Rel⋅e⋅vant -- /ˈrɛləvənt/ [rel-uh-vuhnt] –-adjective-- bearing upon or connected with the matter in hand; pertinent: a relevant remark.
Are our national parks losing their relevancy?
I raise that question because on one hand we saw an upwelling of interest last fall when The National Parks: America's Best Idea riveted many to their television sets for six consecutive nights, and yet on the other hand National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis shortly after he was appointed cited a need to prevent the parks from becoming irrelevant.
"I have conducted over 200 interviews with superintendent candidates, and I always ask, 'What is the biggest issue facing the NPS into the future?' The majority answer, 'relevancy,' the director said back in September in a system-wide email to his staff. "There is deep concern out there that national parks will become irrelevant to a society that is disconnected from nature and history. We need to help all Americans – especially young people – discover a personal connection to their national parks.
"While the places are spectacular, it is our people that make parks come alive. In Ken Burns’s documentary The National Parks: America’s Best Idea he focuses as much on the people as on the parks: employees, residents of gateway communities, scientists, scholars, politicians, indigenous people, activists, concessioners, volunteers, partners and, of course, visitors. Without them, the National Park System would not exist, many parks would never have been established, and the National Park Service would not have the deep support of the American people that we enjoy. I believe every American will relate to and cherish their national parks if given the chance to connect, by technology or by visiting. Beyond parks, our recreation and historic preservation community assistance programs reach and benefit families near their homes in ways that the parks cannot. I plan to expand these programs."
Is the park system struggling with being relevant in the 21st century? Equally worried about the relevancy of parks are the concessionaires that work in them.
"Visitation has declined significantly over twenty years even as the overall population has grown and diversified, and even as a higher percentage of the visits has shifted to close-to-urban center units like Golden Gate National Recreation Area and Lake Mead National Recreation Area," said a white paper prepared last summer for the National Park Hospitality Association, which represents the concessionaires. "Equally importantly, lengths of stays have shortened, and visitation to parks remains largely homogeneous: Caucasian, affluent and educated. There are exceptions. But the exceptions are invariably linked to park units that have worked hard to be visible and relevant regionally.
"...We have already lost a generation – perhaps two generations – of Americans who regularly utilize parks and the Great Outdoors for relaxation and recharging – mental and physical. Large portions of the post-Boomer adult generations have turned to shopping malls and electronic entertainment for leisure pursuits and have limited traditions or skills in the outdoors. And absent intervention and assistance, this pattern will repeat, as parents fail to introduce kids to the outdoors. The truth is that there are major and potent competitors for the leisure time of all Americans, and especially youth. These competitors use advertising and other promotion extensively, and have effectively 'hidden' many traditional leisure choices, including park visits. National park visits can’t compete ad for ad, but there are strategies for making parks and fun outdoors more 'top of mind.'"
The white paper, which promoted creation of a National Parks Promotion Council, said particular focus should be placed on (1) youth; (2) urban; (3) lower income; (4) non-Caucasian; (5) seniors and (6) new Americans.
Of course, to answer this question I suppose one has to define how relevancy, when it comes to national parks, looks. In 2008 the Park Service counted nearly 275 million recreational visits to the parks. Would 300 million visits reflect better relevancy? Three-hundred-fifty million? Four-hundred-million? Or are the parks relevant no matter what the level of visitation?
Do the settings in the accompanying photos lose relevancy if only ten people view them?
Tell us what you think. Are the national parks in danger of becoming irrelevant? And if you think so, what should be done?
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Comments
@NK and Second Life; I like the concept of the virtual tour as "springboard" into the national parks. Virtual tours are intrinsically neither good nor bad for the national parks. From the managerial perspective, they can be viewed as a problem (people will think that virtual tours are an OK substitute for park visits) or as a promotional tool (virtual tours whet the appetite for first-hand experience), but it seems wisest to quit obsessing about the first concept (which you can't do anything about anyway!) and focus on the latter. I believe there is no doubt whatsoever that the National Park Service can, in a proactive way, use virtual tours to make people want to visit national parks. What you need to do is heighten awareness of the experiences, thoughts, feelings, emotions, etc. that an actual park visit can give you and vicarious experience cannot[/it. The National Park Service is not doing anywhere near as good a job as it could in this area.
