Editor's note: Harry Butowsky spent 36 years working for the National Park Service as an historian. In the following op-ed, he outlines concerns he has with the current direction the National Park Service is being taken.
As we begin 2015, which marks the 99th year since the establishment of the National Park Service and National Park System, some troubling trends are more and more apparent. A short review of recent articles should give everyone who supports our parks reason to pause and think about the future.
For example, a recent article in National Parks Traveler, Mount Rainier National Park's Staffing Woes Impact Winter Fun at Paradise, deserves notice. According to this article: "One of the busiest weeks of winter has brought heavy snows to Mount Rainier National Park in Washington state, but staffing woes have closed the sledding and snow play areas at Paradise, frustrating locals and businesses in the areas close to the Nisqually Entrance in the park's southwestern corner."
In addition, a recent press release from the National Parks and Conservation Association stated the following: "The National Park System has been damaged by compounded budget cuts over recent years. The October 2013 16-day government shutdown came on top of a long-term pattern of declining budgets followed by the damaging and indiscriminate across-the-board sequester cut. This pattern threatens the long-term protection of our national treasures and the countless local economies that depend on American families and international visitors having a safe and inspiring experience."
The simple fact of the matter is that the defense authorization bill, recently signed by President Obama, creates seven new national parks and expands nine existing parks, adding roughly 120,000 acres to the park system. The legislation, however, provides no additional funding for the expansion.
These stories raise an obvious question. How long can the nation continue to expand the National Park System and not fund our existing and new parks to the minimum level that the American people deserve and the resources require? When will we reach the breaking point, or perhaps are we there now? Parks are popular and important but what is the meaning of our National Park System when we have so many parks that they cannot be managed and supported? Can we continue to expand our system of national parks forever with no comparable increase in staffing and funding to operate and maintain those parks?
These reports are issued and then forgotten. They go nowhere because they do not represent serious consideration and hard thinking about how many parks we need and how many we can manage in the current fiscal climate.
This is a question that those of us who support the National Park System need to address. This is the question that the National Park Service should address. Over the past several years we have had been many reports and proposals on how to manage the future of the National Park System. Several reports over the last 10 years have provided a vision for the Service’s second century. A Call to Action (2011); America’s Great Outdoors: A Promise to Future Generations (2011); the National Parks Second Century Commission Report, Advancing the National Park Idea (2009); and The Future of America’s National Parks (the Centennial Report, 2007). These reports are issued and then forgotten. They go nowhere because they do not represent serious consideration and hard thinking about how many parks we need and how many we can manage in the current fiscal climate.
Today, the National Park Service lacks the leadership it needs to survive and prosper in today's fiscal climate. The management of the National Park Service lacks the will and insight needed to make the important decisions that will address the lack of resources needed to maintain our parks.
The problems of today are not difficult to discern. The national parks need to have an adequate number of rangers to provide for the safety of the visiting public. Roads, bathrooms and other public facilities need to be kept in a state of repair. Park visitor centers need to be manned by National Park Service employees who can respond to questions and help visitors enjoy their park experience. The Service needs sufficient numbers of professional cultural and natural resource managers to work with the parks and to serve the visiting public. At this time the service is losing the very professional staff it so urgently requires through retirement and buyouts.
So what can be done at this time? To start I recommend the following initial steps.
1. We should not stop the expansion of the system, as time moves on and new areas of historical and natural significance become apparent, but let us do so in a rational manner and not through large and unfunded omnibus bills. We have a process to ensure that parks are thoroughly studied, national significance and suitability and feasibility requirements are met. Let us follow our process.
Today, the National Park Service lacks the leadership it needs to survive and prosper in today's fiscal climate. The management of the National Park Service lacks the will and insight needed to make the important decisions that will address the lack of resources needed to maintain our parks.
2. At this critical time, the National Park Service with the support of Congress needs to examine the total number of national parks to determine which can be transferred to state, local or private communities to manage. Not all parks and historic sites are equal. Some will do quite well under the management of state and local jurisdictions. Indeed, many poorly managed and funded sites will do better.
