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
The pros and cons of the discussion include two camps: those who see the benefits of cell service in places like Yellowstone when a visitor needs to summon help in an emergency, and those who see the intrusion and distractions in this special setting that result from seemingly constant phone conversations, text messaging and other techno communications.
So, one way to satify both camps is to program cell towers in the park to only accept 911 calls :-)
I see a third camp....I say let me have cell service in the areas where other services are. I can send and get electronic mail, check in with family, send a picture, look up info on the internet, use Chimani or send a text. I know some of you choose not to while on vacation, but I see this as a choice. I am sure someday the satellite phone will be affordable, but for now cell towers in the main service areas seems like it should be no big deal.
David,
These folks are of the standard liberal ilk. They know how you should live your life better than you do. The fact that you sending a text from the backcountry doesn't disturb a soul - human or animal - makes no difference. They just don't think that is the way you should act in a park. And, because that is the way they think, it is the way you must act.
I'm bouncing back and forth from one side to the other in this debate. I do feel that if cell towers are placed discreetly in an unobtrusive manner, it shouldn't be much of a problem. On the other hand, I've had a couple of experiences in which I've found myself sitting next to a person carrying on a conversation that is loud and sometimes so filled with foul language that it makes me wonder what ever happened to intelligent vocabularies. At Old Faithful earlier this summer, I finally just got up and moved away from one such individual and then found myself admiring a gentleman who confronted the foul-mouth and successfully shamed him into shutting up.
Then, when I read something like this from this morning's NPS Morning Report, I see some real need for modern technology. Perhaps as Jim suggested above, programming systems to accept only 911 calls may be a helpful partial solution. Here's the morning report:
But how is that different than sitting next to two people carrying on a loud conversation other than it annoys you that you can't hear the otherside. Are we to outlaw talking in the parks? There are rude people in this world - outside and inside our parks. Walk away. There are plenty of spots in the park where noone is saying anything.
What ever happened to an old fashioned thing called "civility?" I'm old enough to remember a time when people were much more considerate of others than they are now. Dr. Runte had it right when he wrote about what I've come to call the Great American Entitlement Mentality.
On page 26 of Yellowstone's Wireless Plan Environmental Assessment is a map that illustrates where cell phone coverage would be under Alternative C, which was the preferred alternative. If you look at the map, you will see that not all of the road system in Yellowstone would have cell phone coverage. Most of the backcountry west of Old Faithful(i.e. Bechler, Cascade Corner), the South Arm of Yellowstone Lake and Southeast corner also would be out of cell range.
http://www.nps.gov/yell/parkmgmt/upload/wireless%20ea%20september_9_08%20final.pdf
It went the same way as "personal responsibility".