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Are Our National Parks No Longer for the People?

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Chesler Park, Canyonlands National Park, Kurt Repanshek photo.

What role do we, as a society, want our national parks to play? Chesler Park, Canyonlands National Park. Kurt Repanshek photo.

Are national parks no longer for the people? Have environmental groups succeeded in legally creating roadblocks to prevent their enjoyment? An Ohio man believes so. But what do you think?

Perhaps the biggest problem in our parks system goes back to the '70s when the focus of park management went from visitors experience balanced with conservation to predominantly environmental/wildlife management. This shift also brought in "top-down, one-size-fits-all" management of our parks with far more focus on the environment than the visitors. Simply put, the parks are no longer for people.

Dennis Gray, of Dayton, Ohio, wrote that in response to a New York Times columnist's suggestion that all the national parks need to boost visitation is a high-profile booster, such as First Lady Michelle Obama.

Here's part of what that columnist, Timothy Egan, wrote: The parks need Obama-era branding. So, the first family should go ahead and spend that week at Martha’s Vineyard in August, playing scrabble with Hillary and Bill, clamming with Spike Lee. But it would not take much for Michelle and her brood to visit the people’s land. Maybe an overnight in Acadia, the first national park east of the Mississippi.

And here's the opening of Mr. Gray's response: Timothy Egan's blog, "We Need Michelle Obama to Rescue National Parks," makes some good points about the declining visitation to our national parks and seashores. Unfortunately, he terribly misses the mark about the cause of and solution to this problem.

Is Mr. Gray right? Have environmental and conservation groups essentially locked up the parks for wildlife and preservation to the detriment of human recreation? Here are some examples he cites to illustrate his contention: When you ban rock climbing from Devils Tower National Monument, does visitation go up or down? When you ban snowmobiles from all parts of Yellowstone National Park, does visitation go up or down? When you close off miles of the best beaches in Cape Hatteras National Seashore Recreational Area, does visitation go up or down?

From Mr. Gray's viewpoint, all national parks can't be managed under the same set of guidelines. Each superintendent, he says, should have autonomy "in the management of each park that would allow it to better reflect the unique history, character, and natural settings of each, as well as the historic lifestyles of the people who live there."

"Our parks are becoming museums, roped off expanses with 'Don't touch' or 'People stay out' signs all over them," he contends.

Here's a larger section of his response to the Times columnist:

This centralized bureaucratic management has also made the parks system more malleable to the whims of special interest groups through litigation. The desire of these groups is to make our national parks more like our national wildlife refuge system, run by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. As this shift has been forced on the National Park Service, its managers have had to redirect their money and resources away from visiting guests to wildlife management. Accordingly the campgrounds, visitation centers, and other infrastructure have fallen into decay.

And they wonder why visitation is down?

If people can't get out and actually experience the great outdoors, how can they ever learn to appreciate it?

What's really interesting is that the original supporters of our parks system were hunters, fishermen, skiers, and other outdoor recreation enthusiasts. They not only supported the parks as a way to conserve spaces for their activities as a concept decades before today’s environmentalists, but they have also supported the parks financially through their user fees, license fees, and surtaxes paid on the sporting equipment used in their endeavors. These recreational groups have long favored reasonable conservation, balanced with the needs of the visitors -- the sensible belief that there is plenty of space for all types of activities. Today these are the very people the environmentalists wish to ban as part of their own narrow-minded, preservationist views of the purpose of our park system.

These environmental groups -- such as Defenders of Wildlife, National Audubon Society, and the World Wildlife Federation -- contribute little if anything monetarily toward the operation of our parks, but will spend millions in legal fees to force the Park Service’s hand on management issues. Even worse, in many of these lawsuits, the Park Service has to reimburse these groups their legal fees, more money that could have gone toward the operation of our parks.

Now, I wouldn't agree entirely with Mr. Egan, nor entirely with Mr. Gray. While it'd be great exposure for the national parks to have the First Family hiking up Cadillac Mountain or taking in Old Faithful or floating the Colorado River through Grand Canyon National Park, that's not the key to energizing Americans in the parks. If that's all it took, why didn't First Lady Laura Bush's hikes in the parks, or President Clinton's support of the parks (remember how his administration stopped the New World Mine from going in next door to Yellowstone?), or even President Bush's attempted bolstering of the parks through his Centennial Initiative generate a rise among Americans?

As for Devil's Tower, true, it's off-limits to climbers for a short period in summer to pay reverence to Native American beliefs. And there has been more than a little pressure to limit snowmobile access to Yellowstone due to resource damage, and off-road-vehicle access to Cape Hatteras and even Cape Cod national seashores during certain seasons to protect nesting shorebirds and sea turtles. But really, the number of climbers, snowmobilers, and ORV enthusiasts who look to the national parks for recreation are minuscule, and lifting these restrictions won't send park visitation skyrocketing.

As for groups such as Defenders of Wildlife, the Audubon Society, and the World Wildlife Federation, (and don't forget the National Parks Conservation Association, The Wilderness Society, and the Natural Resource Defense Council), these are special-interest groups just as are the Blue Ribbon Coalition, the International Snowmobile Manufacturers Association, and the International Mountain Bicycling Association, and all these have their own agendas for how national parks should be managed.

