The Institute for National Park Studies

 

 

THE CENTENNIAL INSTITUTE

     FOR

    NATIONAL PARK STUDIES

 

      Recommendations by the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees

         August 25, 2006

 

VISION FOR THE CENTENNIAL INSTITUTE

 

In the second century of the National Park Service the National Parks are refuges for natural and cultural resources vital to the earth and the human cultures she has produced, significant public resources for scientific and scholarly research and public education, and are widely appreciated as such.

 

The National Park Service is well equipped to manage its resources and to carry out its leadership responsibilities to global, national, and local publics, demonstrating practices needed to sustain life and culture.

 

The Institute provides vital support to the National Park Service Centennial Commission in the form of well-informed, carefully examined, and scholarly studies on issues relevant to the second century; and after the 2016 centennial continues to serve the National Park Service with similar studies.

 

PURPOSE    

 

To initiate, and then to inspire and sustain into the future a rational, responsible, and well-informed discourse about the National Parks of the United States; the international, national, public and private responsibilities of the National Park Service; and the continually changing best means of carrying out these responsibilities.  Stimulated initially by the well-informed “Voices of Experience” and later led by scholarly studies of the highest quality, this discourse will involve as many Americans as can be encouraged to participate and will be aimed at enabling their elected representatives to understand the public’s needs and to meet them in the best and most comprehensive ways possible.

 

GOALS

 

A.  By the August 25, 2016 centennial of the National Park Service the public will be aware of the need for sustainable behavior globally, nationally, and locally, and of the essential role of National Parks in that cause.

 

B.  Beyond 2016 public awareness of this need, and public involvement in meeting it, will be maintained.

 

THE VOICES OF EXPERIENCE

 

In 2003 the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees arose spontaneously as a new, all-volunteer organization.  In mid-2006 the Coalition includes over 535 members whose collective National Park Service experience exceeds 16,000 years, and is growing at a 20% rate annually.  These Voices of Experience are ideally qualified to launch a continuing program of studies and analyses that will provide the American people and their elected representatives the information they need to envision and develop a National Park Service capable of a second century of progress.

 

STEPS AND TIMETABLE

 

• October 2006:  the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees develops a vision of its desired post-2016 National Park Service.
• October 2006:  assemble a preliminary list of topics that require thoughtful, accurate, and expert study, analysis, and exposition.
• October, 2006:  collect information about the skills and expertise of Coalition members, and if necessary recruit other members who possess specific expertise to prepare the Phase One studies.
• October 2006:  assign topics for Phase One studies to at least ten members who are well qualified and willing and able to provide analytical papers.
• April 2007:  collect, edit, and publish first ten papers; assign topics to 15 more members. 
• December 2007:  assemble a small but broad-based group of experts[1] with global perspectives to identify and refine further topics and issues for consideration by the Voices of Experience, by the Centennial Institute, and by a National Park Service Centennial Commission.
• June 2008:  complete all Phase One papers and begin work on Phase Two papers.
• January 2009:  the Coalition, together with others, develops a formally constituted National Park Service Centennial Institute to carry on the work of thoughtful, accurate, and expert study, analysis, and exposition.
• January 2010:  make the expertise of the Voices of Experience available to help the National Park Service Centennial Commission with its work in every possible way.
• January 2010:  assure that the papers become part of the preparatory study materials, and perhaps part of the actual task, of the National Park Service Centennial Commission.
• January 2011:  the Coalition and others assist the Institute in finding funding necessary for its continuing work.
• January 2012:  the Coalition withdraws and the Institute continues the work.

 

THE COMPELLING NEED FOR CHANGE

 

Support for National Parks, along with preservation and conservation of the publicly and privately owned environment in general has suffered in recent decades from a lack of understanding by the American people and their elected representatives.  After a high point around 1980 gradual but steady diminution of public comprehension of environmental values and issues has reached a point where much of the public negatively perceives the term “environmentalist.”  This largely reflects the success of a number of well-funded organizations cloaked in mantles of academic respectability that examine issues and publish a steady stream of reports foreordained to undermine and weaken public support for governmental solutions to national problems.  Unfortunately, it also reflects ill-considered actions sometimes taken by people in the name of environmental advocacy.  Perhaps worst, it reflects silence and inaction from responsible Americans. 

