“Should we close our national parks?” 

The late Bernard DeVoto asked this question in a powerful essay published in 1953. I don’t believe that he really meant to lock the gate and throw the keys away, but rather to awaken the public to the critical, serious issues the parks faced at that time in history.
 
I feel the same question should be asked today. If anything, the issues are more critical now than in DeVoto’s day, half a century ago.
 
Consider that in 1992 the University of Arizona Press published my book, Regreening the National Parks, and now I am working on a new updated edition. Virtually all my research and continued study show that our treasured national parks have suffered from political interference and profiteering power, and are being reduced to commercialized popcorn playgrounds.
 
I hope that I can help to reverse this course and restore the esteem our national parks deserve. Toward that end I invite and welcome your input on how you see the parks, with their pluses and minuses, and your suggestions on how to best protect and manage them in the public interest. But first, this evidence:
 
Olympic National Park, Washington. After seven years in the making, the park has released its final General Management Plan (GMP), covering 900 pages in two volumes, and meant to guide park management for the next 20 years. A critique in the newsletter of Olympic Park Associates, the citizen group of the region, notes: “It takes some positive steps toward ecosystem protection. But despite the urging of conservationists, it tends to be overly focused on motorized use and presents a timid approach to preserving the wilderness integrity of this world-class park.”
 
Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has before it a brief filed by a citizen coalition challenging the park’s Colorado River Management Plan as heavily weighted in favor of motorized tour boats and helicopter exchanges. The lawsuit contends those uses in the river corridor fail to preserve wilderness values, and fail to protect the Grand Canyon’s natural soundscape in violation of the NPS 1916 Organic Act. It challenges commercialization of the river in favor of concession craft while severely limiting self-guided river runners.
 
Great Smoky Mountains National Park, North Carolina-Tennessee. Conservation organizations early in July conducted a press conference in Knoxville to protest the Bush administration proposed change in EPA regulations that would result in worsening air pollution. The rule change would alter power-plant emission-reporting requirements in a way that would lead to serious underestimates of pollution increases in the park. It would make it easier for new coal-fired power plants to gain approval, and six such plants have been proposed within a 200-mile radius of the park. Great Smokies already is the most heavily polluted national park.
 
Yellowstone National Park, Montana-Idaho-Wyoming. “From mid-December to mid-March Yellowstone bans automobiles from most of the park, but it welcomes snowmobiles on 189 miles of snow-covered roads. One of these machines can emit as many hydrocarbons as 250 cars – and there are about 80,000 snowmobiles in the park each season. Park employees complain of headaches, nausea and throat irritation from the pollution, and fresh air has to be pumped into park entrance booths. The Bluewater Network, leader of the national campaign to keep snowmobiles out of the park, calculates that in addition to fouling the air, two-stroke snowmobile engines dump 180,000 to 210,000 gallons of unburned gasoline and motor oil on Yellowstone’s ecosystem each season.” – Ted Williams, Forest Magazine, Summer 2008.

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In April 2007, I titled a post "Laverty the Disaster" and concluded it with this warning:

I believe the President's selection of Lyle Laverty for the #3 position within the Department of Interior represents just about the worst possible choice. "Disaster" does not begin to describe what we can expect if he is confirmed.

Pasted below is an article from today's Rocky Mountain News about a newly completed audit of Colorado Parks as it had operated under Laverty's leadership.

Here's the bottom line of that audit.

 "There is a pervasive, long-standing culture of abuse, waste and loss," said Jennifer Harmon, a legislative auditor. "It needs a complete turnaround."

Today the Department of Interior needs a complete turnaround and a fresh start. The same thing can be said about the Legislature, the Judiciary the Executive Office, the National Park Service, the US Forest Service and a lot more. The appended article suggests: ".... it's like the inmates are in control." I'd suggest that many of those now in control should rightly be inmates.

Scott

On an environmental listserv someone today wrote:

Sustainability (and wilderness, for that matter) are dead ideas. Say goodbye to them. All ecosystems, in 100 years, are moving ~100 - 150 miles north or an equivalent up ...

