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Cellphone Towers In Yellowstone National Park: A Flaw In The National Park Service Mission?

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When the National Park Service was created nearly a century ago, its mission seemed straightforward: to preserve the landscape for the enjoyment of today's and tomorrow's generations. As the agency nears its centennial, is there a need to recommit to that mission?

Those who believe so might point to ever-increasing fees across the National Park System, efforts to create deeper channels for boats at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, and ongoing snowmobile use in Yellowstone National Park.

But there also are groups that believe the Park Service should indeed re-examine its mission statement and focus a bit more on recreation in the parks and working with businesses that reflect an element of the human landscape in the parks, such as the oyster farm at Point Reyes National Seashore.

If you follow the writings and musings of Michael Frome, the man whom the late Gaylord Nelson said had no literary peer when it came to arguing for "a national ethic of environmental stewardship," you'll sense his belief that the Park Service needs to focus more on the environmental landscape of the park system.

That message was inherent in Mr. Frome's recent thoughts on the approval of a cellphone tower near Lake in Yellowstone.

Cellphone service originating from inside the boundaries of Yellowstone has been limited to the Mammoth, Old Faithful, Canyon, Tower-Roosevelt, and Grant developed areas. The Lake developed area is the one additional location in the park where park managers determined cellphone coverage could be added under the park’s 2008 Wireless Communications Services Plan Environmental Assessment and its associated Finding of No Significant Impact.

In July the park received permission to erect a tower near Lake. The new cellular site is to be located next to a buried water tank on a 100-foot rise above the Lake Administrative Area and 700 feet below the top of the Elephant Back Ridge. This site already has access via an existing service road and is near existing electric and phone lines. Antennas will be configured to minimize spillover coverage into Yellowstone’s backcountry.

In the September edition of his Portogram, Mr. Frome laments that decision.

"Changes made in response to comments were incorporated into a Finding of No Significant Impact. No significant impact — so the park administrators said. As they see it, the developed areas, with electric wires, phone lines, lots of automobiles, gas stations, hotels, commercial gift shops and sewage treatment, are 'sacrifice areas,' otherwise known as popcorn playgrounds or tourist ghettos," he writes.

"Before coming, you think of Yellowstone the way it is in the nature series on television. The Park Service tells you to unplug your ears and connect with nature — but when you arrive you can check your e-mail, the state of your stocks, and feel the conveniences of home," continues Mr. Frome. "Perhaps park administrators might have chosen not to allow those towers in the first place. They might have determined this was a strictly commercial service using public resources and public land, and that the signals the towers emit can spill into and pollute hiking trails away from developed areas.

"They might have decided that since hotels in the park get along without television, they can make it without wireless Internet service. When people come to Yellowstone, it’s one of the special times in their lives. They want to hear the splash of geysers and feel themselves in harmony with natural forces that over the centuries created the thermal features, peaks and canyons. That is what they come here for, and not having that sound drowned out by somebody conversing via cell phone."

As Mr. Frome goes on to argue against the cell tower, he says national parks "are presumed preserved to reflect the original America. Many National Park Service personnel want it that way. They care deeply, feeling their mission is to encourage us to embrace a lifestyle that treads lightly on the earth, and that doing so adds richness to all of our lives. They ought to be able to defend their park areas from overuse and misuse with a clear conscience. To deplete or degrade the visible physical resource does something to the invisible spirit of place as well."

To further drive home that point, Mr. Frome points to Zane Grey's 1925 book, The Vanishing American, in which "Nophaie most loved to be alone, out in the desert, 'listening to the real sounds of the open and to the whispering of his soul.”

"In short," Mr. Frome concludes in his column, "instead of treating a national park like any other place, the park professionals ought to say, 'If you can’t do without your cellphone or laptop or tablet, don’t come here!'”

Comments

Who said anything about making new law?

That is exactly what "reinterpretation" is in most cases. I will use your example. As preferable as the outcome of "Brown vs Educations" may be, that is not what either the 13th or 14th amendments called for. That result should have been gained through new Constitutional amendments or law not judicial activisim.

The examples of such "law" by the Supreme Ct is rampet including the total perversion of the commerce clause.

Sorry Kurt - Justin led us off topic and I followed. I'll end it here.