 

If silence and inaction continue, these entities, supported by donors who benefit financially from unrestricted private exploitation, will slowly but steadily grind away the places of beauty, wildness, and historical depth; the places for serene and restorative recreation; and the places needed for survival of the other species with whom we are interdependent.  We will awaken one day and discover that the commonwealth that distinguishes this nation from all others will have become private wealth from which the public is cut off.  Soon afterward we will discover that today’s obsession with immediate profit will have depleted the long-term ability of the world’s natural and cultural ecosystems to sustain life as we have known it, and our own survival will be at risk.

 

Although we must halt the damage now underway, the American need for national parks and related parts of the commonwealth can never be met by defensive measures.  It is essential to approach our task from a constructive and progressive point of view.

 

Across the globe, people and organizations are increasingly recognizing and acting upon this situation.  The Natural Step, an initiative that originated in Sweden, arranges for industries to build the total costs of environmental cleanup and ultimate disposal or recycling of their worn-out products into their planned business cycles.  The Global Leadership Initiative is an international consortium of businesses and governmental entities demonstrating that sustainability is sound business—the only sound business.

 

Supporters of National Parks, public lands, and the common wealth of our national heritage must break silence and provide sound, responsible, non-partisan, and truthful information about the value of National Parks and other special places; and restore the United States to leadership in all that the parks represent.

 

PHASE ONE:  PAPERS BY THE VOICES OF EXPERIENCE

 

The initial round of papers by the Centennial Institute for National Park Studies will consist of informed opinion, written by selected, well-qualified volunteer members of the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees.  They will be focused, editorially consistent, 3,000 to 7,000 words, easily understandable, published as articles and op-eds wherever possible, compiled and posted on the Coalition website, and possibly published as a body.  They will stimulate popular interest and discussion, create a sense of possibility for a better National Park Service, and provide a basis for Phase Two studies.

 

Phase One work will be overseen, supervised, and directed by the Executive Council of the Coalition.  This may be done on a volunteer basis or a paid individual may be retained to manage the work and to continue the steps toward an established Institute.

           

PHASE TWO:   STUDIES BY SCHOLARS 

 

Second round studies will be longer treatises, professionally researched and documented by qualified scholars, focused, peer-reviewed, carefully edited, attractively illustrated, and published as a prestigious series.  They will be studied by all members of the National Park Service Centennial Commission as preparatory work for their task.

 

Initially, the Institute will be overseen by the Executive Council of the Coalition, or by a larger consortium of organizations invited by the Coalition, or by a respected academic institution.  The goal is to evolve the collegium of scholars who study issues and produce reports into the governing body of a self-directed institute, by which time administration and management must be performed by a paid staff.

 

PHASE THREE:  CENTENNIAL INSTITUTE: 

 

The independent and self-governing Centennial Institute will continue research and analysis of important topics by qualified scholars, with focused and peer-reviewed reports, for the benefit of the general public, scholars, scientists, lawmakers, policymakers, and National Park managers and staff.  In this phase the Institute may also conduct special educational events such as annually convening meetings of citizens in National Parks to discuss conservation and park issues; or convening leaders of major corporations in National Parks to discuss mutual and voluntary ways of becoming better environmental citizens.

 

POTENTIAL TOPICS FOR ESSAYS AND STUDIES

 

1.  The Unity of All Things—

The dominant culture in the United States is nearing the end of a 4,000 year history of believing that humans have unlimited dominion over the earth and all things in it.  This has led to short-sighted and destructive practices that have diminished the earth’s ability to support humans and the larger web of life of which we are a part.  We can learn from the attitudes and philosophies of indigenous people that the earth and all of its inhabitants are sacred, interconnected, and interdependent.  A good beginning point for this topic would be three books, Look to the Mountain, and Native Science, by Santa Clara Pueblo member and University of New Mexico professor Greg Cajete; and Earth Community: Earth Ethics, by Union Theological Seminary professor Larry Rasmussen.