As for superintendents and autonomy, they and regional directors actually do have a great deal of latitude, but politics -- and lawsuits -- often force their hands.

The overriding question that we as a society have to reach some consensus over is how we want the National Park System managed, and not just for today but for tomorrow. Do we value flora and fauna that are finding it harder and harder to survive outside national parks due to increasing urbanization and fragmentation of habitat? Would we rather have the parks turned into visitor-centric recreational playgrounds where we don't worry about the needs of plants and animals or the landscapes themselves?

And really, haven't we already created a system by which different public lands are managed for different purposes? After all, the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Bureau of Land Management long have managed their landscapes for multiple use, for both the birder and the dirt biker, for the cross-country skier and the snowmobiler, for the hiker and mountain biker. Shouldn't the National Park System continue to be managed with an emphasis on conservation and preservation, as well as enjoyment ... but with limits on what forms of recreation should be allowed?

Going a step further, does the level of national park visitation even matter? Shouldn't it suffice that we protect these unique places -- the landscapes, the culture, the history -- and all they harbor so future generations can appreciate and understand them by visiting them, if they desire, rather than reading a book or watching Ken Burns' documentary and so having their imaginations piqued but left unfulfilled because those responsible for sound stewardship in the past failed and these landscapes are no more?

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The idea of replacing cars in Zion Park with the tram car system was a dollar short and a day late if you ask me. I'm sorry it happened after my days of visitation to that park ended. I never found the saturation of visitors to that park to be enjoyable. I remember once when my "window of opportunity" to visit Angel's Landing passed me by. It was around 8am and had I stopped to chat with some hikers just before the final climb, I was quickly overtaken by a busload of french women that were right behind me. I stood to the side making room as about 50 women hiked by, grateful that I wasn't going to share that precarious precipe with all of them, plus the hikers I'd already seen go up! It would have been like a crowded bar, except there was a 1000' drop off on all sides! Many of the hikers were young, inexperienced, and ill mannered in hikers etiquette. It was unsafe in the extreme.
Same deal when I went to the south rim of the Grand Canyon. Absolute pandemonium on the hiking trails. Way overcrowded trails with the occasional mule pack going by making you have to suddenly squeeze against the side of the already too narrow trail... hundreds of feet straight down if anyone lost their footing. Many of the female hikers were wearing high heels!

Anytime you're letting that many of the general public into a confined area at the same time, you are going to have huge traffic management problems, just as if you're at a parade, the zoo, etc. That many people are like a herd of ill-mannered cattle. I'm happy to see that they've turned Park visitation into a highly profitable venture, but they should manage visitor traffic as well as the visitor/wildlife interaction. There are lots of accidents waiting to happen on those trails.


National Parks were established to preserve the natural and cultural resources they have to offer. They are not all things for all people. They are not amusement parks. They were not established for the enjoyment of the people at the risk of harming their natural resources. If you do not care about the natural and cultural resources of a particular park and will not enjoy and respect it, don't go !

These wonderful, diverse ecosystems deserve to be protected whether visitation is up or down. That is why they were established.......to be saved for those of us who DO love and respect them !

As an adult without kids, I feel an obligation to get involved and help a kid understand our natural world and learn to protect and respect it. If we all made that effort, maybe a few would leave their video games and cellphones long enough to see what Mother Nature has to enjoy and teach us.


Beamis, whenever you rail on, I do get the same message, and certainly your distain for people trying to do their job, but I never get a picture of how you think things should work if YOU had your way. You say you believe in preservation, and in parks. So how would it work, if you were Emperor of the North, and could make it go your way? What would people do on Monday?

Most of the lessons Rangers and other park people learn from, come -- not as you picture it -- but from what actually happens day in and day out, or happened over time, at this or that park, with this or that action by park management. It would actually be welcome if Rangers got more training, but in fact most park people don't take the time they should for training, because they are too busy. (not a good excuse, but true) Most park people are these very practical people who don't have much use for bureaucracy. Park rangers are forever pointing out how lawyer-driven Director's Orders undermine sensible management on the front line in a real park. Practical people. There IS, of course, much regret when some part of the park experience is lost, on those occasions when management let some adverse action go on, that in the end impaired the park experience. Park people REMEMBER and talk about when they should have stepped in but didn't. Those experiences, good and not good, are then applied to future enforcing protection or encouraging park use.

Park people are always talking to each other about how to be more welcoming, and there is a lot of criticism among peers for rangers who do not like people, or act like they do not like people. Most park people, overwhelmingly, are hugely gratified by how much most of the public really enjoy themselves at the park. It keeps most park rangers going, the joy of the visitor.

It is true that some of the superintendents are not very politically skilled, and in their public explanations while hide behind what the regulation says, or some higher-up policy, but the reason for that political style is the way public officials get creamed in America today whenever they are open and clear. There are lawyers everywhere, and a lot of angry ranters who love to litigate. Read the papers.