3. The National Park Service also needs to implement a zero-based budgeting system that will look at all of the Regional and Washington, D.C., offices and programs to determine what is the value of the money we spend on these programs and what is the value that is returned to the American people for this effort. If a program or position does not produce tangible results, then it should be eliminated.
4. The National Park Service maintains many grant programs which are popular and worthy to many people. Some of these programs include the American Battlefield, Historic Black Colleges & Universities, Japanese American Confinement Sites, Native American Graves Protection & Repatriation Act, and National Center for Preservation Technology, Preserve America, Save America's Treasures and Tribal Heritage. These programs were started years ago for good and worthwhile reasons, but do they need to continue? At the very least, the National Park Service needs to ask this question.
The National Park Service has budgeted thousands of dollars for public relations campaigns to celebrate its 100th anniversary 2016. While this will serve as an effective way to gain public support for the National Park Service, a portion of this funding ought to be diverted to thoroughly examine the National Park System to ensure the longevity and health of our parks. We need to eliminate any duplication and waste that may be present to effectively manage our scarce resources (including both funding and personnel) in a more strategic and logical manner.
We cannot do more with less. In the final analysis, if we do nothing then we can only sit by and watch the entire system spiral down and collapse under poor management, excessive numbers and waste. I do not believe this should be the legacy of Stephan Mather, Horace Albright and the founders of the National Park Service in the 21st century. The American people deserve better.
Dr. Harry A. Butowsky retired on June 30, 2012, from the National Park Service in Washington, D.C. where he worked as an historian and manager for the National Park Service History e-Library web site. He is the author of World War II in the Pacific, a National Historic Landmark Study, six other landmark studies, as well as 60 articles on military, labor, science and constitutional history. Dr. Butowsky teaches History of World War I and World War II at George Mason University. His Ph.D. is from the University of Illinois.
Dr. Butowsky manages npshistory.com, which contains thousands of NPS reports and articles.
Comments
There have been NPS managers in the past that have stood up to political pressure. If the NPS wants to move forward, we will need more of them. My sense says that those in place are more than happy to have their domain expanded.
Jeepers, Dr. Butowsky.
First:
"Unfunded Omnibus Bills"? You were in the park service for 35 years. You must know that authorizing bills are not funded, because they are not appropriations bills. They authorize funds, they don't appropriate funds. And even though you did not work in the parks, you must know that it would be really stupid for Congress to fund these new parks until their planning was done, and it was determined what kind of development plan is needed, how much money is needed, and when. Certainly not all at once !
And then, you must know parks compete for the funds. If the new area is nationally significant, it still must compete against the existing parks to see which priorities are really the most important. If the new park is the most important priority, it might get funded, meaning the other parks needs are not as great.
But most likely these new parks will receive minimal funding for the next 10 years and if you really look at these different parks, comparatively little after that. Their budgetary impact will be small. Dr. Butowsky, you write as if 120,000 acres will be a disproportionate burden to the national park system. You should know two things, that there are about 85 MILLION acres of parks and second, that the number of acres has nothing to do with cost. With the possible exception of Valles Caldera, considering that the area under the US Forest Service partnership was unable to meet its budget, it is not clear how it will achieve its goals. But otherwise this is not a big expansion, but expecting as you seem to that all the funds for these parks should be in an authorizing bill NOW just makes no sense.
So the basic question is, when you must know that funding comes from appropriations bills, what is the point except rhetoric to suggest there is a problem when an authorizing bill does not include appropriations? And why would you want to give them money before plans have decided how much is appropriate, and when? This is how it has been for 200 years. You are the historian.