 

2.  Global Warming and Pollution from External Sources—

Even with all of their problems, parks receive higher protection than most other places.  They often contain relatively undisturbed biota and may represent extremes of climates and ecosystems.  As a result, they can serve as benchmarks against which the condition of resources elsewhere can be studied and measured, although a systematic approach to such study was dismantled when the Service’s research function was removed in the mid-1990s.  Parks should be more fully utilized for research to understand the impacts of pollution and global warming and for public education to help people understand what is happening and what must be done.  It is also vital to use this research to develop strategies for natural and cultural resource preservation in the face of global warming.

 

3.  The National Parks as Popular Metaphor for Environment: Opportunities and Obligations—Phase One: Jerry L. Rogers, National Park Service Associate Director for Cultural Resources (Ret.).

In the sound-bite-oriented minds of many Americans the National Parks have come to stand as metaphor for environment.  If the National Parks in their beauty and majesty are safely preserved and open for public enjoyment, people tend to believe the environment upon which all life depends is also safely preserved.  It is true that the parks are essential to a healthy environment and that they can validly stand as a partial symbol.  It is also true that this perception helps the parks, but in return it gives the parks an obligation to advance and in appropriate ways to lead the comprehensive set of interests that actually are “the environment.”  This includes other international, Federal, State, local, Tribal, and private lands that are wholly or partially dedicated to preservation of natural and cultural resources and provision of recreation.  A second century of work for the National Park Service should begin with a firm understanding of this perception and the obligations it entails.

 

4.  National Parks: Models for Future Living— Phase One: Judy Hart, Superintendent of Rosie the Riveter / World War II Home Front National Historical Park (Ret.).

National Parks, by operating transparently in an exemplary fashion, can model and interpret to visitors programs, practices, and life ways that everyone should follow at home, for example recycling materials in the fullest sense, refreshing and reusing gray water, purchasing carpets that can be melted into new carpet, and green construction of buildings and infrastructure.  Parks can widely embrace scientific research, interpret the projects and their outcomes to visitors, and invite the public to conferences in parks on global warming and other embracing issues of conservation.

 

5.  A Comprehensive Review of Public Land Management—

Several months ago the possibility was reported that a consortium of seven universities plus Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government might undertake a comprehensive review of public land management in the United States.  Such a review might result in sound recommendations for a sensible and coordinated array of land management practices in places carefully chosen for management according to standards that range from National Park type preservation to National Wildlife Refuge type management to National Forest and Bureau of Land Management type multiple use to intensive and even motorized recreation on carefully selected other lands that have already been irreparably impacted.

 

6.  A National System of Parks—

National Parks, State Parks, local parks, National Historic Landmarks, National Natural Landmarks, National Register Properties, State Historic Preservation Programs, State Natural Heritage Programs, State Outdoor Recreation Programs, Tribal and Local counterparts to any or all of these, and private sector partners joining in to support and expand the cause have long been called a National System of Parks.  This concept needs to be articulated anew with a positive and comprehensive vision for the future that directly articulates the difference between privatization and a healthy public/private relationship.

 

7.  Additional National Parks—

As far back as the early 1980s, Director Russell Dickenson said that the era of creating great natural and scenic National Parks was largely over because most qualifying places had been designated.  Future growth of the National Park System would likely be in historic and recreational areas.  However, as a growing population brings increased need and as rapid development overwhelms remaining unspoiled places, the nation also modifies its idea of what places are precious enough to be National Parks.  Simultaneously, other agencies sometimes improve their management of outstanding areas as a strategy for keeping them from being transferred to the Park Service.  The Maroon Bells and San Juan Mountains in Colorado might fall into this category.  National Grasslands that separate the two units of North Dakota’s Theodore Roosevelt National Park, under unified management, could easily become a Great Plains National Park of a dimension appropriate to the plains.  Other potential National Parks are in private ownership: for example the Galisteo Basin and the Lincoln County War area of New Mexico, the Nebraska Sandhills, or Texas’ Palo Duro and Tule Canyons and the two important Red River War battlefields they contain.  Some National Monuments have been created under the management of the Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, Forest Service, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration rather than transferred to National Park Service management.   What should be the nation’s intention for continued growth of the National Park System, or for alternative means of preserving and enjoying outstanding places?