Ray Bane is right about the pressure on any ranger who wants to confront human impact on the park. At Ray Bane's old park I saw a front-line ranger merely try to enforce a permit condition against a film company in which they promised not to get too close to the bears, and that guy's chief ranger -- the guy who probably negotiated the permit -- rebuked the front line ranger as a zealot, and to chill out. Superintendent's who try to protect beaches in recreation areas really do get sliced and diced. Even in the end if the agency supports the restriction, that superintendent realizes his/her intervention was not deeply appreciated by Higher Authority.

Parks are there, not just for preservation, but so people can enjoy and learn from unimpared wild, scenic or historic places. It is a wonderful idea, and most of the visitors find the park people pretty wonderful, too. Part of that time, in that grey area, that means there can be tensions over over use, and how to prevent it, and the human beings needed to protect the park and the human beings, with all their variety and vastly different levels of experience, who visit the park. I remember being startled to learn that my own wife, who I think is pretty sensitive and law abiding, was approached once by a ranger who said he'd seen her picking some wild flowers. He was not heavy handed, but pointed out others came to the park to enjoy those flowers, and it would not take many people picking 'em before the whole scene would be altered. For a moment, she was defensive, but almost immediately grateful that she better understood how to behave in a park. She appreciated the 'intervention,' and I am not sure you could have a gentler intervention, other than letting anything go.

You can bring your incipient anger to characterize rangers as hostile, but it is just not so. It does get boring, it lacks all nuance.

Thinking through in a collaborative way the right way to protect and experience the parks needs to be a continual and earnest process. Constantly blaming the rangers seems pretty silly.


I disagree that we need more visitors to our parks. They are overrun as it is, at least the popular ones and at least in the summer. What we do need is more interest in our parks from young people. With the number of visitors, most of whom are city people who know very little about how to behave in the outdoors and around wildlife, the switch in emphasis toward preservation is probably a good thing. Park professionals have learned, in many cases the hard way, that if you let people go unattended into certain sensitive areas ancient artifacts will become souvineers, beautiful rock walls will be covered with graffiti and trash will be strewn around. They have discovered that if you allow people to hike into bear rich areas, people will feed and tease them, hike without taking proper precautions and get too close in the name of a picture; resulting in maulings and dead bears. Etc.
While nearly anyone who has spent more than a short vacation in our parks probably can site instances where they wish a ranger wasn't there ("So I'm 80 yards instead of 100!! He's not paying the least bit of attention to me, and my car is right there!!! If he looks my way, I'll back up!), the fact is that most rangers do a great job of balancing resource protection and visitor enjoyment. After all, they are overwhelmed, have no idea if you are an outdoorsperson who has spent his (her) life in the wilds, or a city slicker; and they are understaffed.
I would suggest visiting at a slower time of the year, when things are a lot more relaxed.


D-2--

You are too polite to Beamis. He is mostly wrong. Most park people are the opposite of what he claims they are: they are polite, usually well-informed, and have the visitor's back most of the time. I almost laughed out loud when he talked about young rangers coming out of training "gulags". What planet does he live on? As you point out, there's not much training going on anywhere other than the bare minimum that is required to meet certification standards. Park employees, including rangers, are not much different than any one else except they work in really nice places and, in the vast majority of the cases, try hard to help park visitors understand what they are seeing and to have a good time in the park. There are exceptions, as you point out; maybe Beamis has run into every one of them. But his "draconian" law enforcement people and "radical environmental" managers are not the ones I meet when I go to parks.

Rick Smith


It's been my experience recently that the National Parks are at the brink of capacity with visitors. The off-limits areas may seem excessive, but are needed because the sheer numbers of people who would trample them if if they were open is too much for some ecosystems.


d-2 and Rick -

Thanks for your perspective - which is certainly in line with my 30 years in the parks.

Are all employees perfect? Of course not - in parks, or anywhere else - and I recognize the workplace has changed in the years since I retired. I suspect employees in any job that involves public contact vent or joke among their peers about situations they encounter. Even so, Frank_C and Beamis seem to have hung out with a different set of employees than I did in eight parks, large and small. I'm glad my experience was much more positive than theirs.

d-2 said, "Parks are there, not just for preservation, but so people can enjoy and learn from unimpaired wild, scenic or historic places. It is a wonderful idea, and most of the visitors find the park people pretty wonderful, too."

I heartily second that view, and take it a step further. Despite the inevitable challenges, long hours and occasional negative experiences, most park people I worked with found the majority of visitors to be "pretty wonderful," too. If you don't find real satisfaction in helping visitors enjoy some of the best places on the planet, you're in the wrong job.


It the rules were designed to maximize visitation now, the experience 10 generations hence would be trashed. We understand what protecting for the long haul means much better now than some decades ago.

And I agree that tastes have changed. A national forest near where I live has decided that to get more people to use their campgrounds, they are going to bring in wifi and cell coverage because their surveys show that the inability to text message is keeping young people away. In the mean time, some of the more rustic campgrounds without flush toilets will get closed.

And I'm not surprised if attitudes in Yosemite Valley get a bit warped. It doesn't need more visitation, at least during peak season. any ranger who got the job to enjoy the wilds can hardly help from developing an attitude if their jobs ends up managing traffic gridlock and a pall of smoke and pollution.


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