Second:
As a historian, what do you make of the very recent article in the National Park Traveler on the short funding woes of Olympic National Park in the 1950s? Perhaps that over time budgets go up and down, and these temporary woes do not lead to the destruction of the System as you propose. It is possible your analysis lacks the perspective one should expect from an historian? Afterall, you mention the sequestration as a primary issue, but is it not true that this year, in the appropriations bill (as appropriate) the National Park Service was given for this year every dollar for park operations it asked for? Would that not appear to you some effort is underway to compensate for the sequestration? You mention "fiscal climate." Isn't it true that that climate has everything to do with an immediate political fight across the government at the start of this decade, particularly over the question of funding entitlements vs cutting taxes, and is it not clear that this fight is still being worked through before it is settled, and that the NPS budget (1/17th of 1% of the federal total) is a function of this current fight? As an historian, do you see many examples of states wanting to take back parks and fund and manage them? As an historian, are you aware that when Jimmy Carter attemped zero-based budgeting before, but it fails for a staff-heavy agency like the NPS because you cannot zero-base encumbered positions? And to move them around costs more than any gain? And yet you complain that retirements and buyouts eliminate staff, and isn't it true that that the buyouts are happening in your part of the NPS and there you will find that the most expensive positions are the senior people, and that is exactly why buyouts are provided, to save the dollars the senior people cost? And that younger employees do not cost as much and are not encumbered? Not that i am in favor of eliminating professional jobs, quite the opposite, but these continual contradictions in this piece in trying to make the case to blame the current NPS managers, rather than fight for the money, just makes one start to sputter.
Third:
You say the omnibus bill is not "rational" and imply that the NPS and Congress did not "follow the process." What? Is it not true that every one of the new parks was studied, EXACTLY as provided in the process? Is it not true that in every case, the NPS examined the feasibility, suitability and significance of each and found that they fully merited addition to the System? Is it not true that over the years the NPS rejects 3 out of every 4 areas so reviewed? I mean, as an historian? Is it not true that the NPS held public meeetings for public input in every one of these cases? Is it not true than then every one of these new parks had a congressional hearing, and in every one of the cases of the new parks, the NPS testified that it agreed the parks, subject to amendments it recommended, that the areas SHOULD be new parks?
Was not every new park in this bill then reviewed by the Congressional Budget Office and the OMB? And found not to add significantly to the US deficit or to the NPS? And in nearly every case did not the Congess accept or modify its legislation when concerns were raised by the NPS? Even in the case of Manhattan Project, is it not true that the NPS held out until the Energy Department agreed not to cease being responsible for the primary clean up costs? Wasn't that good "leadership"? And smart?
What exactly, then, was not followed in "the process"? Are you saying, Dr Bukowsky, that the problem is that all the parks, even though they all followed the proper process, were all bundled into one bill? How does that, or did that, compromise the process?
And you say not all historic site are equal, and some can be managed by others. Is that not EXACTLY one of the jobs of the NPS new park study system? And is it not also true that an entire part of that process is to examine whether it would be better if someone else managed the area? So all these new parks WERE examined precisely for that, and in each case the NPS testified that notwithstanding, not only did they qualify as parks, but the best way to recognize them would be to add them to the System of parks?
But is it not also true that when you have the history of a person like Harriet Tubman, and her many great accomplishments with important places associated with her memory: do you NOT thing the National Park System is weaker and incomplete without recognizing what a powerful force and symbol she is to the United States? Can you think of BETTER way to protect and recognize all she represents to the United States OTHER than a national park? And do you really think buyouts among cultural resource people in Washington would have been prevented had we not finally recognized her multiple contributions?
Fourth,
You say that the NPS grant programs should be considered for cuts. You mention Save Americas Treasures and Preserve America as among those needing this examination. In Obama's first complete budget did not the NPS recommend eliminating the funding for these programs, and isn't it true they have not been funded since? You mention Battlefield Protection program. Isn't it true that a large percentage of those acres purchased end up in the park system? And isn't it true that it is MUCH less expensive to manage a park with fewer private or incompatible developments? I mean, does not the Battlefield Protection program save money by eliminating costly repeats of Manassas? And for the battlefields that stay in non-federal hands, isn't that a good investment when lands and money can be leveraged this way with private or state money? And isn't NOW, when the economy is down, actually the best time to buy land? If you really believed as you say in this kind of examination, you would have noted that half the money going to land acquisition in the new 2015 appropriation would go to the states, that in fact would protect land without the NPS having to absorb operations charges, so that lands DON'T have to come into the System, AND those dollars are leveraged. Doesn't the "leadership" of the NPS deserve credit for such cost effective thinking? Hmm? Just didn't deserve attention?