 

8.  Parks in a World of Change—

The United States is the primary engine that spreads rapid and constant change throughout the world.  In The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility (1999), Stewart Brand notes the effect upon individuals and society of the ever increasing pace of change in life.  “Old people and young people live in completely different time zones.”  “Now that we have progress so rapid that it can be observed from year to year, no one calls it progress.  People call it change, and rather than yearn for it, they brace themselves against its force.  Technology is treated as something that pushes us around rather than something we create.”  “Life becomes perpetual transition with no resting point in sight.” The National Parks to some degree must change with the times, but if they change too much they will cease to serve as resting points or to give people the anchoring strength to cope with potentially overwhelming change.  People who need quiet sanctuaries more than ever may seek to bring the oppressive changes into the sanctuaries.  Manifestations of this contradiction include the desire to use Parks to “get away from it all” and yet to bring along motor homes, off-road vehicles, jet skis, snowmobiles, aircraft, cell phones, televisions, and computers.  It may be very difficult to maintain enough public comprehension of the true meaning of genuine refuge and also to sustain public support for protecting it.

 

9.  A Contract with the Future—Phase One: Robert Arnberger, National Park Service Alaska Regional Director (Ret.).

Establishing a national park is a fundamental act of faith by one generation in the grand and unknown possibilities of the future.  It is a validation of the interests of a present generation and a contract with the future for generations yet to come.  This generational contract places an obligation upon the American people and their elected representatives for something more than short term benefit or gain.  Each generation of Americans has chosen its best places for parks because they have felt their best in or about these places.  Consciously and deliberately the American people have determined that these are the most special of American places, deserving standards of care and sustainability unique to them and different than other national public lands.  In these landscapes and historic shrines we feel wonder, reverence, and respect, taking pride in those things that demonstrate America at its best.  This process has continued over a century through a rich tradition of law and public service.   Keeping this contract with the future will require us to be constant learners, to be better than we have ever been, and to be the best that we can ever be.

 

10.  The Common Wealth of the National Parks: the Dangers of Privatizing It; and the Proper Roles of the Private Sector in the National Heritage—Phase One: Jerry L. Rogers, National Park Service Associate Director for Cultural Resources (Ret.).

The National Parks are the crown jewels of our republic—the inalienable treasures of all of the people of the United States.  Over decades of experience, the National Park Service has worked out proper roles for the private sector in providing visitor services and assisting in the responsible management of the National Parks.  The private sector has been engaged extensively and positively in preservation of natural and cultural resources outside the parks.  Now some extremists advocate handing the entire responsibility over to the private sector.  What are proper roles for the private sector in the National Park Service of the 21st century, how do we reach the optimum arrangement, and how do we recognize the lines that must not be crossed?

 

11.  The State of Park Interpretation—Phase One:  Tom Vaughan, Superintendent, Chaco Culture National Historical Park (Ret.).

Although the task of educating a nation inevitably requires accommodating millions of pupils, students, and scholars in classrooms, educators know that learning happens in ways and at times that are unique to each individual and that are based upon the individual’s motivation to learn.  An educational system that can return America to the forefront of the world must combine traditional institutional approaches with innovative media and with the unparalleled opportunities inherent in all museums, historic sites, and parks.  The National Parks are visited by 300 million people each year.  Each visit is a different, non-institutional, and highly effective opportunity to engage a mind and to stimulate an imagination about who the individual is as an American or citizen of the world and about the relationship of the individual to all other life.

