all segments of our society. It is time to restore the great idea to the prominence it has always enjoyed in our national community, insulated from the divisiveness of partisan politics and destructive political ideology not practiced in the public interest.

 

addressing immediate concerns and threats

Several actions must be initiated immediately to stop the downward spiral of the care of the national park system and to begin to restore its integrity and its programmatic responsibilities.

 

Call to Action I:

 

• Increase immediately the annual recurring operational budget for the National Park Service by at least $600 million dollars to restore the Service’s ability to manage the daily operations of our national park system.

 

This recurring budget increase will restore Service ranger protection and education programs, fill lapsed positions throughout the Service, provide facility managers with funds required to care for federal assets, and continue the recent programmatic gains in science and resources management. The budget hemorrhage must be halted, pragmatically based on the reality that “today’s budget deficit is tomorrow’s backlog.”

 

• Cease immediately efforts to weaken the mission of the National Park Service by a variety of initiatives carried out by the current Administration and replace them with progressive and constructive decisions that celebrate and strengthen that mission.

 

The environmental record is clear and the efforts to roll back protections of our parks are real. It is time the American public reclaim their responsibility to determine that they, alone, have the right to determine the future of their parks, rather than narrow partisan political interests that currently predominate. The institutional processes and organizational structures currently governing our national heritage resources have increasing limitations. Their ability to achieve sustained protection and effective management of them is diminishing. These processes and structures do not support managing these irreplaceable treasures according to professional and scientific standards. They are increasingly susceptible to political whim and decision-making favoring short-term interests—neither of which is conducive to the unimpaired perpetuation of our natural and cultural legacy.

 

• Restore immediately the agency discretion to manage the national park system through a National Park Service whose career professionals are valued, encouraged, developed and held accountable to managing the public’s trust.

 

There must be devolution downward of public interest resource decisions to the agency and its career professionals to the highest extent possible limiting narrow political ideological decisions that now characterize the process. Inherently governmental functions on behalf of the public interest must be restored to their proper place. This is essential to rebuild the public trust in the agency that manages its system of national parks. The agency must be transformed into a responsive and professional science-based, educational institution that places the protection of valuable national natural and cultural resources as its highest calling.

 

 

preserving the national park system for the future

 

It is time to invigorate a national dialog to explore the issue of governance of our national park system, identifying the problems that prevent long-term strategies and long-term sustainability of our parks and determine if we can “find a better way” to manage our natural and cultural legacy. The goal is simple, yet daunting – no less daunting than it was 100 years ago: How best do we preserve our system of national parks while providing public enjoyment in order to pass them on unimpaired to future generations?

 

Call to Action II:

 

• Establish and convene a non-partisan National Parks Blue Ribbon Commission to examine the most effective organizational model for the governance of the national park system and the National Park Service. The Commission would report to Congress, the President and the American public on its findings and recommendations.

 

Some would argue it is time to examine the feasibility of independent agency status along the lines of the Tennessee Valley Authority, U.S. Postal Service, or Smithsonian Institution. Others would argue this as folly, believing the parks are best served by staying in the Department of Interior. Regardless of the variety of personal beliefs, it is essential that this national dialog begin to take place. Enlightened national leadership must create the circumstances to begin this dialog on behalf of the broadest public interest.

 

• Establish and convene a non-partisan National Parks Technical Panel to sort “fact from fancy” and determine what are the true budget and personnel needs of the National Park Service, evaluating what governmental processes stand in the way of success and what is required to overcome them. This panel will report its findings to the National Parks Blue Ribbon Commission.

 

The systems and processes of governance such as budget cycles, matching congressional authorization and appropriation in unified fashion, developing phased and reasonable restoration of operational budgets, long-term strategic planning, and all the other governmental processes required to carry out the custodial functions of the System must be similarly open to national dialog seeking “a better way.” Short-term actions and thinking must be replaced by long-term strategy and investment if we are to pass these parks on to future generations unimpaired by this generation.

 

• Revitalize our national park system by combining the recommendations of the National Parks Blue Ribbon Commission and the National Parks Technical Panel into a bold, multi-year “Keeping the Promises” Plan culminating in 2016, the 100^th anniversary of the National Park Service.

 

• Establish a National Parks Restoration and Conservation Corps[41] similar to the celebrated Civilian Conservation Corps, to address the National Park Service’s maintenance backlog. The members of this Corps would be paid professionals. The investment of tax monies in this project will assure that the current young generation of Americans recognize the value of their national park areas and will signify their desire that these areas be passed onto their children in superb, not deplorable, condition.

 

A bold, multi-year, national action plan must be put into place that will incrementally and methodically restore our national park system to greatness. The Plan will be based upon the findings of the National Parks Blue Ribbon Commission and the National Parks Technical Panel and will serve as the most effective symbol of our stewardship commitment to our national park system and the Service that manages it on behalf of the people. Two historic models to accomplish this already exist if we follow the examples of the legendary Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) program of the 1930’s and the Mission 66 Program (1956-1966). These were responsible for massive infusions of workforce and funds to develop our national park system as we know it today.

