Storm clouds over Bryce Canyon National Park/Rebecca Latson
Politics has taken the voice away from the National Park Service. Instead of relying on the expertise of its biologists, archaeologists, botanists and others, the agency has deferred to administration partisans in the Interior Department with intentions not always in the best interests of the national parks.
Some of those who have lost their voices are doing so out of self-preservation. They like to be gainfully employed in their chosen profession.
"I don’t hear much about anyone who is stepping up, even in a subtle way, to talk about what is 'right' rather than what 'is,'" Bill Wade, who grew up in a national park and then spent his professional career with he Park Service, told me. ”Doesn’t help when everyone sees what happened to Wenk when he tried to stand up to a wrong-headed decision."
"Wenk," of course, is Dan Wenk, who is retiring this week after more than four decades with the agency rather than move across the country to oversee the National Capital Region of the Park Service for a few years. A member of the Senior Executive Service, Wenk's position with the Park Service is at the will of the agency's director. And when he and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke got cross-wise over how Yellowstone's bison herds should be managed, Wenk was told to either head to Washington or retire. He chose retirement, a terrible decision for the Park Service but one its political elements forced him into.
Wenk's dedication to the National Park Service Organic Act, which directs the Park Service "to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations," and not political pressures was indirectly recognized this week when a U.S. District Court judge in Montana vetoed the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's decision to remove Endangered Species Act protections from grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.
Part of Judge Dana Christensen's ruling mirrored concerns voiced two years ago by Wenk, who at the time was the only voice on the Yellowstone Ecosystem Subcommittee of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee opposing the conservation strategy that was to be used once the bears lost their ESA protections.
Wenk at the time told the Traveler he was concerned about the "ambiguity" of the conservation strategy's intent to continue to base grizzly bear populations on the so-called Chao2 estimator. That estimator factors in numbers of grizzly sows not observed by researchers working on estimates. While the conservation strategy said the Chao2 methodology would be used for the "foreseeable future," Superintendent Wenk wanted greater assurance that Chao2 would remain in the plan. That assurance was not forthcoming.
Seemingly channeling the superintendent, Judge Christensen wrote that by not ensuring consistency in population estimates, "the Service illegally negotiated away its obligation to apply the best available science in order to reach an accommodation with the states of Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana."
Secretary Ryan Zinke's desire to allow hunters in the state of Alaska kill more wolves and bears in national preserves the Park Service manages in that state has been met by acquiescence by the Park Service, which in 2015 banned the following practices in the preserves:
* Taking any black bear, including cubs and sows with cubs, with artificial light at den sites
* Harvesting brown bears over bait
* Taking wolves and coyotes (including pups) during the denning season (between May 1 and August 9)
* Taking swimming caribou
* Taking caribou from motorboats under power
* Taking black bears over bait Using dogs to hunt black bears
In its environmental assessment on the changes, Park Service staff relied on state of Alaska assurances that increased hunting of the predators would not have an overall impact on their populations. (They did acknowledgement the rule changes would reduce opportunities for wildlife viewing and degrade wilderness character in the preserves).
Today the Park Service is being forced, some would say, into positions it wouldn’t normally take if it closely followed both the National Park Service Organic Act and the 2006 Management Policies that are the guidelines superintendents are supposed to refer to when coming to decisions.
Most recently, Secretary Zinke ordered the Park Service and other bureaus under him to relax their wildlife/fisheries management plans to mesh with state plans. As University of Utah law Professor Robert Keiter pointed out, Zinke lacks the authority to do so. When Park Service staff at their Washington headquarters were asked about that, it took a week to come up with a response, in part because it had to be approved by Interior Department staff. While that response stated that any changes would be made consistent with the Organic Act and other federal laws and regulations, they added that recommendations also will be "in accord with policies established by the Director of the National Park Service and the Secretary of the Interior."
But will those "policies established by the Director of the National Park Service and the Secretary of the Interior" be in the best interests of the national parks and their wildlife? Judge Christensen's ruling this week made it clear that the Trump administration's Fish and Wildlife Service was not operating in the best interests of grizzlies.
Years ago, Mike Finley, then superintendent of Yosemite National Park, was so concerned with overcrowding of the Yosemite Valley that he actually restricted access at times to limit visitors and gain Congress’s attention. Today such a move would be anathema.
"You are asking important questions for which there are no good answers," Rick Smith, another long-tenured Park Service veteran, replied when I asked whether the current Park Service staff is being trampled by politics, not best decisions. "There have been 'pushbacks' in NPS history, something that Wade calls 'selective disobedience.' But I suspect the tolerance for that is at an all-time low in the NPS in the current political climate. That is why the Coalition (to Protect America's National Parks) is now more important than ever. Someone with NPS experience has to speak for wolf pups and bear cubs. It certainly won’t be any of those running the DOI."
Administrations in Washington come and go. The Park Service Organic Act has been around for more than a century, and was reaffirmed by Congress in 1978 when it passed the Redwoods Act. In crafting the Redwoods Act, which expanded Redwoods National and State Parks, Congress specifically included this language:
"...the promotion and regulation of the various areas of the National Park system ... shall be consistent with and founded in the purpose established by the first section of the Act of August 25, 1916, to the common benefit of all the people of the United States. The authorization of activities shall be construed and the protection, management, and administration of these areas shall be conducted in light of the high public value and integrity of the National Park System and shall not be exercised in derogation of the values and purposes for which these various areas have been established, except as may have been or shall be directed and specifically provided by Congress." (emphasis added)
Courts have repeatedly upheld that approach to managing the national parks.