 

12.  The Ever-Increasing Need for Scientists and Other Subject Matter Experts—George Melendez Wright used his personal fortune to insert sound science into National Park management as early as the 1930s.  Richard Sellars’ 1997 history, Preserving Nature in the National Parks, revealed that after Wright’s untimely death the Service quickly reverted to confusing scenic beauty with healthy nature.  It was widely assumed that natural and cultural resources somehow take care of themselves if they are “protected” from harm, and that this could be done by a relatively few low-cost generalists.  Only gradually did the Service recognize that park resources may change and even be destroyed unwittingly without the trained eye of biologists, archeologists, historical architects, curators, conservators, and other specialists.  Even with the improvements of recent decades, the Service remains dangerously unaware of the full scope of park natural and cultural resources and of reliable steps by which they can be preserved.  The need for specialized professional expertise inside the Service, and for access to outside expertise, is more acute than ever.  A careful study should identify the kinds and numbers of experts needed and should lay out a multi-year plan to have them.

 

13.  Soundscapes / Natural Quiet—

In this highly mechanized society, natural quiet has become so rare that relatively few Americans ever experience it.  Noise generated by humans and their machines penetrates even the great National Parks where visitors hope to renew themselves in undisturbed interaction with nature.  A highway heavily traveled by large trucks can be heard for more than thirty miles; engines pumping irrigation water in agricultural valleys become a low hum to hikers and campers in distant mountain parks.  Airliners seven miles high send a sound like constant thunder to park visitors on the ground.  Far worse, however, are the slapping of air tour helicopters, the roar of all-terrain vehicles and snowmobiles in the wild places where they are increasingly allowed, the putt-putt of power units on motor homes, and increasingly even the annoying voices of other hikers shouting into cell phones about how awesome it is at the top of a mountain.  Pervasive noise not only prevents many visitors from fully grasping the sounds of birds and animals or cascading water or wind in trees or from ever experiencing genuine quiet, it has negative effects not yet fully understood on some species.  Natural quiet, as a resource to be managed and a value to be interpreted, needs to be better and more widely understood.

 

14.  Night Skies—Phase One: Joe Sovcik.  National Park Service Southwest Region National Park Service Southwest Region, Associate Regional Director, Resource Management (Ret.). 

From the Pleistocene to the present the night sky has been an important element in cultural heritage.  The combination of what appeared to be eternal order in certain night sky patterns with such changeable things as lunar phases, planetary movements, seasonal angles of declination, and annual meteor showers was one of the early great stimuli to curiosity.  The discovery of predictable order among the inconstants was important in the development of belief systems and their attendant cultural values—influencing even the idea of what it means to be human.  It remains so today. Without conscious action it will be much more difficult for future generations to have the same experiences, or even to

imagine them.  As urban areas expand and as change without consideration of light pollution continues, places where the night sky can be experienced grow fewer and more difficult to reach.  We risk losing a beauty that has been the backdrop to and motivator of human actions since time immemorial.  It is also well-known that many species are affected by the intrusion of artificial light into the night sky, but not nearly enough is known about how many species are affected and in what ways.  This subject needs many years of intensive research.

 

15.  The Best and the Brightest—

From the origin of the National Park concept until the present the idea of devoting one’s career—and life—to preservation of extraordinary places has created a workforce of extraordinary quality.  Many people work for the Service because they want to serve a cause they believe vital to the nation and the world. Management systems and attitudes among people in high positions that treat such employees as recalcitrant, or that measure them against partisan political standards, counteract and waste the creative energy inherent in these altruistic motivations.  Over the past several decades, as politics have become more polarized, government more politicized, and the executive branch more centralized, it has become steadily harder for employees to maintain the motivation that attracts the best and the brightest to work for the National Park Service.  It is essential to develop Learning Organization systems that can satisfy the valid prerogatives of elected and appointed officials, bring out the best in every employee, replace top-down command-and-control direction, and engage the minds of all employees in participatory leadership and management.    