Fifth,
in blaming the current leadership of the National Park Service, and saying that the reports do not help because they don't recommend ways to cut the System and the reports are not used and forgotten, where do you get that? 50 years ago, did the reports leading to Mission 66 fail because they did not recommend slashing the System?
Take an example now, are you aware that the Second Century Commission made a big focus on partnerships as a way to help the NPS (unlike your proposal) carry out the Mission? For example, it suggests the NPS learn from its succeses with the national heritage corridors, and even cite one as showing how to leverage their federal funds more than 20 to one? And, has not Director Jarvis in his Call to Action emphasized exactly that, new partnerships to find innovative ways to fullfill the Mission while stretching dollars, and greatly expanding outreach and public engagement? And in fact have not parks responded? Have you seen the series of brilliant articles by Kurt about the park partners and the incredible work they are doing in engagement and leveraging dollars? Isn't that exactly the kind of leadership we need, but that you claim is lacking? Have you compared the budget of the NPS today with the budget of 50 years ago? Do you believe that if your program now, that a good study would recommend cuts to the System, if applied then, and all the incredible parks of today since then had NEVER come into the System, it is your contention that the NPS would have received those monies anyway?
And another NPS request that was fully funded was challenge cost share. Isn't that good leadership from the Director? Doesn't that mean that the NPS money for those parks in this program will be DOUBLED or more by non-NPS sources? What is wrong with that? Don't you think that achieving that during your "budget climate" is pretty great leadership?
And on that subject, you speak of "thousands" of dollars being spent to promote the public recognition of the meaning of the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service as a bad idea. How many of those dollars actually come from the two and a half billion dollar park service budget?
And now, are you actually really saying that you cannot do more with less? Well whether you can or not, the Second Century Commission and the Director are pointing to many ways YOU CAN do more with less through partnership. Through building constituencies. Through telling the untold stories. Through introducing young people to the out-of-doors. There really are people who know how to get more resources by the way they do their work, and that concept flows throughout the Director's Call to Action, but for years and years before that there is a new spirit among non-traditionalists, and one of the differences with the traditionalists is YOU CAN get more than one dollar for every dollar spent.
[BTW: This is the sort of thing to get behind, not the kind of multiple reorganizations, that take years and years of resources, that have been proposed and failed before, and will lead to no additional support for parks. Such attempted reorganizations in the past have created a lot of hot air wasted effort, have led to significant employee demoralization and have done nothing to improve the quality of the visitor experience. Ask anybody. Especially the originally optimistic, who have lived through any of them.]
Sixth,
You speak of "problems of today" and the very first problem you list is the need for an adequate number of rangers to ensure the public safety. Would you please provide some documentation that the PUBLIC SAFETY HAS GONE DOWN? Are there more accidents? Significantly increasing number of deaths? Are there fewer searches? fewer rescues? What exactly is the safety problem you see right now, or perhaps the past 5 or 10 years, from inadequate rangering?
Seventh,
even if you were right that new areas such as these take money away, or that the new park will be underfunded, you ignore the fact that park lands are protected from the kind of transformative developments that will destroy the landscape and the character of the resource. And, if you would note it in your next article, every one of these new parks emerged from partnerships, so to leverage money well but also to expand the public engagement. So waiting for the Senate to find more days in the year to pass each new park in a freestanding bill means that you will see resources destroyed, regardless of whether there is money there or not. Better to fight for the money, of course.
# # #
Dr Bukowsky, I realize these points, coming after the great plaudets you received from that distinguished and incessant critic of the national parks, Senator Coburn [who by the way is considered such an extremist even by Republicans that it was comical on C-SPAN watching his colleagues give their goodbye speeches in the Senate, and Senator McCain in his goodbye speech could not even resist saying out loud what all of them call him in private: "Dr. NO"], that you don't have any particular reason to take comments from anyone else.
