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 fail