National Parks threatened by an unlikely source, the National Park Service

OPINION

By Rick LoBello, iloveparks.com

In 2007 after nearly ten years of study, the National Park Service concluded that so many snowmobiles are incompatible with the preservation of Yellowstone National Park’s natural resources. To those concerned about the future of the world’s first national park and what many have said it the best idea America ever had, one might think that with that research conclusion it would be a given that changes would soon come to how the National Park Service manages the use of snowmobiles in the fragile winter wonderland. Unfortunately the report was only wishful thinking for as soon after the results were announced the country’s “law suit machine” intervened preventing the NPS from moving forward.

Over the years I have seen many instances of how political forces have prevented the National Park Service from living up to its mandate, but now I am seeing examples of a threat even more troublesome. When I worked at Carlsbad Caverns National Park in 1993 the park recommended that the underground lunch room in the Big Room be removed because of its impact on the fragile underground ecology of the cave and because it was is no longer necessary and was incongruent to the “natural visitor experience”. When the Superintendent Frank Deckert tried to implement the change and move the food service up the elevator to the Visitor Center area, Senator Pete Dominici (R-New Mexico) who was a part of the fight against removal, announced that President Bill Clinton had signed the 1995 Interior Appropriations Bill that included a clause to bar removal of the facility. Deckert did the best he could to live up to the National Park Service mandate to preserve and protect the parks, but his efforts were stymied by the political influence forced upon the NPS by Senator Dominici.

That was 1995, today park superintendents like Frank Deckert with the passion to protect the parks have all but retired and many who remain seem more concerned about keeping their jobs than they are about protecting the parks. The other day when I opened up my winter 2009 issue of National Parks, the Magazine of the National Parks and Conservation Association, I was reminded of a new and growing trend in our country’s national parks that few people are talking about. That trend is the growing threat to the parks from within the National Park Service. Yes, you heard that right, I saw it happening when I worked in the national parks over a 25 years period and I see it continuing to happen today. The quality and dedication of the people running our parks is declining and park rangers with the guts to stand up for what is right are rapidly becoming endangered species.

I applaud NPCA for saying it like it is when they criticized the NPS for failing to follow their own science when choosing to allow a daily count of 720 snowmobiles in the park this winter in response to a court order requiring them to provide for snowmobile and snowcoach access in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Park. Over the past ten years more than a half million Americans have made comments about winter access in the park with four out of five favoring snowcoaches over snowmobiles. According to NPCA, Yellowstone’s Superintendent Suzanne Lewis could have caped the daily limit at 318 snowmobiles this winter, but chose not to by defaulting to the upper limit of 720, a number that NPCA says “flies in the face” of the Park Service’s own science.

Let’s all hope that with the new Administration and President Barack Obama’s call to “restore science to its rightful place,” current and future park rangers will be both encouraged and required to make better choices for the future of our national parks.