Traveler's View: Random Thoughts From, And About, National Parks

An aspiring congressman thinks Olympic National Park should be given to the state of Washington/USGS, Robin Munshaw, Simon Fraser University

There really never is a dull moment when it comes to national parks. Not when there's a candidate for Congress saying Olympic National Park should be turned over to the state of Washington, when Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke praises the stabilization of a small backcountry lodge in Glacier National Park but is mum on Grand Canyon National Park's leaky water system, and when the National Park Service looks the other way regarding its role not to interfere with natural processes.

Relinquish Olympic National Park!

Douglas Dightman is a Republican running for Congress in Washington state. A medical doctor hoping to unseat U.S. Rep. Derek Kilmer, Dightman figures that since Olympic is located entirely in Washington, it should be owned and run by the state.

“I’m not sure why we can’t just give the park to the state of Washington and let them manage it, let the people who live around it have more control with what goes on in the park … and have more control at the local level," Dightman said the other day at a League of Women Voters forum that was covered by the Peninsula Daily News.

Kilmer pointed out, though, that it's nice that the entire nation, through the federal budget, pays for the park's upkeep. And with a $120 million maintenance backlog and $12 million annual budget, Olympic can be expensive to operate. With Washington's state and local budget deficit running about $96.3 billion, how likely is it that the state's voters would agree with Dightman?

“It is a good thing that as a nation we collectively say these are public assets that we want to maintain and that that cost is not entirely borne by the residents of the Olympic Peninsula," Kilmer pointed out.

If there ever does come a serious consideration to transfer Olympic to the state, let's hope there's a good appraisal on just what the state should pay for it.

Winter stabilization of Sperry Chalet in Glacier National Park has been completed/Glacier Conservancy

Stablizing Sperry Chalet

3,000 vs. 6 million

Those numbers represent, roughly, the number of visitors who in the past have visited the Sperry Chalet in Glacier National Park during its two-month summer season, and the number of visitors who crowd the South Rim of Grand Canyon National Park each year.

Sperry, of course, burned down in September 2017 as part of the collateral damage caused by the Sprague wildfire. Secretary Zinke, a Montanan, quickly came to the rescue, with $12 million from a pot of $138 million Congress gave him to "address only longstanding deferred maintenance and major construction related requirements of the Service.”

The other week, Glacier officials announced that the first phase of rebuilding Sperry -- stabilizing the backcountry lodge for the winter -- had been completed, and the Interior secretary was quick to applaud.

"I cannot say enough good things about the great team rebuilding Sperry Chalet. I've seen the photos and the progress the construction crew has made is incredible," said Zinke. "After last year's devastating fire, I made rebuilding Sperry Chalet a top priority. It wouldn't have been possible without our private partners, community members, and entire Glacier National Park team. I look forward to visiting Sperry again soon."

Meanwhile, some 1,140 miles to the south, the antiquated, decrepit, and leak-prone Transcanyon Waterline that funnels water from the North Rim of Grand Canyon to the South Rim has been springing leaks recently and forcing water conservation measures on South Rim visitors and guests.

The Interior secretary visited Grand Canyon in September to rally support for legislation in Congress that would begin to pay down the National Park Service's roughly $12 billion maintenance backlog. While Zinke helped slap paint on South Rim cabins that date to the 1930s, he didn't mention dipping into that $138 $126 million to help address the leaking pipeline, which most assuredly qualifies as part of the maintenance backlog as well as "major construction."

Park officials have a plan for addressing the matter, but until it is formally approved by the Park Service and bids sought, the repair/replacement cost won't be fully known. But it has been ballparked between $100 million and $150 million. Fortunately, the park does have the funding to continue searching near Phantom Ranch for a new water source for the pipeline.

A wolf recovery program this fall brought four wolves to Isle Royale National Park, where just these two had been remaining/Michigan Tech

Not All Natural Processes Are Equal

Chapter 4 of the National Park Service's Management Policies addresses how superintendents should manage natural resources in their parks. It clearly states that natural processes should typically be allowed to play out, unimpeded.

Natural resources will be managed to preserve fundamental physical and biological processes, as well as individual species, features, and plant and animal communities. The Service will not attempt to solely preserve individual species (except threatened or endangered species) or individual natural processes; rather, it will try to maintain all the components and processes of naturally evolving park ecosystems, including the natural abundance, diversity, and genetic and ecological integrity of the plant and animal species native to those ecosystems. Just as all components of a natural system will be recognized as important, natural change will also be recognized as an integral part of the functioning of natural systems. (Emphasis added)

At Isle Royale National Park, the Park Service skirted that guidance when it committed nearly $700,000 for a three-year wolf recovery program -- crating up wolves from other areas of Michigan and Minnesota, and maybe Canada, and shipping them to the park -- to rebuild the predator's population so it might tamp down the burgeoning moose population that is eating up the island's vegetation.

It wasn't a quick, and certainly not an easy, decision. But it now raises questions of how active managers elsewhere in the park system should be in controlling the dynamics of their natural resources, whether the Park Service decision was weighted to support the long-term prey-predator research done by Michigan Tech in Houghton, Mich., and whether the current recovery program will forever forward require Isle Royale managers to manipulate natural processes to achieve a desired result. Some have even suggested that the Park Service should bring lynx and caribou, which were native to the island, back there.

Those IG Reports

The other day, the Interior Department's Inspector General completed yet another report on an investigation into Secretary Zinke's ethical behavior (attached below and to be formally released this week). It focused on his practice of having his wife, who is not a federal employee, travel with him (Secretary Zinke said he reimbursed the government for her travel costs. While Interior policy had prohibited family members from traveling in government vehicles, it changed that policy on July 27, 2018, after it became aware of the IG investigation into Lolita Zinke's travels with her husband); on the $25,000 cost of having a U.S. Park Police security detail accompany him and his wife on a vacation to Turkey (the secretary said the Park Police recommended the detail, he didn't ask for it); on other travel costs and whether they were appropriate, and; whether Zinke ordered a former employee to walk his dog (no he did not, according to the IG).

Whether this behavior by the secretary is greatly contrary to that expected from a public servant no doubt is colored by one's political persuasion. But one glaring aspect that stands out, and which everyone should be concerned about, is the final sentence of the report, concerning the disposition of the findings:

We provided this report to the Deputy Secretary of the Interior for any action deemed appropriate.

Just what are the odds that David Bernhardt will send his boss to the woodshed?