 

 

“The National Park Service has a 21^st century responsibility of great importance. It is to proclaim anew the meaning and value of parks, conservation, and recreation; to expand the learning and research occurring in parks and share that knowledge broadly; and to encourage all Americans to experience these special places.”

National Park System Advisory Board Report 2001

Rethinking the National Parks for the 21^st Century

 

Of course, many will argue that this Call to Action is nothing but idealistic and impractical dreams with no hope of success. There will be those who say that idealistic naivety offers less hope for progress than what we have at the present. There are those who will see these dreams as threats to their narrow political ideology. The best defense to these arguments is reflected in today’s reality of the best national park system in the world—one that has served as the model for parks and reserves all across the world—born from dreams and dreamers who had vision coupled with reason. They chased a vision, caught it, and created it. Then they passed it on to us. We owe that effort nothing less than the best of our generation’s dreams and visions to pass on to the next generation. One will never get to a destination without first starting the journey.

 

Time is running out on Ray Lyman Wilbur’s prophetic statement. Will there still be a sustainable national park system in twenty-five years for our children or grandchildren to thank us for?

 

Principal Authors:

 

Robert Arnberger – Regional Director, Alaska Region (retired after 34 years in the NPS)

 

Richard B. Smith – Associate Regional Director, Southwest Region (retired after 31 years in the NPS)

 

J. W. “Bill” Wade – Superintendent, Shenandoah National Park (retired after 32 years in the NPS)

 

 

Contributors and Reviewers:

 

n         Don Castleberry

n         Tom Vaughan

n         Denny Huffman

n         Hugh Beattie

n         Dave Ochsner

n         Rick Gale

n         Art Allen

n         Bill Brown

n         Frank Buono

n         Erik Hauge

 

Editor:

 

n         Steve Oppermann

 

 

 

 

In early 2002, Eric Schaeffer, founded the Environmental Integrity Project with support from the Rockefeller Family Fund and other foundations. Mr. Schaeffer directed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Regulatory Enforcement until 2002, when he resigned after publicly expressing his frustration with efforts of the Bush Administration to weaken enforcement of the Clean Air Act and other laws.

 

The Campaign to Protect America’s Lands (CPAL) was formed soon thereafter, as an additional campaign of the Environmental Integrity Project, for the purpose of “conserving our natural and historical heritage by exposing policies that permit destruction of our parks and public lands for private profit.” CPAL temporarily hired a former National Park Service official to research actions by the Administration that were detrimental to the values and mission of the national park system and the National Park Service.

 

Three retired senior leaders of the NPS (Mike Finley, Rick Smith and Bill Wade) were asked to appear at a national press conference in Washington DC on May 19, 2003 to address several of the policies and actions that were seen as impacting the parks and the NPS. At the same time, a decision was made to prepare a letter to President Bush and Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton outlining these concerns. This letter was signed by Finley, Smith, Wade and 15 other retired NPS officials. Subsequently, a substantial number of additional “signatories” to the letter were added. The letter was widely distributed to the media and coverage was significant.

 

As more and more concerned NPS retirees agreed to “sign on” to the letter, the result was the rather spontaneous rising of our group of principled experts who feel compelled to set the record straight and underscore what the nation cannot afford to lose. We have used “Coalition’ of Concerned NPS Retirees” to describe the group, but it is important to note that we have resisted becoming an “organization,” having “members,” or being seen as another conservation or environmental group. Instead, the intention is to be a nonpartisan assemblage of concerned professional and (primarily) career officials who have retired from the NPS and who still carry passion and concern for the natural and cultural resources that deserve the highest degree of reverence.

 

We have retained our affiliation with the Campaign to Protect America’s Lands because they have the ability to access the media (currently through the Hastings Group, Inc., a public relations firm under contract to CPAL) and provide other support and contacts that we don’t have. We also have worked in cooperation with the National Parks Conservation Association, the Wilderness Society, the Association of National Park Rangers and others on activities such as Congressional visits and testimony, letters of support of positions on issues to Members of Congress, and other actions.

 

Never before in the 88 year history of the National Park Service have so many retired employees come together to voice concern about threats to the Service and system to which they devoted their professional careers.

 

Our assembly now consists of 325 retired NPS employees. All of us are former non-political career employees of the National Park Service. In our personal lives, we come from the broad spectrum of political affiliations. Many of us were senior leaders and many of us received awards for stewardship of our country’s natural and cultural resources. As park managers, rangers and employees in other disciplines, we devoted our professional lives to maintaining and protecting our national parks for the benefit of all Americans. We know that many more of our former National Park Service colleagues, who, like us, have served under several different Administrations, both Republican and Democratic, agree with our concerns. We have served this country well, and our credibility and integrity in speaking out on these issues should not go ignored.

 

We count among our members:

• Five former Directors or Deputy Directors of the National Park Service
• Nineteen former Regional Directors or Deputy Regional Directors
• Thirty-eight former Associate or Assistant Directors at the national or regional level
• Fifty-three former Division Chiefs at the national or regional level
• Ninety-five former Park Superintendents or Assistant Superintendents

 

Current information about the “Coalition” can be seen by going to www.npsretirees.org.