The National Park System belongs to the American people, not a political persuasion, and should be managed as such.
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Comments
It's not just the NPS that has been robbed. This administration's attack on truth spreads throughout our government just as smelly sludge oozes out across the width and breadth of a drying bed at a sewage plant.
Let's hope that voters bring it to an end as soon as we can.
Here, from the Weekly Report on National Parks from the Coalition to Protect our Parks comes this tidbit:
EPA Continues Efforts To Weaken Laws Checking Greenhouse Gas Emissions – On September 21st, the Washington Post ran an article on the so-called Environmental Protection Agency’s latest effort to weaken laws that limit emissions that are fueling climate change. Reporter Dino Grandoni wrote the following: “First it was carbon dioxide, when the Environmental Protection Agency proposed in August relaxing pollution standards for coal-fired power plants meant to curb emissions of that most common greenhouse gas. Then it was methane, when both the EPA and Interior Department each took steps in recent weeks toward replacing Obama-era rules regulating the leaking of that climate-warming gas from oil and natural gas infrastructure. Now, the Trump administration is trying to replace regulations for an even more obscure set of greenhouse gases in an effort apparently aimed at slowing down the Obama administration's efforts to deter global warming.” This time they’re looking to weaken rules meant to prevent the leaking and venting of a set of organic compounds called hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, from large refrigerating and air-conditioning units. “In the case of HFCs,” writes Grandoni, “even tiny amounts leached into the atmosphere pack a wallop of a punch to the climate. On a pound-for-pound basis, those compounds have a warming potential thousands of times greater than that of carbon dioxide.”
Here's a link to the site so readers who aren't familiar with the Coalition may begin to become acquainted : https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=wm#inbox/FMfcgxvzKktTTgljwHWKBTdkZ...
Be sure to scroll down to the set of items regarding climate change and its effects on parks.
The mission for the short term has to be preventing those acts which cause irrparable harm and mitigating those acts which, in time, can be corrected.
Looking forward to election day!
interesting article. The Wenks and Finleys of the world would be the first to tell you they had competent and engaged staff to back them up at all levels of the agency and the Department. Relationships had been built over decades (when mobility was encouraged) to where important decisions could be made with confidence you wouldn’t get stabbed in the back. You had a history with people. You could trust them and they could trust you.
Today in the NPS, rightly or wrongly there is a culture of gotcha! Through social media and other ways of communication the leadership of the agency is constantly under attack and it isn’t just by the political leadership. Employee suggestion boxes are no more - why bother when you can just call thr IG when you have a beef with your boss Or go after them on the NPS employee Facebook site. Many of the processes put in place for accountability purposes have ground hiring to a snails pace that frustrates all involved. The once simple things that were automatic are now confusing, slow and cumbersome. There are change agents around but hey often become targets themselves.
There are still plenty of good (and brave) people around - it isn’t as easy to see them at work anymore because many have to duck and cover much more than you used to and that is a shame. As much as the politics of things is frustrating to the employees of the agency - we have changed as an agency and not sure it will be better before it is worse. I do have hope for the next Director. He is a decent person who people will follow - and that matters.
NPSer is right about networking, and mobility, and how necessary “accountability” is disfunctional and perverted.
We can learn from the old times. The old times weren’t always so great. Many good people were being shoved out in the 1980s, too. A couple of stories:
I was complaining to a colleague - not for the first time - of how bad things were, how many people were ducking and covering, how many once-critical issues the NPS did not even have a seat at the table now, and how the best we were doing was making bad things a little less bad. And how I had just talked to the Dep Dir Mary Lou Grier about her wanting to crush a Superintendent for simply getting the local agricultural college to conduct a range study of the of effects of the grazing leases on his park. Where is the NPS?
My colleague, though patient, cut in:
’What we have,’ he said and aimed his hand at my chest, ‘is You, and‘ - pointing to himself - Me.’
What he meant was, we build our networks one person at a time, and step by step do what can to improve things, to seek an advantage.
— Not long after I was on the last plane late on a Friday out of Washington. In that eerie quiet in a late-night plane, trying to digest what I had been through that day in WASO. There was a guy sitting across from the empty seat, who said he was here for an experimental treatment program for his cancer, he had been expecting death somewhat philosophically when the treatments started but 22 treatments later he was surprised he was still alive.
It gave him perspective on his work. He was Team Leader at a famous science lab, mentoring around 20 scientists under him. 3 times more than the old ideal.
But he said, ‘you know, it helps to see the patterns. You can see the people in an organization in three groups. One is made of people who will do well no matter what you throw at them. On the other end, there’s the spoilers. Not that they are dumb or incapable. Many are smart. But they are the spoilers’
‘And then there is the group in between.’
‘THEY are looking which way to jump,’ said the Team Leader scientist sitting across from me.
’As manager, it is up to you to show them which way to jump.’
He said, don’t manage for the spoilers. Use excellence. One person at a time, show that excellence is the way ahead.
Two important lessons in troubled times.
Helped me stay positive. Stay focused on the excellence, keep your eye on the Values that matter, why you are doing this. Build and reinforce like-minded partnerships.
Thanks, D-2; I needed to read that. Even if we don't have managers like that, and even if there are a lot of careerists ducking and dissembling, there still _are_ a lot of folks out there at all levels of the park service simply doing what is needed for unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations. I'm fortunate to interact with many of them in my job.