 

16.  The Rise of Subject Matter Specialists, Its Effects upon Generalists, and the Future of the Ranger Corps— Phase One: Charles R. “Butch” Farabee.  Assistant Superintendent, Glacier National Park (Ret.).

In the earliest days of “Steve Mather’s Family,” and even before there was a National Park Service, vast amounts of land—sometimes entire parks—were looked after by single individuals.  The proud tradition of the National Park Ranger was born in a time when necessity required individuals to do anything and everything that had to be done in a park.  But this was also a time when neither the Service nor the public comprehended the complexity and sometimes fragility of the natural and cultural resources that simultaneously were to be enjoyed and also preserved for the future.  Inevitably, as the Service matured it recognized the need for specialists such as biologists, archeologists, air and water quality experts, architects, landscape architects, historians, ethnographers, interpreters, and many others.  As this occurred, the Ranger who once did everything evolved more and more into a law enforcement officer.  The specialized professional demands of law enforcement can sometimes conflict with traditional values associated with the title “Ranger.”  What should the Ranger of the future be like? 

 

17.  Easements, Tax Benefits, Subsidies, Land Trusts, and Other Incentives—

Chances are there will always be private inholdings inside National Parks or private property just outside parks that in the public interest should not be developed without restraint.  Beyond the immediate neighborhoods of parks, the overwhelming majority of natural beauty, plant and animal habitat, historic and archeological resources, and land suitable for recreation will always be private property.  The United States needs a fresh and comprehensive study of ways to reward private owners for being good stewards and interpreters of resources and to motivate them to help meet the ever-increasing need for public access.

 

18.  Park Land Protection: A Unique Opportunity.—

As technology makes it possible to work from computer stations anywhere in the world, enabling more people to live and work amid unspoiled natural beauty, developable private holdings near National Parks and even inside park boundaries are increasingly likely to be built upon.  This will be detrimental to park values, and will make future acquisition and protection of such holdings either impossible or extremely expensive.  Now may be the last great chance to protect vital lands through selective acquisition.

 

19.  Our Changing National Energy Availability—Phase One: G. Ray Bane, National Park Service Anthropologist, Alaska Region (Ret.).

Since the days when Stephen Mather promoted park-to-park highways, National Parks have been planned and developed with the assumption that automobiles would be vital to parks, and that their fuel would cheap and abundant.  It is now generally accepted that conventional oil reserves are finite and will eventually be unable to meet demand.  At some time worldwide production will peak and begin an irreversible decline.  This has already happened on a national scale in the United States and many other major oil producing countries.  Oil is expected to become increasingly scarce and expensive.  Congress will be tempted to eliminate barriers to development of coal, oil, gas and other resources on national conservation lands and to shift support from conservation to other priorities.  This will be more likely if private travel becomes so expensive that park visitation drops significantly.  In anticipation of such pressures and changes, the parks must find a new niche in the public mind.  They must be seen as the wellspring for renewal and hope in a world that will be faced with a difficult transition from an

oil-dominated system of life to one that is sustainable and environmentally friendly.  This could require rethinking of the mission as set forth in 1916.

 

20.  Scenario Planning for the National Park Service—

Global warming, intrusion of exotic species, extinction of indigenous species, oil spills and other forms of pollution, advances in communication and other technologies, wars, extreme political changes, and even the aging of the American public and their changing recreational preferences all present possibilities for extreme and rapid changes for the National Park Service and for individual parks.  As brief examples, global warming threatens to inundate Everglades National Park and to drive its ecosystems hundreds of miles to the north; and to drive northward the forest that was an essential part of the battle at Horseshoe Bend National Military Park.  In these cases and a great many others, the parks may lose resources that were fundamental to their reasons for being.  Do we simply wait for the changes and then try to react to them, or do we anticipate the changes and try to avoid or minimize their effects?  Scenario planning processes that anticipate a wide range of worst case and best case scenarios, and that prepare strategies ahead of the appearance of the scenarios, have been used with great success by many major companies and by the military.  Leaders in the field have been Joseph Jaworski in his work with Royal Dutch Shell, and Stewart Brand with his Global Business Network.

