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The Seattle Times recently published a lengthy cover story framed around two questions, quoted here as they appear in the article:
- Is a national park supposed to be a crown jewel of American wilderness, a place protected from the bulldozers and strip malls that define much of our lives?
- Or is it a "park," an outdoor playground for the masses, shaped for everyone's enjoyment and run to help businesses profit along the way?
Those familiar with my work will know my answers to those questions. I need not repeat them here. Unfortunately, and as this article confirms, today's National Park Superintendents rarely agree with my positions. And that being the case, I'd like to pose for you two questions of my own:
- Why do high ranking National Park officials almost invariable fail to understand and accept the fact that they are employed by you and me to serve as custodians of our nation's crown jewels in accordance with long held traditions and in compliance with existing laws and precedents?
- What more must the American People do to ensure that high ranking public servants of all stripes show more respect for them and less subservience to business interests and the pursuit of profits?
The Seattle Times article is long. I have provided a much condensed version below as well as a link to the original piece.
Scott
--- CONDENSED / EXCERPTS FOLLOW ----
After The Deluge
by Warren Cornwall
At the time, driving a bulldozer into Mount Rainier's wilderness seemed like a good idea.
A storm starting on Nov. 6 had dumped nearly 18 inches of rain on the
mountain in 36 hours. Rivers poured from their banks and sliced through
road after road throughout Mount Rainier National Park.
So, on Nov. 15, with the blessing of the park's top brass, a
maintenance crew steered a bulldozer into the woods. Their mission:
Drive a mile and a half through protected wilderness to where the creek
had left its original streambed. Then pile up rocks to force the water
back where it used to flow.
The incident is emblematic of a conundrum at the very heart of the country's national parks, none more than Mount Rainier.
Is a national park supposed to be a crown jewel of American wilderness,
a place protected from the bulldozers and strip malls that define much
of our lives? Or is it a "park," an outdoor playground for the masses,
shaped for everyone's enjoyment and run to help businesses profit along
the way?
To put it more bluntly: Do you drive a bulldozer into the wilderness to protect a road?
From its start in 1899, Mount Rainier National Park was born to dueling parents.
On the one hand were the stirrings of the modern conservation movement,
spurred on by the writings of people like John Muir. On the other,
there was the impulse to help people get into the woods, and to make a
buck doing it.
Today, the push and pull over what's best for national parks continues.
At Yellowstone National Park there's a running battle about whether to
continue letting in snowmobiles. Yosemite National Park is caught in
lawsuits about, among other things, whether to restrict how many people
come to Yosemite Valley. The fight emerged after a 1997 flood forced
the park to examine how to rebuild.
In a windowless room at Mount Rainier headquarters in late February,
Park Service employees weighed what to do with their own flood damage.
By February, the bulldozer had been ruled out at Kautz Creek.
The immediate threat of the flood was gone. And an environmental group,
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), had learned
of the incident and was warning of possible violations of the federal
Wilderness Act.
But the pressure to reopen was immense. Businesses in Ashford, six
miles from the park gate, suffered without the trickle of winter
visitors. U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks had come to see the damage and find out
how soon the area would open.
Eric Walkinshaw, a Park Service engineer, held up a blueprint for the
new plan. The feds would try to force the creek to stay in its new
course, hoping to keep it from again changing direction and wiping out
a different section of road. It would involve clear-cutting a grove of
trees, digging a huge trench 150 feet up a hillside and installing two
massive 12-foot-wide culverts beneath the road. They would tiptoe up to
the edge of the protected wilderness.
"It's not going to be pretty," warned Lucy Gonyea, head of the park's maintenance program.
It's also temporary.
Another flood could overwhelm even these massive culverts. Or the river could pick another route.
Klump, the ranger who objected to the Kautz Creek bulldozer incident,
noted that 20 or 30 years ago people wouldn't have thought twice about
such work. But the focus has shifted — largely to whether to preserve
what we had before the floods or adapt to a world in which the human
footprint inside Mount Rainier actually shrinks.
The park leadership, so far, has shown little appetite for letting go of what it has.
Park Superintendent Dave Uberuaga talks about the importance of
preserving people's routes into the park, as well as the historic
significance of the roads and buildings. Strange as it might seem, the
road system itself is designated as a national historic landmark.
But that approach comes with potential costs, both in dollars and to the environment.
Michael Pollock, a federal scientist at the Northwest Fisheries Science
Center, the dug-out riverbed looked like demolished fish habitat that
could worsen flood problems downstream as the river races through the
newly straightened channel.
Pollock, who stresses he is not representing an official agency
position, says, "It seems as though they got away with bending the
rules more than any other agency — and certainly any other private
company would be allowed to do."
The biggest struggle between wilderness and access, though, may be over
a little-known five-mile gravel road in the park's northwest corner
{the Carbon River Road}. The road was flood damaged and fixed in 1995,
1996, 1999, 2003 and 2005. According to the Park Service's own words,
it probably shouldn't be fixed this time.
In 2002, in its 20-year development plan, the Park Service warned it
can't keep repairing the road without damaging the Carbon River. So the
next time there was a major washout, the road would be closed to cars.
But {Park Superintendent Dave} Uberuaga now says he wants to rebuild at
least part of the road... "I believe it's worth the risk to rebuild,"
Uberuaga told the Washington Trails Association in early February.
Not everyone agrees, of course. PEER, the environmental group, recently
sent a letter to the Park Service protesting that Uberuaga seemed to
have made up his mind before an environmental review has even been done.
It's not clear if the road will get repaired. That's partly because
bull trout, protected under the federal Endangered Species Act, live in
the Carbon River. And the deep pools of the new creek look like good
fish habitat.
Beneath the surface of talk about the Carbon River Road lies the
persistent question of wilderness versus civilization inside the park.
When do you let the rumble of pickups and the glare of headlights
pierce the woods as people try to push deeper toward their favorite
campsite? And when do you let the forest go quiet...
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- Land management 