To which I'd like to respond.
 
I agree that the ecology of designated Wilderness areas is subject to change (perhaps radical change), but strongly disagree with the claim that wilderness is "a dead idea." 
 
With regard to "sustainability", that politically motivated frame was invented in the 70s as an ecological analogue of the "New Deal." It was a compromise intended to sustain capitalism during a period of intense environmental attack and to avoid taking meaningful actions on such growth-unfriendly issues as population control and over consumption. The hope was that by working within the system (as contrasted to opposing it or trying to modify it), the conservation community could take the hard edge off unlimited growth and spare the planet the worst of its impacts.
 
Contrary to anyone's assessment that the concept of sustainability is dead, I suggest that few who possess power or influence will be kissing that idea farewell anytime soon. The decades old concepts of sustainable growth and sustainable development are about to blossom and the result will be unnecessarily extreme and disastrous overshoots on numerous fronts.   

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What follows is a comment letter sent to the Supervisor of the Shawnee National Forest.

Those who believe in the US Forest Service and have faith in them -- are will likely see one thing in the appended News Release.

Those who do not believe in the Forest Service, those who have lost all faith in that agency, and those who are familiar with the American Recreation Coalition as a black-hat, anti-environmental lobby group shamelessly exploiting the issue of "kids in nature" as a vehicle with which to further commercialize, privatize and motorize our National Forests, will likely to see something entirely different.

Is there a right and a wrong interpretation for the appended News Release?

Scott

The headline given to the appended Op-Ed was "Compromise not option on proposed wilderness." The author is adamant in his position and states it in three words "No Wilderness, period." I am not sharing this for it's rant value. I am sharing it because, it is so incredibly uncommon to see "compromise" taken off the table.

The writer of this Op-Ed states:

[ We are told that even if they become wilderness, we will still be able to snowmobile and ride ATVs, mountain bikes, dirt bikes and generally enjoy our recreation essentially unchanged. Wanna bet? ]

Did someone really say that after these areas became Wilderness, snowmobiling, dirt biking etc. would remain accepted uses? Perhaps he's making part that up. Or, perhaps, those who are promoting this Wilderness Bill have really offered that compromise as a price they are willing to pay in order to get their bill passed.
I'm sharing this piece because it offers an uncommon perspective on the subject of compromise in relationship to Wilderness designation and, by extension,  Wilderness management.

I'd grown tired of hearing only the cry coming from my fellow conservationists saying we all must compromise, compromise and keep compromising until Wilderness-haters find it worth their while to abandon their principles and clinch the deal.

Scott 

Bill Schneider of the New West online magazine has published TWO very important articles in as many days.

Yesterday, Bill shared an internal memo from within the ranks of the Montana Wilderness Association. That memo called upon MWA to return to its roots and distance itself from positions and policies said to be overly compromising and harmful to the very purposes for which the organization existed. It called upon MWA to break free from the PEW/ Campaign for America's Wilderness orbit and to refuse to "submit to Faustian bargains in an attempt to cut across the switchbacks on our way to new wilderness."

That piece can be read here.

 Today Bill followed up with further discussion of what he refers to as "a feud between green groups." Here are a few lines quoted from that piece, to give you an idea of what it is about:

 [First, if wilderness groups can’t find enough common ground to form a unified front in the battle for Wilderness, we should just give up and go to Plan B, to be explained later in this commentary. I still can’t imagine Congress passing a true Wilderness bill with a large percentage of wilderness advocates opposing it--or to be fine-line political, not supporting it.

 Second, I probably shouldn’t call it a green group feud. It no longer seems like green vs. green; it’s more like green vs. brown, with supporters of the quid pro quo approach being brown and supporters of the save-what-we-have-left approach staying green.]

I'd like to thank Bill for giving exposure to this issue. I'd also like to suggest to Bill and others, that there are many "Plan Bs" and no one should feel confined to select between the current "Plan A" and those few alternatives offered in Bill's article available at this link.