@ arms. "..... serving the public however they visit?" ??????? Would you please restate your central idea? I have read your comment seventy-leven times and I still cannot fathom what you are trying to say. One way to read your comment is that it matters not a whit if people ever actually visit a national park -- we can still count it as a "visit" if they vicariously experience parks. If that's what you mean, I couldn't possibly disagree with you more and will take that opinion to my grave. If you mean that the National Park Service needs to take more credit for ways that the system benefits people who never visit a national park, that's a completely different notion. Or perhaps there's some other idea in there? Again, I remain puzzled about your central idea and would be interested to know more about the reasoning that goes with it.
Anon wrote:
Bat's comment-in-reply also addressed the concessionaire "conflict of interest" arising from obsession with the bottom line.
There is no clearer illustration of the central point here than the case of the Yosemite Park & Curry Company, the concessionaire tail that wagged the National Park Service dog for the better part of a century (ending 1993). Much of what the Curry Company did by way of providing infrastructure and services was beneficial to the park, but so very much of what the company was allowed to get away with was outrageously inappropriate in Yosemite, or in any national park. If you focus only on the virtuous end of that, you can talk yourself into being a big fan of the company. If you look just at the latter result, you could conclude that the company's primary role was to serve as a cautionary tale -- a prime example of what NOT to do in the national parks.
imtnbke wrote:
We need to be careful here in differentiating between policies and practices that the Park Service is responsible for putting into place and the things that Congress burdens the agency with. Point Reyes National Seashore is a greenline park that combines federal and nonfederal land, including a pastoral zone where leaseholders graze beef and dairy cattle. That pastoral zone exists in the first place because of the enabling legislation -- that is, because of the way the Congress wrote the law that brought the park into being decades ago. The ranches on the peninsula date to the Spanish grazing industry that was established there before California became part of the United States. This is deep, deep history. As far as the law is concerned, the ranches in Point Reyes National Seashore are historical resources, not just economic enterprises, and they most certainly are not "masquerading" as public parks through some National Park Service-assisted subterfuge. When Point Reyes National Seashore was created (authorized 1962, established 1972), the enabling legislation insured the continuation of ranching (pastoral activities) by providing that ranchers who sold their property to the federal government would be given renewable leases. If you don't like that original arrangement, or object to continuing it so long after the national seashore was established, you need to take it up with our elected officials. Berating the National Park Service does not, in this instance, gain us any ground.
I'm not sure that's exactly the reference. The majority of Point Reyes cattle/dairy areas are fenced off without public access. Part of the reason for Point Reyes existing as an NPS unit was that there were plans for large-scale housing development which many felt would destroy the pastoral character of the area.
I'm pretty sure that the reference from imtnbike would be to the East Bay Regional Park District. They have cattle grazing in many of their parks, including Wildcat Canyon Regional Park near where I live. I found the dairy cattle at Wildcat Canyon to be pretty harmless (they moved when they were blocking the trail) but I've heard stories of other herds (especially Mission Peak) with more aggressive cows.
http://www.ebparks.org/stewardship/grazing
http://www.ebparks.org/stewardship/grazing/benefits
http://www.ebparks.org/stewardship/grazing/parks
http://www.ebparks.org/stewardship/grazing/safety
http://www.ebparks.org/stewardship/grazing/help
Apparently some people don't like it:
Experience the Extreme Pleasures of East Bay Cow Parks
http://rangenet.org/projects/wplgalbum/page4a/Extreme%20Pleasures%20HTML...
Head 'Em Up, Move 'Em Out!
Are the cattle grazing in the regional parks creating a profound, environmental mess as activists contend, or are they a living symbol of the grand -- and fading -- tradition of ranching in the hills?
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/eastbay/head-em-up-move-em-out/Content?oid...
Parks or cattle fields?
http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2002-11-16/article/16165?headli...
And CAPTCHA for today is "required messes". :)
My bad. I'm going to leave my comment in there, though, because deleting it would remove the comments that follow it.
Nah - you had a fair response. I live in the area in question and hike the parks, so I knew. I wouldn't expect that most people reading this would understand that "park agency" meant the East Bay Regional Park District. I've tried hiking some of the trails where there are cattle grazing, and they can become these strange barely passable mud bogs or severely widened trails.
However - the NPS does allow some cattle grazing near publicly accessible trails. Bolinas Ridge (Golden Gate NRA but administered by Point Reyes NS) has a long trail where there are cattle (with gates). I also don't think they normally want cattle in public areas, but once I passed a cow right on the road to the oyster farm. I don't think that technically was in the pastoral areas.
http://www.gatetrails.com/exhibits/026bolinas.html
YPW wrote: "I'm pretty sure that the reference from imtnbke would be to the East Bay Regional Park District."
You are correct! And thank you for those links; I'll look at them. See also http://www.NoOnMeasureWW.org