But you were very good at what you did in the park service, and i hope you consider this seriously:
right now is a time to fight for the money.
Now is the time to work to protect, not find ways of backing away from preservation or established parks. Now is not a good time to suggest that any of these new parks were inadequately considered (especially when they were !), because there are plenty of people like Senator Coburn who are happy to turn preservationists against each other. People who vote with Senator Coburn on the Hill are certainly not working to protect our air either, or our water, or any of the other national preservation agencies. You are smart enough to realize that these people are not friends of parks.
Rather than giving credibility to the enemy, it might be a good idea to recognize the efforts underway now to build the partnerships and the preservation needs this nation will need for the future, not by tearing down, but by fighting for the parks, for the money, for ther partnerships, for the national recognition of the meaning of a NP centennial.
As an historian you should recognize that turning preservationists against each other is like chopping up a smaller and smaller pie, when what is needed is to encourage the pride and recognition of our American heritage.
I'd like you to consider how giving NATIONAL recognition as a Unit of the park system to Harriet Tubman will help build American patriotism, and help us tell the untold stories.
I'd like you to consider how NATIONAL recognition of the complex story of the building of the Atom Bomb will show that it does not escape our attention of the tremendous significance of the United States since World War II.
\And I'd like you to consider what it says about a Nation recognizing the first place in America where an entire watershed was harnessed for industry (every tributary with only 10 feet in the entire drop not terraced by dams for industry), what it says about sustainability, what it says about people who built a canal through granite with hand tools, and what it says when those jobs created by those people are simply sent away for greater profits elsewhere leaving a polluted and jobless landscape behind but even more what it says as those people fight now to restore a sustainable landscape.
These points only representing 4 of the new parks, but they all deserve your strategic thinking. And think about all the partners all those areas will bring in, potentially to work with you and other, like Director Jarvis is trying to do, to get the support from all sources to protect our heritage.
"Like Director Jarvis is trying to do, to get the support from all sources to protect our heritage".
Sounds like Jarvis is getting his people to cover these sites with comments because d2 doth protest too much.
Gee, backpacker, is that you who is talking about protesting too much. Remember the backcountry fee?
Rick
D-2 provides a pretty indepth and detailed explanation on why these places should be protected. Just because sophisticated debate offends does not necessarily make what he stated a conspiracy. But then again, one can't expect a person that just sees a key word like "jarvis" which instantly triggers their hate emotives to provide good well-thought out debate. That would be the day!
I agree with what d-2 says. While I have the greatest respect for Dr. Butowsky as a historian, he is wrong on another point also. The beauty of the National Park System is that each generation of Americans gets to add, speaking through their representatives in Congress, in an Omnibus bill or not, the areas it believes deserve protection in perpetuity. As a matter of generational respect and equity, we owe it to these previous generations to provide the highest standard of care possible for the areas they added. The idea of peeling off some of them to make them state or munincipal areas violates that principal. Besides, who gets to decide? One person's Steamtown is another's Salem Maritime. Someone's Cayuhoga is another's Pinnacles. I would hate to see the areas added by my generation such as MLK Jr. or Guadalupe Mountains be pruned from the System. And historically, the peeling as been the reverse as one can see from Golden Gate and Gateway.
Rick
I’m loath to dissent from Harry Butowsky’s analysis, but dissent I must.
Most critically, I strongly disagree with the zero-based budgeting system proposed. Cultural values often do not convert to dollar values. Many of the parks and programs managed by the National Park Service will never be profitable, yet their loss will come at a critical cost to our society. The value of the resources entrusted to NPS reflect understanding of a nation’s human and natural history from which spring lessons of both stability and change. The measurable impacts of climate changes population dynamics of predators, prey, fish, pollinating insects and pollinated vegetation barely begin to teach us what nature has to offer. The effects of war, slavery, and education, understanding of the legacy of everything from the Homestead Act and the Tallgrass Prairie it so dramatically changed to Elwha Dam’s removal and how salmon runs resume, even the varied cultural responses of specific categories of park visitors and neighbors can and should have deep, non-economic benefits far beyond park boundaries.
