A majority of the members of the National Park Service Advisory Board, frustrated that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has not met with them or scheduled a meeting, has resigned.
“After playing such an active and instrumental role in the planning of the highly successful National Park Service Centennial in 2016, we can understand the members’ deep frustration at the prolonged deactivation of the Board and the complete lack of response from the Department of the Interior to numerous requests in 2017 to meet with Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke," said Phil Francis, chair of the Coalition to Protect America's National Parks, on Tuesday evening.
“This discourteous and disrespectful treatment of the board is inexcusable and, unfortunately, consistent with a decidedly anti-park pattern demonstrated by Secretary Zinke’s department,” he added. “We keep waiting for a pro-park agenda to emerge, but we are now convinced we are waiting in vain.”
The board, which has existed for more than eight decades, typically provides non-partisan input and independent perspectives on current challenges and issues. The resignations of nine of the 12 board members was reported earlier Tuesday by The Washington Post.
It's not unusual for new adminstrations to appoint new members to the board, and the nine who resigned were to have their current terms end in May. Still, the lack of any relationship with the Trump administration surprised those on the board.
According to the Coalition, the board helps the Park Service develop collaborative relationships. "The current board enlisted the support of over 160 outside subject matter experts," a release from the park advocacy group said. "These private citizens, all volunteers, include representatives of professional organizations, conservationists, scientists, educators, business people, and leaders with governmental experience."
According to the Post, Tony Knowles, a former Alaska governor, "wrote that he and eight other members 'have stood by waiting for the chance to meet and continue the partnership . . . as prescribed by law.' All of the signatories had terms set to expire in May.
“We understand the complexity of transition but our requests to engage have been ignored and the matters on which we wanted to brief the new Department team are clearly not part of its agenda,” Knowles added. “I wish the National Park System and Service well and will always be dedicated to their success.”
The Trump administration has exhibited lukewarm interest in the National Park Service and public lands in general. The president has yet to nominate a permanent director for the agency, and has moved to lop 1 million acres off of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah.
Mr. Zinke's Interior Department also has reversed the Park Service's ban on the sale of disposable plastic water bottles in parks; ordered the National Park Service to reconsider wildlife regulations that are at odds with hunting and trapping regulations enforced by the state of Alaska; called for a review, and possibly removal, of regulations pertaining to oil and gas drilling in units of the National Park System; and reversed the Obama administration's position on a more than 7-mile-long line of transmission towers running near Historic Jamestowne and Colonial National Historical Park in Virginia by approving the project.
Too, the president has proposed a 13 percent cut in the Park Service's budget, along with a 1,200 reduction in employees. Mr. Zinke has further raised eyebrows by claiming that roughly one-third of his vast workforce is not loyal to him or President Trump, and that while park staff is good at cleaning restrooms, it's not good at managing campgrounds.
Now Mr. Zinke is hoping to push through a surge-pricing scheme at 17 of the country's most popular national parks with the stated hope the increase in fees will help eat away at the Park Service's $11.3 billion maintenance backlog.
According to the Post article, the advisory board was surprised that it was not asked to weigh in on either the reversal of the water bottle ban or the move to raise entrance fees.
Comments
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/nine-12-national-park-system-adviso...
https://www.nps.gov/resources/advisoryboardreport.htm
Advisory Board Members
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The National Park System Advisory Board are citizen advisors chartered by Congress to help the National Park Service care for special places saved by the American people so that all may experience our heritage.
The Board was first authorized in 1935 under the Historic Sites, Buildings, and Antiquities Act. The Board advises the Director of the National Park Service and the Secretary of the Interior on matters relating to the National Park Service, the National Park System, and programs administered by the National Park Service, including the administration of the Historic Sites, Buildings, and Antiquities Act; the designation of national historic landmarks and national natural landmarks; and the national historic significance of proposed national historic trails. The Board may advise on matters submitted to the Board by the Director, as well as any other issues identified by the Board.