I'd furthermore like to suggest that those who see themselves as "green", as Bill defined above, should consider aligning themselves with the efforts of "Voices for Public Lands".  VPL is a coalition, now consisting of some 45 member organizations united in support of a set of Principles for Public Lands. VPL is prepared to challenge overly compromising Plan As and to create and advocate for, better Plan Bs, Cs and Ds.

To learn more, click here.

Scott

Don't miss this article that appeared on the front page of the New York Times on Friday, March 7 under the headline:

 Recreation Fees Rising in Wake of Fires' Costs

This is the most prominent national coverage of the issue of public lands access fees to date. You will note from the headline and the opening passages that the Forest Service is now shifting the blame for access fees to the cost of firefighting. Don't be fooled by this. In the Forest Service budgeting process, fire and recreation budgets are completely separate.

The fees began long before the extreme fires of recent years. Originally, the justification was backlogged maintenance needs. Then it became reduced appropriated budgets. Now it's firefighting.

Fees have nothing to do with fire. Fee revenue has not made a dent in backlogged maintenance needs. Fees have not prevented the Forest Service from closing and decommissioning thousands of recreation sites. Fees are an issue all to themselves. The public lands agencies have become addicted to fees for their own sake, and will use any excuse to continue them.

The NY Times story is helping gain the attention of officials in Washington who have not previously focused on the fee issue. This is a perfect time to contact your elected officials in the House and Senate and ask them to support S.2438, the Fee Repeal and Expanded Access Act. You can find out contact information about your elected officials at www.Senate.gov and www.House.gov . Please call, fax, or email them today.

Thanks,
Kitty Benzar, President
Western Slope No-Fee Coalition

Pasted below is a News Release issued today by the American Recreation Coalition. It speaks of those special lures now being used by the motorized recreation industry and their federal partners to attract additional customers and to hook 'em on powerboating, houseboating, recreation trailers, ATVs and all those other marvelous products, goods and services that make spending time (and money) in the Great Outdoors so valuable ---  or is that 'profitable'?

In sharing this News Release I run the risk that some people will actually buy into these cleverly targeted Public Relations efforts. I run the risk well-meaning people simply don't know the first thing about these anti-environmental, motorized wreckreation industry players and their motives and will thus accept this News Release at face value.

I run the risk of being called an "extremist" by my usual opponents and by those of my peers who are supporting the industry's  'More Kids in the Woods' campaign and by fellow conservationists who are piggy-backing upon the Nature Deficiency Disorder / Couch Potato Kids / Declining Visitation  mania with campaigns of their own -- campaigns that offer kids a different alternative than the motorized techno-gadgetry being hyped by the ARC. These campaigns do not so much compete with the ARC as amplify the effectiveness of the ARC's master campaign --- or so I suggest.

I am prepared to take risks in my ongoing efforts to convince my peers to start calling BS on the industry's anti-environmental efforts.

Either the conservation community joins with Wild Wilderness in speaking out, or the Great Outdoors will, as I have long warned,  be radically transformed to accommodate the commercialized, privatized and motorized special interest groups and corporation who sponsored this event and who pull the strings of the land management agencies.

Scott

American Recreation Coalition member groups keep their supporters updated as I as do Wild Wilderness' supporters. One of the ARC-slanted resources I monitor is the monthly newsletter of the National Association of RV Parks and Campgrounds.

Pasted below are three short items from the "Government Affairs" section of their February edition. The first is about the National Park Centennial Initiative, the second about the Baucus Fee Repeal bill and the third is about ARC's efforts to shape the future of recreation at Army Corps rec-sites.... which, I'd just remind folks, provide the lion's share of ALL OUTDOOR RECREATION visits in this country.

In these three items you may notice that the common thread is private-sector recreation profits. When it comes to public lands recreation policy, private sector recreation profits is the main driver.

Scott

Patiently the D.H.C. [Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning] explained. If the children were made to scream at the sight of a rose, that was on grounds of high economic policy. Not so very long ago (a century or thereabouts), Gammas, Deltas, even Epsilons, had been conditioned to like flowers -- flowers in particular and nature in general. The idea was to make them want to be going out into the country at every available opportunity, and so compel them to consume transportation.

