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Quoted from appended San Francisco Chronicle article:
["It's one edge of the administration's big privatization project," alleges Bill Reffalt, chief of the refuge system under former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. "They can't attack it directly; they tried that when James Watt was Secretary of the Interior. So they're trying this form of privatization, so they can reduce the federal presence and control in public areas like parks and refuges."]
Gosh, for a moment I thought the author was describing a different edge of the Bush administration's big privatization project, namely the recreation fee demonstration edge. Perhaps his next article will point out the direct connection.
What is the chance that the private sector (or a tribal government) will provide public access to public lands/facilities unless they are permitted to charge, collect and retain access fees from those members of the public wishing to visit their lands???
Perhaps it is for this very reason that the Bush Administration's newly introduced legislation designed to make fee-demo permanent (HR 3283) contains the following clause:
"The Secretary concerned may establish and charge a fee for a regional multientity pass that will be accepted by one or more Federal land management agencies or by one or more governmental or nongovernmental entities for a specified period not to exceed 12 months."
Perhaps all of Bush's privatization pieces (outsourcing, user-fees, volunteerism, partnerships, etc.) really do fit together into one great big privatization package!
Scott
--- begin quoted---
October 16, 2003
Bush's plan for preserves
Paul McHugh, Chronicle Outdoors Writer
The Bush administration is proposing to alter the way national wildlife
refuges and national parks are staffed and run. The proposal will find
new staff for these preserves outside the traditional National Park
Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service personnel, through
"outsourcing" agreements.
While critics of the proposal see a profound threat to these preserves,
supporters say the changes should bring fresh ideas to resource
management, and cultural renewal to the Indian tribes poised to be the
first to assume many jobs on these federal public lands.
Five national parks and seven refuges form part of the green garland of
lands creating wildlife habitat and open space in the Bay Area. They're
part of the 388-unit national park system that comprises 78,810,678
acres of federal land and the 540 units with 95,000,000 acres in the
system of national wildlife refuges. Proponents of the change say only
a few units will be affected; opponents say many, or all, could be.
The essence of the shift: administration officials encourage Indian
tribes with a cultural, geographic or historic tie to a federal refuge
or park to help run many of these sites. They describe this as a mild
evolution of an ongoing program to empower American Indians and nurture
self-reliance.
Opponents call that a cover story.
"It's one edge of the administration's big privatization project,"
alleges Bill Reffalt, chief of the refuge system under former
Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. "They can't attack it
directly; they tried that when James Watt was Secretary of the
Interior. So they're trying this form of privatization, so they can
reduce the federal presence and control in public areas like parks and
refuges."
"It's a way to help tribes achieve economic independence and self-
governance," counters Paul Hoffman, deputy assistant secretary for fish
and wildlife and parks in the Department of the Interior. Hoffman says
some tribes have wildlife management experience. "We could see new and
innovative practices emerge. But no harm will come to the (Fish and
Wildlife) Service. I don't see reduction in staffing or some wholesale
move of refuges to tribal control."
An April listing in the Federal Register of sites available for
transfer included 18 refuges and 34 national parks, and more than a
dozen refuges in Alaska.
A test case is the National Bison Range in Montana. Salish/Kootenai
tribes, which occupy the nearby Flathead reservation, began lobbying
for control of the programs and budget at Bison Range in 1996, using
provisions of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance
Act.
The tribal push was renewed after Hoffmann took his post in the
Interior Department. He was formerly state director for Vice President
Dick Cheney in the 1980s, when Cheney was a congressman from Wyoming.
Subsequently, Hoffman spent 12 years directing the Chamber of Commerce
in Cody, Wyo., where he was known for battling park wildlife programs
and federal regulations. Now, Hoffman's job is to interpret and
implement such rules.
Last spring, Hoffmann began negotiating in earnest with the
Salish/Kootenai over their proposal to run Bison Range and three other
refuges in Montana, totaling 30,000 acres. But a resident and hunter,
Susan Reneau, an outdoors writer from the Bitterroot Valley, began to
object.
"Everyone assumed it would go through by the end of June,'' she says.
"So we launched a big, grassroots campaign of hunters and sportsmen
against it. I'm not against qualified Indians participating at a
refuge. I am opposed to snatching a refuge from the hands of career
federal wildlife professionals. Hoffman said anyone against a transfer
had to be racist. That's not it. We don't want any local entity taking
over our refuges."