 

21.  Parks as Biodiversity and Cultural Landscapes—

In its major 2001 report Rethinking the National Parks for the 21st Century, the National Park System Advisory Board recommended that biodiversity conservation become a core purpose of park management and that parks be linked with other natural areas through wildlife migratory corridors and greenways.  The need to manage parks as parts of broader natural and cultural landscapes and the need to work collaboratively with other owners and users of those landscapes has been long recognized, but institutional implementation has been elusive.  Urgent needs inside park boundaries press for priority, and there is little incentive to work collaboratively except in high profile cases.  Specific recommendations should be developed for a few sample regions, such as the California Desert, Great Lakes, Colorado Plateau, or Hudson River; outlining needs, actions, collaborations, and incentives.  From these examples, other regional analyses should be developed.

 

22.  Understanding and Measuring Park Resources—

In the wake of Richard Sellars’ 1997 history, Preserving Nature in the National Parks, the National Park Service undertook a multi-year effort to improve its capability to manage natural resources in an increasingly complex world.  Modest gains were made and a core inventory and monitoring system was put into place, but that system needs to be maintained, strengthened, and broadened to include cultural resources.  Without such comprehensive information, it is not possible to know whether the National Park Service Act of 1916 mandate to preserve resources unimpaired is being accomplished, and fierce political debates over preservation vs. use take place as abstract questions without genuine understanding of their meaning.  A broad and comprehensive study is needed to put natural and cultural resource inventorying, monitoring, and management on the right track for a second century.

 

23.  Funding Park Operations:  Fixing a Broken System—

Funding to operate parks is appropriated and apportioned in such ways that even when the National Park Service budget shows an increase, the money allocated for operation of individual parks often turns out to be less than the year before.   Central offices hold back percentages to cover costs of activities that are more efficiently handled in common than park-by-park.  Overall budget increases are frequently dedicated to particular program priorities, or may be earmarked by Congress for such things as the maintenance backlog, construction, communications systems, or studies to determine whether services might be more economically purchased from the private sector.  Most parks nowadays have little budget flexibility except in the category of salaries, so they adjust to financial pressures by leaving important positions vacant.  This has the effect of producing unintended negative consequences in the parks.  It is time to examine the entire complex of planning, budgeting, allocating, and accountability to see whether a better and more effective system can be devised.

 

24.  Global Sustainability—

The National Park System has been a model for national park establishment world wide, and was famously called by Wallace Stegner “the best idea America ever had.”  In recent years, however, even as the need for global cooperation has increased, the System has become more and more insular.  The National Park Service must recover its role as a leader and an effective participant in partnerships to increase sustainability of resources on a global scale.  Cooperative efforts to preserve indigenous languages and neotropical migrants, to share best practices for sustainable necessary park developments, and to make wildland preservation compatible with human needs and habitations must be increased in order for the National Park Service to play its proper role in national and international life.

 

25.  Parks as the Foundation of American Values—

 

26.  Parks as Learning Laboratories (education beyond interpretation)—

 

27.  Partnerships—

 

28.  Proper Roles of Volunteers, Cooperating Associations, Interns, and Similar Unsalaried Individuals and Groups.—

 

29.  Park/Community Cooperation—

 

30.  Gateway Communities—

 

31.  The $7 to $9 billion backlog—

 

32.  Strategies for Times of Extreme Financial Constraint—

 

33.  Law Enforcement and Public Safety—

 

34.  External Encroachment—

 

35.  Changing Demographics—

 

36.  Current and Foreseeable Recreation Patterns—

 

37.  Motorized Recreation—

 

38.  Capturing the Lessons of Experience—

 

39.  Closer Interaction with Tribes—

 

40.  A Local, State, Tribal, National, and International Survey and Compendium of Funding Strategies—

 

PLUS BETWEEN 10 AND 60 ADDITIONAL TOPICS