RANGER ORGANIZATIONS PRAISE COURT RULING THAT REINSTATES REASONABLE FIREARMS RULE FOR NATIONAL PARKS

NOTE: The court's ruling can be viewed in the attached .pdf file.

RANGER ORGANIZATIONS PRAISE COURT RULING THAT REINSTATES REASONABLE FIREARMS RULE FOR NATIONAL PARKS

Washington, D.C. (March 20, 2009) - Several national park ranger organizations today praised the ruling by the U.S. District Court that made a preliminary finding that suspends the Bush Administration’s Department of the Interior (DOI) regulation that authorized loaded, concealed firearms in national parks.

“The members of the Coalition are delighted that the court has granted the injunction. We have said from the beginning of the rule making process that the DOI was proposing a solution for a problem that did not exist. The previous rule governing weapons in our national parks and wildlife refuges worked well; the Department presented no evidence during its rule making that a change was needed,” said Bill Wade, chair of the executive council of the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees (CNPSR) and former superintendent of Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. CNPSR has over 690 members, all former National Park Service employees, with over 20,500 accumulated years of experience in managing national parks and Park Service programs, including law enforcement and visitor services.

In her ruling, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued an injunction against enforcement of a Department of Interior rule that allowed loaded and concealed firearms in national parks, and said that the defendants’ process was "astoundingly flawed” and "ignored substantial information in the administrative record concerning environmental impacts."

“This regulation seemed rushed and written in such a way that a clear interpretation could not be made because its parameters left it ambiguous. No obvious attempt seemed to have been made to honor the National Environmental Policy Act by the Agency which Congress holds responsible to be the guardians of our national parks,” said John Waterman, president of the United States Park Ranger Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police, which is the largest organization of U.S.
Park Rangers in the country.

“We have always viewed this case through the prism of what is best for the preservation and management of National Park System resources, including wildlife, and historic monuments, petroglyphs, and park signs and markers that could have been harmed by vandalistic shooting,” said Scot McElveen, a retired chief park ranger and president of the Association of National Park Rangers (ANPR). ANPR has a membership of 1,000 current and former Park Service employees. “Many ANPR members are both park supporters and gun owners, and we advocate for firearms’
regulations in parks that respect both individual rights and the statutory purpose that Congress created parks for,” McElveen added.

Under intense political pressure from the National Rifle Association, the Bush Administration rewrote reasonable Reagan-era regulations that had allowed firearms in national parks as long as they were unloaded and properly stowed. The revised regulation, finalized in January 2009 and now suspended by the court, mandated that national parks allow loaded and concealed firearms.

Department of the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced in February that the Obama Administration would defend the regulation, but instructed the agency to perform a 90-day review of the environmental considerations. Earlier this month, Secretary Salazar told reporters that he believed that the issue was a “distraction” for the agency.

In a letter sent to Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne in April 2008, seven former directors of the National Park Service stated that there was no need to change the regulations. “In all our years with the National Park Service, we experienced very few instances in which this limited regulation created confusion or resistance,” the letter stated. “There is no evidence that any potential problems that one can imagine arising from the existing regulations might overwhelm the good they are known to do.”

The American public overwhelmingly opposed the Bush Administration’s regulation. Of the 140,000 people who voiced their positions on the issue during the public comment period, 73 percent opposed allowing loaded, concealed firearms in the parks.

The Coalition of National Park Service Retirees and the Association of National Park Rangers were joined by the National Parks Conservation Association in this lawsuit and represented by Hogan & Hartson LLP.

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CONTACT:
== For the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees: Bill Wade - 520-444-3973; == For the Association of National Park Rangers: Scot McElveen - 423-286-8644; == For the United States Park Ranger Lodge of the Fraternal Order of
Police: John Waterman - 800-407-8295