The Board's membership consists of no more than 12 individuals selected from among citizens of the United States having a demonstrated commitment to the mission of the National Park Service, and representing various geographic regions, including each of the administrative regions of the National Park Service. Membership includes (a) at least six individuals who have outstanding expertise in one or more of the fields of history, archeology, anthropology, historical or landscape architecture, biology, ecology, geology, marine science, or social science; (b) at least four individuals who have outstanding expertise and prior experience in the management of national or State parks or protected areas, or natural or cultural resources management; and (c) the remaining members are individuals who have outstanding expertise in one or more of the areas previously described, or in another professional or scientific discipline, such as financial management, recreation use management, land use planning or business management, as it relates to the mission of the National Park Service. At least one individual must be a locally elected official from an area adjacent to a park. Members are appointed by the Secretary of the Interior for terms not to exceed four years.
NPS / Diana Bowen and Sarah Eddy
GRETCHEN LONG appeared on MSNBC January 17, 2018
January
Wilson, Wyoming
Terms of appointment: 5/05/2014 - 5/05/2018; 4/08/2010 - 4/08/2014
Qualifications for selection: NATURAL RESOURCE CONSERVATION
"Over the past 25 years Gretchen Long has had a distinguished role as board leader of several conservation related organizations. She has chaired the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, and the Murie Center in Grand Teton National Park. She has been vice chair of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), and has served on the boards of the Land Trust Alliance, World Resources Institute, and Scenic Hudson. Currently she chairs the Land Trust Alliance National Council and serves on the board of NatureBridge. Long had a previous business career and is a graduate of the Harvard Business School.*"
"Another great example of draining the swamp. This advisory board has a history of wasting money on unnecessary travel."
Any documentation available for that claim?
IF TAXPAYERS ARE TRULY CONCERNED About Wasteful Travel, Read:
TRUMP'S WASTEFUL TRAVEL AT TAXPAYER'S EXPENSE
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/2/21/1636368/-Trump-Spends-More-Tr...
You expect us to put any stock in an article that starts "Before he became the illegitimate President of the United States"?
FORMER NPS DIRECTOR HARTZOG ON NATIONAL PARKS ADVISORY BOARD
http://www.craterlakeinstitute.com/oral-histories/hertzog-oral-history/a...
We covered a lot of ground in these sessions, but there are a few areas that I'm hoping we can talk about a little bit more. One thing we have not discussed is the advisory board. It would be helpful for me to get a sense of what role the secretary's Advisory Board on National Parks, Historic Sites, Buildings and Monuments played during your tenure.
Well, I felt very good about the role the advisory board played at the time that I was there, because we made a substantive change in the way we managed the affairs of the advisory board. If we had already made up our mind on an issue, we didn't send it to the advisory board. We started using them only for substantive material about which we had not yet made any conclusions, so that we asked for their professional judgments on what the issues should be and what the results should be. The result was that after two or three years the [congressional] committees were sufficiently impressed by the major change in the emphasis of the work of the advisory board that they started always in the hearings asking for the report by the advisory board on the subject matter.
We took them on their field trips and we challenged them in new areas of work that were under consideration. For example, the year that Mel [Dr. Melville B.] Grosvenor became chairman of the advisory board. He was also the CEO of the National Geographic Society. We took the advisory board to Alaska to review almost all of the proposals that we were making up there for the expansion of the system and saving that great natural and cultural area. Out of that trip came subcommittees appointed. I remember the one on the land bridge between Russia and America. The historians, I think, have pretty well settled with the archeologists today that there was originally a connection between the continents. [Dr.] Emil Haury was the chairman of the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Arizona. Ned [Dr. Edward B.] Danson, [Jr.,] who is the director of the Northern Arizona Museum at Flagstaff, one of the greatest museums in the country, Bob [Dr. Robert L.] Stearns, the president of the University of Colorado, and Justice Byron White's father-in-law.... that continued to be the composition of the board until the Nixon administration came in. They came in and they started politicizing it.
W.E.- Excuse me, George, but wasn't Alfred Knopf on the board?
G.H.- Oh, yes, very much so.
W.E.- Yes.