 

"And didn't they consume transport?' asked the student.

 

'Quite a lot," the D.H.C. replied. 'But nothing else.'

 

Primroses and landscapes, he pointed out, have one grave defect: they are gratuitous. A love of nature keeps no factories busy. Is was decided to abolish the love of nature, at any rate amongst the lower classes to abolish the love of nature, but not the tendency to consume transport. For of course it was essential that they should keep on going to the country, even thought they hated it. The problem was to find an economically sounder reason for consuming transport than a mere affection for primroses and landscapes. It was duly found.

 

'We condition the masses to hate the country,' concluded the Director. 'But simultaneously we condition them to love all country sports. At the same time, we see to it that all country sports shall entail the use of elaborate apparatus. So that they consume manufactured articles as well as transport. Hence those electric shocks.'

 

'I see,'said the student, and was silent, lost in admiration.

 

                                 - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World 1932

From: WESTERN SLOPE NO-FEE COALITION

The Fee Repeal and Expanded Access Act has gained another co-sponsor!

Colorado Senator Ken Salazar has joined Senators Max Baucus and Jon Tester, both of Montana, and Idaho Senator Mike Crapo in backing S.2438, which will repeal the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act, known to many as the Recreation Access Tax, or RAT.

Senator Salazar serves on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and on both the National Parks and Public Lands & Forests Subcommittees, so he is in an excellent position to help get S.2438 passed.

Thanks to all you Coloradans who contacted Senator Salazar, not only about this bill, but about fees in general over several years. Please take a moment to thank him for his decision and assure him of your support. At http://salazar.senate.gov/contact/email.cfm you can send a brief email of thanks and see a list of his office phone numbers around the state and in Washington.

All of you in other states, please take encouragement from this and keep calling and writing YOUR Senators! You can locate their contact information at www.senate.gov. Just a brief message is all it takes: Please co-sponsor S.2438, the Fee Repeal and Expanded Access Act.

Kitty Benzar,
President, Western Slope No-Fee Coalition
 

The appended article, which is about a proposed new $US1000 extraction fee for having yourself pried from within a mangled and crushed vehicle,  is described as breaking new ground.

Two questions:

• 1) What becomes of someone who refuses to pay the Jaws of Life Fee?
  
  
• 2) What will sprout up from this newly broken ground --i.e.,  what's next?

It was not so long ago that the American public could barely conceive of being charged a fee to walk in the woods, another fee to sit by a stream and watch the water flow, another fee to watch the deer browse, and yet another fee to look upon the setting sun.  New ground was broken with the Recreation Fee Demonstration program. All of those fees have now become part of our American culture and our American way of life. In the past decade, much has sprouted from that broken ground with the Jaws of Life Fee being an obvious extension.

As for the ANSWER to the first of my questions posed above, consider this. In order to make the newly proposed fee work, those who can not pay or who refuse to pay must suffer. It is only through the use of enforced suffering can fees such as these become accepted, or at least, tolerated.

Scott

Yesterday I shared, and commented upon, a News Release distributed by the National Park Service but written by the American Recreation Coalition. It announced an ARC event that begins tomorrow and at which high-level federal officials will be participating. At the very top of the News Release appeared the words "MEDIA ADVISORY FROM GET OUTDOORS USA!"

Go to the Get Outdoors USA website and you discover that this "organization," founded by ARC President Derrick Crandall, has two, and only two,  "members" -- those being the American Recreation Coalition and the Coleman Company. The Coleman Company is a "sustaining member of the American Recreation Coalition"  and has long been represented on ARC's Board of Directors.

Read the News Release, and you see references to Derrick Crandall, to someone from the Coleman Company and to Rex Maughan -- listed as Chairman of Forever Resorts.