. . . that is not what either the 13th or 14th amendments called for.

But that's just another competing "interpretation" of the Constitution, which is what the Supreme Court does.

(And no, ec, I didn't lead us off topic. You introduced constitutionality in your response to Zeb. I'm not sure it's entirely off-topic, given the subtext of legal language in this thread, but it may indeed be too tangential to the conversation. )


In an attempt to steer the conversation back to the Organic Act, I'd like to observe an undercurrent to the comments that I often see on this site. The Organic Act is indeed subject to much interpretation, as is any law that is so simple. It is inevitiable that it is, to some extent , a "living document", a product of the present culture. But we can also look to the "spirit and intent."

The Organic Act is a product of the early 20th century, a time when there was a growing reaction to modernity, to the congestion, crowding, and filth of the cities in which more and more of the population resided, to the increasing speed, striving, and materialism of modern life. The Act is as much a product of Niagara Falls (which many considered an embarassment because of its crass commercialism; a national treasure besmirched...) as it is of Hetch Hetchy and the lumber barons.

For many in the Park Service, the presumption is that, in order to "provide for the enjoyment" of the natural and historic objects and scenery, the Service needs to maintain the parks in something resembling their undeveloped condition- without the crowds, congestion, development, noise, and commercialism of the city- so that present and future generations can have the space and the silence and the peace to actually enjoy those things being preserved. That the parks should be a refuge from, and an antidote (if not an antipode) to the excesses of civilization. This idea is reflected in NPS policy, and is the central point of contention in many of the debates about park management.

Those who don't feel this way tend to think that those who oppose , say, a commercial bike race in Colorado NM, are opposed to all commercial activities, or that a desire to prevent crowding in Yosemite Valley, or a cell tower in Yellowstone that enables the hyper-connected modern lifestyle, is somehow misanthropic or anti-democratic or "elitist." This is intellectually dishonest- the argument is only to limit such things in a tiny percentage of the country- the 1 % or less that is designated as National Parks. They are not arguing that such conditions or activities are ot appropriate elsewhere.

As with most contentious topics, this is sometimes best understood as a spirtual or moral issue. Many think of the parks as spiritual places, and the aforementioned elements of the modern, hectic, urbanized life as a profanation of that sacred space. Certainly such language was used in the Hetch hetchy debate that helped frame the Act.

I also have to laugh at the notion that erecting a cell tower is somehow misanthropic, as though it actually "excludes" anyone. What a pathetic vision of modern humanity! We brave sons of the pioneers can't even canoe across a lake without an electronic umbilical cord back to the sheltering mama of the modern security network. Sheesh!


Calling out the fact that national parks represents only 1% of the total surface is intellectual dishonest as it is completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand.

The fact that Marmot calls this debate a spiritual issue really speaks volumes. National Parks are not a church, even though it seems that some poor lost souls have taken to the parks as some kind of new age church... And that's why no rational amount of discussion can be had. One cannot reason with faith!

Happy worshipping. :)


Marmot, thank you for a truly refreshing bit of good sense well written. I truly pity those who cannot understand what happens in the heart when a person is fortunate enough to stand in a high place and see nothing but beauty and majesty all around. Worshiping? No. Awestruck is more like it.


I actually am not one sided on this subject. I feel I am one who is awestruck at the majesty and beauty, but do not mind cell service in the areas of so many other services. I still feel the cell towers could have been camoflaged (rather than just a tower). But does this mean in undeveloped parts of the park they will erect towers? Probably not.


Sorry, Zeb. When I lived in Seattle, I considered Mt. Rainier the closest thing to a cathedral in my life. Even when I was in the city, turning a corner and the peak of the mountain suddenly appearing gave me a lift and, pardon the woowoo, recharged my spirits. If you want to pat me on the head and call me a 'poor lost soul', go ahead and do whatever helps you to feel better about your own self.

On the practical side of things, I'm retired after 20+ years of involvement in nursing and EMS. I like the idea of cell access for emergencies, and think that the technology is readily available to create a tower that blends in and appears to be just another tree.


I enjoy great landscapes as much as the next guy, but I don't assign it a church like value. This is clearly the result of our puritanical past.


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