G.H.- The other thing that we did to utilize people like Alfred Knopf, we created a council to the advisory board so that when these very distinguished people--and Alfred Knopf was one of them; Frank [E.] Masland, [Jr.,] was another one of them, and the great old guy, who was the president of the University of California, Dr. Robert G. Sproul--but when they went off, when their term of six years expired, we didn't want to lose them, so we created a council which in effect gave them like an emeritus appointment and they continued to work with the board. They had no vote after their term was over. But they could participate in making a contribution to the learned discussion of the committees and of the board, and many of them did participate. We paid their travel, but they served without compensation. They didn't get any fee or anything. It was a contribution. But we did pay for their travel.
That was your initiative because you started to feel like you were losing some expertise?
We did that when I was director, to capture that talent which otherwise would be lost. After six years of experience, you see, they'd been through the ropes. They knew it and they knew the history of the Service. I'm glad you mentioned that.
W.E.- Also, wasn't it customary that all proposals for new parks were passed on to the advisory board?
G.H.- Oh, yes, absolutely.
W.E.-To advise the secretary of what they thought, which was great.
Well, after you left, the advisory board became a Park Service board instead of functioning at the secretarial level. Is there anything you want to add about the board's role and how it might have changed?
W.E.- It was a board that was listened to and the secretary would put things before them, like any proposed new park, and the Congress, I mean, Alfred Knopf, yes, they listened to him. The fact that he would take this job, he was a very busy man, I mean, if it was only to be a figurehead he wouldn't have taken it. For us it was great; he got a real interest in the parks. He started to visit them and speak very highly of them. So it was not politicized at all. The board was part of the 1935 Historic Sites Act.
Did the passage of the National Historic Preservation Act in 1966 make the board's role any more important?
I don't think it made it any more important, because, you see, the 1966 act created the President's Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, so most of the authority that was given in the 1966 act went to the president's council. It became a very important part of the cultural programs.
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised to see more pro-trump comments posted under the name 'anonymous'.
MORE WASTEFUL TRUMP TRAVEL AT TAXPAYER'S EXPENSE
https://www.gq.com/story/donald-trump-is-spending-all-your-tax-dollars
https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2017/04/28/trump-takes-off...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/09/21/abusing-taxpayer-money...
https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2017/03/18/how-much-trump-fami...
The following clipped from the Coalition to Protect Our National Parks weekly brief:
Department of the Interior
NPS To Be Evicted From Offices In Main Interior
The above Washington Post article also included a short passage regarding a planned upcoming action sure to disrupt the management of the agency. It warrants its own entry. Here it is in its entirety:
"The [NPS advisory] board members' action comes as one of Zinke's top deputies, Doug Domenech, assistant secretary for insular areas, plans to move into the Washington offices that the National Park Service has occupied for half a century. NPS will be relocated elsewhere in the building, according to individuals briefed on the plans."
Source: Above Washington Post article.
The Coalition also reports that nomination of Susan Combs, currently Texas Commissioner of Agriculture has been resubmitted to the Senate. Here is information about her: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Combs
The Coalition reports, too, that trump's nomination for head of Interior's Council on Environmental Quality, Kathleen Hartnet White, has also been resubmitted. Info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathleen_Hartnett_White
and this from the Dallas News: https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/editorials/2017/10/17/trump-errs-nami...
and: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2017/11/07/senate-panel-takes-n...
In addition, this piece from a Texas energy website tells us more about Doug Domenich: https://www.texaspolicy.com/content/detail/doug-domenech-joins-tppf-as-d...
And this from a watchdog group: http://www.allgov.com/news/top-stories/assistant-secretary-of-interior-f...
I found this comment in the article to be of particular interest: In an August 2015 opinion piece for the Washington Examiner, he called the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) "an overreaching federal agency unbounded by public opinion or congressional oversight that acts recklessly on secret science." He worked at the oil industry-funded group for nearly two years, leaving to lead the Trump administration's Interior Department transition team and then as senior White House advisor to Interior.
He is married to Jeanne Domenech, whom he met in forestry school. They have two daughters, Emily and Florence, and two sons, Ben and Ellis. Ben Domenech {his son} is a conservative writer who in 2006 was forced to resign from The Washington Post after only three days on the job because critics had found multiple instances of plagiarism on his part.
Sure looks like trump is working hard on filling the swamp with some questionable crittters.
And finally, the House Natural Resources Committee has submitted
H.R. 3058, to redesignate the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in the State of Missouri as the "Gateway Arch National Park". Why?