Maughan is so much more than just a rich, powerful, anti-environmental and pro-motorized wreckreation NPS concessionaire. He long served as Treasurer  upon the ARC's Board of Directors and as the Chairman of the concessionaire lobby which recently renamed itself "Park Partners". Explore the Park Partners website.  These people are indeed PARTNERS of the NPS. They are the managing partners while those persons employed by the NPS or the federal government are merely junior partners.

Yesterday, Kurt Repanshek at the NationalParksTraveler blog also wrote about this News Release. Kurt focused upon Crandall and the ARC connection. He titled his piece; "Strange Bedfellows" -- and he was correct.

Today I'd like to focus upon Rex Maughan. As important as Crandall is when it comes to shaping the look, feel and operation of America's National Parks, Maughan is more so. Crandall is, as the news release so proudly states, "The Outdoor Guru". Maughan is much more. Crandall is a hired hand. Maughan owns the ranch: many ranches, including the Southfork Ranch from the TV show "Dallas" -- pictured here.

In 1992, conservationist Michael Frome  in his book "Regreening The National Parks"  took Maughan and his NPS partners to task. Frome warned us about the frisky frolicking of these Strange Bedfellows.

Appended are Frome's words. Did anyone listen? Is anyone now listening?

Scott 

For more than two decades Secretaries, Under Secretaries and Assistant Secretaries of Interior and Agriculture  have bowed to the man known as "The Outdoor Guru".

This morning, The Guru spoke. He spoke against efforts in California to better control emissions from dirtbikes, snowmobiles and jetskis. He spoke in support of the motorized recreation and petroleum industries -- something The Guru has done for more than two decades. 

Two days from now, according to the appended NPS-Media Advisory, The Guru will be joined by Assistant Secretary Lyle Laverty and Undersecretary Mark Rey and together they will announce an important new initiative to Get Kids Outdoors.

Green or Greenwash? You decide.

Scott

In the appended article and elsewhere we are told that kids are becoming obese while spending far too many hours immobilized before TV's and play-stations.  We are told, and it is true, that it would be highly beneficial if kids spent more time enjoying the natural environment and participating in unstructured outdoor play. I fully support those goals and yet I find myself questioning the mechanisms being brought to bear upon this situation.

Forget for the moment that the now-famous Richard Louv (Brand) "Nature Deficiency Disorder" is largely the over-hyped PR-creation of the recreation industry. Forget that the industry's purpose for promulgating this campaign (starting more than a decade before Louv was elevated to celebrity status) has always been to get more kids, teens, adults, retires and recreation consumers into the woods on off-road vehicles while pumping money into the tourism economy. Forget that vital piece of information and merely ask yourself whether it is appropriate to impose regressive and/or sin taxes that disproportionately impact persons of limited financial means?

In this instance, is it right to penalize a poor minority family or the single mother whose kids are getting fat while glued in front of the TV?  Will taxing their TV or video game resolve the social and economic issues that created this situation?  Will taking money from that family's budget solve their children's weight problems, improve the quality of their diet or allow poor children to have recreational opportunities even vaguely similar to those of wealthy families -- families easily capable of purchasing the biggest televisions on the market while spending but a fraction of the tax cuts heaped upon them in recent years -- families who can afford personal trainers, memberships at the gym and even the new "America the Beautiful - National Parks and Federal Recreational Lands Annual Pass" created by and for the identical recreation industry groups currently hyping the "More Kids in the Woods" mantra.

Poorer people and working people did not receive similar windfalls. Poorer families can not afford the higher fees charged to access outdoor recreation areas, engage in school sports, or to swim and play at the local municipal park.  Higher fees which exclude the poor are oftentimes, by design, meant to exclude the poor. EXCLUSION is their purpose 

I don't know what it is with the conservation community that they have become increasingly quick to rally behind regressive taxes and user fees. Socking it to the poor with TV-taxes is but the tip of an enormous iceberg of society-altering proposals based upon pricing and economic coercion. Pricing the poor out of the market has become a preferred tool of neoliberals and the liberals alike! Conservationists, in particular, have become extremely supportive of using targeted taxes and user fees to address a wide range of environmental problems. In this regard, they have embraced a New Environmentalism far removed from, and oftentimes counter to, the ideals of environmental and social justice.