A commenter on the retirees' listserve recently noted that the NPS share of the national budget is so small that its adequacy to meet park and program needs can be reduced to a simple concept: Priority. If NPS has the popular support it claims, then we should be able to rally the public will that can command a priority for minimum staffing and funding.
A point Harry doesn’t address is fees. The rush to slap fees on every possible site is a de facto closure of parks to many of the prospective visitors we keep claiming represent our future. It is the young and minorities who are least able to pay fees at every turn. The latest proposal I’ve seen is an administrative nightmare fee along the entirety of the mostly narrow, 184.5-mile-long Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park (Will we build a fence the length of the canal to prevent some non-paying visitor crossing over to the tow-path trail? Maybe we’ll just randomly enforce it when an LE ranger happens upon a hiker without a receipt?) Single-visit fees of $25 are a true impediment to someone working part-time or full-time employed as cashiers, hotel or sanitation workers, or in the construction trades. We’re making them choose cheaper alternatives that lack the exposure to the programs and resources we care for on behalf of them as much as for the lawyers, engineers, office managers, and bankers who increasingly are becoming our core users. Minimum staffing and funding should mean whatever is necessary to assure true public access, with token fees to supplement, not supplant appropriated budgets.
Dr. Butowsky also proposes an active effort to identify and discard those park units that don’t truly expose something exemplary or something typical of a memorable period of America’s human and natural history. I’m less sanguine about the trustworthiness of such a process, no matter how well intentioned. The park system can and should represent America’s diversity in such a way that most of us can find included places that do NOT inspire us individually, though they may deeply inspire others. They are about the interplay of human understanding and response. The same place can spark overwhelming awe in one, avid curiosity in another, and plain indifference in a third. I’m not sure we should decide that the indifferent responder should set the standard for what rightfully belongs.
I certainly agree with Dr. Butowsky that we would be feckless and reckless to declare there is some magical number or variety that is “enough” parks. History does not stop. Nature’s special places lose the special protection of owners who die – or whose own priorities change – and the protective distance that once assured remote places needed no special care. I mistrust parks created by legislative fiat without adequate advance professional evaluation, but I remind readers that most of the new parks brought to NPS in December had been studied and found worthy. New parks should always be on the prospective agenda, but they should be promptly followed with the money and people needed to run them.
Worthy or not, additions are a problem if the Service is continually asked to stretch existing resources to meet growing demands for both resource protection and visitor use. He invoked the “Do more with less” mantra that I’ve heard articulated in some form throughout the 41 years I served in NPS. He thinks we’ve played that song past it’s end point. So do I. There may have been a time when there was fat to cut, though I never saw it. We’ve been carving the lean meat for a long time now and allowing outsiders to insist there must be gross amounts of “waste, fraud and abuse.” I’ll even concede that, given human nature, the Service’s employment of a lot of humans assures there will be occasional misjudgment and malfeasance. What I won’t concede is that the losses are more than negligible -- or that the Service does not actively watch for them.
I’m less well versed in the varied grant programs NPS administers. For the most part, however, I suspect they make it possible for state, local, and private operators to manage deserving resources that would otherwise be lost outright or added to the direct workload of the National Park Service. Accordingly, I suspect that slashing these programs would prove short-sighted. If careful analysis contradicts me, I’ll be pleased to be wrong.
Thanks, d-2 and Duncan for some good thoughtful -- and apparently quite knowledgeable posts. Certainly some things to read and consider carefully. These two posts and Dr. Butowski's original article illustrate very well the complexity of trying to resolve the many differences of opinion and other forces that influence management of our parks. They also illustrate how dangerous it is for any of us to lock on to only one set of arguments and cling to them while failing or refusing to consider other possible options.
Thank you all. Now I'm going to print off hard copies of all these arguments so I can spend a little more time trying to digest it all without getting a stiff neck looking at my computer monitor.