Hoffmann denies ever describing people opposed to such a transfer as racist. However, he does say they're misguided.
"People jump to conclusions not warranted by the facts," Hoffman says.
"There is no valid comparison between these negotiated agreements with
tribes and the administration's initiative for competitive outsourcing
of some functions in parks and refuges."
Hoffman refers to a parallel Bush administration push to outsource
tasks in national parks formerly handled by National Park Service
personnel. For example, in the Bay Area, the Golden Gate National
Recreation Area must look for contractors to bid on the jobs of 111 of
the park's 370 staffers, primarily in maintenance.
A battle over these changes is underway in Congress, where a bipartisan
push has begun to bar funding for any outsourcing -- not only in the
Park Service, but in the U.S. Forest Service and the Fish and Wildlife
Service. The fate of that measure, attached to the Interior
appropriations bill, will be determined within weeks.
"There has long been a federal directive to examine the efficiency of
agency workforces from time to time," says Barry Tindall, director of
the nonprofit National Recreation and Park Association, which supports
the de- funding measure. "We don't see anything wrong with it. But any
idea you don't need professionals handling park and recreation
management is just wrongheaded. "
Where some see a benign invitation to the tribes, others see a stalking
horse for a Bush agenda of dismantling preserves and weakening federal
agencies. Ever since the Reagan-era "Sagebrush Rebellion," a
conservative movement has pushed for greater local control of federal
public lands.
However, in Montana, at least, many locals pushed a different way.
Reneau says a summer of intensive lobbying by Montana hunting buddies
of Bush administration officials, in league with other
conservationists, brought the National Bison Range transfer plan to a
screeching halt.
Hoffman says negotiations to manage Bison remain on track.
Reneau and Hoffman both agree that another test case for this transfer
policy is the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. At nine
million acres, it's the system's third-largest refuge, adjacent to the
famed Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Not coincidentally, preliminary
seismic studies indicate Yukon Flats may hold oil.
Just as at Bison, an Indian group -- this time, the Council of
Athabascan Tribal Governments -- wanted to assume all functions at the
refuge and take control of the refuge budget. Rebuffed, the council now
negotiates for a subset of refuge functions. Meanwhile, another group,
the Doyon limited partnership, seeks to swap some of its land for the
Yukon refuge acres suspected to have oil. That's under discussion.
Should the transfer occur, the tribal group will have sovereign
authority over development.
"Tribes are not private enterprises. They are other governments," Hoffman points out.
Despite apparent advantages to tribes, he does not predict a landslide of transfers.
"I don't see this as precedent-setting," Hoffman says. "There's a
number of refuges and parks on the Federal Register list. There is not
a similar number of tribes waiting in line to take them on. I don't
think there will be any big rush."
Technically, there may be few constraints on transfers.
Pat Durham, the American Indian liaison for the Fish and Wildlife
Service in Washington, D.C., for the past three years, says even the
Federal Register list is not definitive.
"Any tribe could apply to contract for park or refuge functions
anywhere. We would have to listen, as long as they could prove a
cultural, geographic or historic connection," Durham says. "They would
not end up completely in charge.
The furthest it could go, in theory, is that a tribe may be able to
provide all refuge staff. But you'd still need a Fish and Wildlife
Service manager."
But given the parameters, Gene Hocutt, a former refuge manager, now a
spokesman for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, feels
the nation's whole refuge system is in play.
"I'd hate to be a manager in that position," Hocutt says. "It's a bad
idea that does not augur well for the integrity of the system. It may
be illegal, too. Congress declared by law in 1976 and again in 1997 it
wanted all refuges run as a single, integrated system by the Fish and
Wildlife Service.
"We've asked Interior Secretary Norton for an environmental impact
statement on this transfer scheme and (to) include a 'no change'
alternative. Not only is this a significant federal action, but
international treaties and effects on endangered species are involved.
Those demand an EIS. We've not heard back from her yet.''
So far, no transfer proposal has involves a Bay Area park or refuge.
But other California sites in California on the Federal Register list
are Redwood National Park, Whiskeytown National Recreation Area and
Humboldt Bay National Wildlife Refuge, as well as Bureau of Reclamation
projects on the Trinity and Klamath rivers.
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- Privatization 