Scott 

The main-headline given to the appended Salt Lake Tribune article reads: "Nurturing love for outdoors" while the sub-headline reads: "Outdoor industry sees teens as business future." The bottom line of this article and of the entire industry-created "More Kids in the Woods" campaign, can be read in the final, uncharacteristically revealing, quote.

Read this article and decide whether the main or the contrasting sub-headline accurately explains the increasingly frantic efforts of an industry which sees the good times in its rear-view mirror and a vast emptiness of its own making,  through the windshield.

I would like to add that it is the recreation industry that is most directly responsible for transforming traditional, sustainable nature-based,  re-creation into unsustainable adrenaline-based wreckreation. I make almost no distinction between the efforts of the non-motorized industry described in this article and those of the motorized recreation industry which have long been the focus of own work as an environmental activist. The differences separating them are less than the ties binding them.

Scott

PS... Following the article is a passage quoted from "Protecting the Golden Goose", an appeal made in 1987 by conservationist Michael Frome to the Travel / Tourism Industry.
 

Appended is an article published today in the LA Times about collaboration and compromise.

 It begins:

["Collaboration" is all the rage. In collaboration, diverse stakeholders (as they invariably tag themselves) -- environmentalists, developers, off-roaders, timber companies, county officials -- hash out an agreement on how to manage their local public lands and then submit it to Congress for approval.]

As a further introduction,  I offer a few words from David Brower sent, in 1989, to Doug Scott,  then Conservation Director of the Sierra Club.

From - David Brower 1989

[My thesis is that compromise is often necessary but that it ought not originate with the Sierra Club. We are to hold fast to what we believe is right, fight for it, and find allies and adduce all possible arguments for our cause. If we cannot find enough vigor in us or them to win, then let someone else produce the compromise. We thereupon work hard to coax it our way. We become a nucleus around which the strongest force can build and function....

   The Club is so eager to appear reasonable that it goes soft, undercuts the strong grassroots efforts of chapters, groups, and other organizations -- as if the new professionalization and prioritization requires rampant tenderization. I go along with Ray Dasmann, when he speaks of those who want to appear reasonable to the Fortune 500 and allies, and who therefore go to lunches, or to other lengths, to demonstrate their credibility, access, insiderness, and reasonable strategy. Ray says it is a union between Bambi and Godzilla.]

Scott

"(Many) national environmental organizations, I fear, have grown away from the grassroots to mirror the foxes they had been chasing. They seem to me to have turned tame, corporate and compromising, into raging moderates replacing activism with pragmatic politics, and a willingness to settle for paper victories."     --Michael Frome,  2000

"Snowmobile fees are tough, but right choice" was the headline given to the appended Op-Ed by a Maine newspaper. Twenty-five years ago, the recreation industry, acting in response to challenges they saw looming for the continued growth in motorized recreation equipment sales and associated tourism revenues, came to much the same conclusion. Twenty-five years ago, the motorized recreation and the travel-tourism industries, with the blessing and full cooperation of the Reagan Administration, undertook the serious transformation of soul-comforting, nature-based re-creation into adrenaline pumping, pay-to-play outdoor wreckreation.  For them, it wasn't a tough choice at all. It was a rational and strategic business decision and it was not something they attempted to hide. To the contrary, they worked diligently to sell the pay-to-play idea to outdoor enthusiasts. They are still doing so to this very day.

I wish I could share the appended Op-Ed with only my environmental friends. I wish snowmobilers, dirtbikers, ATVers and jetskiers never got to read this Op-Ed or my introduction.  This Op-Ed got it right — right, that is, if privatization, commercialization and motorization of recreational opportunities in nature is your desired objective.

You might ask, "Why, then, are you sharing this?"  To which I'd respond, "Because it is the truth."

 "When people who are honestly mistaken learn the truth, they will either cease being mistaken, or cease being honest."
       (- source of quote unknown)