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 The appended article is new from the free-market think-tank PERC. It describes what PERC has always wanted for America's National Park and Wilderness systems. It is what they dream about. It is where PERC's dear friend and former Senior Research Fellow, Gale Norton, might have taken the NPS and Wilderness management if she not been required to resign prematurely.
This is the direction in which the Bush administration is steering the national park system. The President's Centennial Initiative plays heavily into this concept and helps make the dream come alive.
The final two paragraphs of this article set a stage and then request the read imagine some things. Those things are the dreams of PERC and those who share their vision. I suggest that, to one degree or another, those running the Executive Branch and those within the Department of Interior who oversee the park system share this vision and this dream. I suggest that those who unquestioningly and uncritically support the President's Centennial are supporting this vision, whether they know it or not.
Scott
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September 2007
Volume 25 | Number 3
National Park Goes Local
By Tom Burnett
Cuenca is a city with a resumé. It is designated a World Heritage Site.
Ecuadorans consider it their most beautiful city. Though hard for
international visitors to fathom, it is the only city in Ecuador to
treat its sewage before discharging it into the ocean or nearest river.
But perhaps its most distinguishing claim is that it “owns” a national
park insofar as it exercises considerable autonomy in financial
controls, marketing, management, and enforcement. Even more strange,
the city’s water and sewer department manages the park.
Cajas National Park, rich in scenery, biodiversity, and recreational
opportunities, glitters above Cuenca, some 20 miles to the west. Stony
peaks ascend to an altitude of 13,800 feet. It presents raw
environmental beauty, yet is home to an extractive industry: water.
Cajas’ mandate is multiple-use— preserving the area for its water
potential, shepherding the unique flora and fauna, and providing
delights for tourists. Like the tin roofs and rain barrels used by
resourceful people around the world, ways to collect and channel water
from roofs to inhabitants below are the gifts of Cajas.
Cuenca, the water-user and the city with a sewage treatment plant, was
an easy choice when the Ministry of Environment was forced by a 1997
law to decentralize management of protected areas. The law specified
that management of Ecuador’s 22 protected areas should fall to local
municipalities. It seemed Ecuador was having trouble caring for its
natural riches. The Ministry lacked funds, it was inefficient, and
found itself distant from citizen participation and local support.
Ministry orders went unheeded. Cuenca was chosen to pilot the hand-over.
Cajas, a little-known National Recreation Area, became Cajas National
Park in 1996. Tourists and travelers discovered the park when a road
was completed over the Andean divide to Guayaquil. As managed by the
Ministry of the Environment, operations were sketchy. For example,
about the only evidence that a park existed at all was that there were
a couple of rangers in a hut arbitrarily collecting fees.
Cuenca gets 40 percent of its water from the city’s drainage, so
Cuenca’s water, sewer, and telephone department (ETAPA) appealed to the
ministry to take the management role. They were “fed up” with the
central government’s careless stewardship of the area’s water and
natural treasures. The transition took two years. The department
changed everything, creating a legal framework with rules, building
control cabins at the entrances, training rangers and guides, erecting
a visitor’s center, publishing maps and tourist materials, keeping
records, and setting up research projects.
One of Cajas’ cheerleaders is Carlos Lara. A dedicated family man, he
guided our group of 13. Before the duties of marriage and fatherhood
overtook him, Carlos burrowed about the trails and peaks of Cajas for
years, earning him excellent qualifications for guiding botanically
curious tourists like us. Stopping our bus at Lake Toreadora, Carlos
led out, naming flowers and explaining the gorged water-holding
capacity of “cushion plants.” The cushion plant mass was 12 inches
deep, bouncier than Berber carpet, suffused with water, but not
releasing it under our step. This would be a standard lesson for school
children from the city, so they would know the source of their water
and the reasons for keeping the mountains clean.
Percy Nuñez, the Peruvian botanist of prodigious knowledge, dropped to
his knees and hailed us to a crevasse as wide as a Panama hat. Water
coursed in it noisily. On the crevasse wall, Percy pointed out
“Merlin’s Grass,” not a grass at all but a member of a primitive genus,
Isoetes, with a pedigree stretching 400 million years.
Carlos asked several times, “Do you like Cajas?” Who could not like
Cajas? Its mangled ridges, twisted trees, ground-hugging flowers
adapting to the high, cool altitude, and severity of climate were
unexpected. Carlos hoped we would appreciate in a few hours what
decades of closeness had infused in him. He knows Cajas like Goodall
knows the misty forests of Tanzania.
Carlos holds a perspective that encompasses more years and more onthe-
ground observations than anyone. Smitten since age ten, he began
visiting the lakes and peaks of Cajas with his father. On our bus ride,
Carlos told us how the city of Cuenca had been given management of the
park, briefly explaining the unusual devolution. He added, “This has
been good for the park—very good.” Later he told me, “As a tour guide,
I travel all over Ecuador. I would say that Cajas is at least ten times
better than other national parks, because of local management.” He
gently urges us to stay on graveled paths. Because this is a “local
national park,” he takes a proprietary interest in it and its upkeep.
Peer review works to preserve the park’s value. People in Cuenca’s
tourism and water businesses all know each other and the rangers,
guides, scientists, and engineers all keep an eye on ETAPA. Social
sanctions are immediate and surgical.
In the United States, on the other hand, when a problem needs
rectifying in national parks, sometimes the only way to get after it is
to make a publicity spectacle and bring pressure to bear on Congress.
This process can be lengthy. Response times are shorter with local
management. A truck spilled petroleum in Cajas. Within two weeks, new
regulations were in effect, barring petroleum hauling. A fish farm was
found to be polluting one of Cajas’ 235 lakes. It was promptly shut
down. In contrast, enemies of snowmobiles have been working for ten
years to control their use in Yellowstone and the battle is still not
over. The merits of snowmobile regulations aside, the alacrity with
which local authorities can act, compared to national bureaucracies, is
beyond dispute.
Local management, however, has not always been easy. For example,
Cajas’ managers have had a difficult time controlling grazing
incursions. Asked if there were any dams in Cajas, Augustín Rengel of
ETAPA said, “no,” but that “it is possible that in the future it may be
necessary to construct several dams.” Asked if there are many conflicts
between ETAPA and environmentalists, he said there were a few, one
being precisely the possibility of dam construction. Such a dilemma
will test the limits of the federal bequest and the ingenuity of local
parties as they strive to both protect and provide. Asked what he
thought would happen at the end of the ten-year decentralization trial,
Augustín replied, “I hope that the initial period will be renewed
forever,” exactly the sentiment of our fervent guide, Carlos Lara.
In 1982, Richard Stroup and John Baden proposed turning over the
management of 80 million acres of wilderness areas in the United States
to a “Wilderness Endowment Board comprised of private naturalists
rather than public bureaucrats.” In 1984, Randy Simmons, while working
at the Department of the Interior, proposed granting the wilderness
area at Aravaipa, Arizona, to Defenders of Wildlife. The proposals
promised better stewardship through superior incentives and streamlined
administration. Some of the principles underlying their proposals are
found in Ecuador’s local solution. But the concept fared poorly in
Washington, D.C. Neither the Wilderness Endowment Board nor the
Aravaipa hand-over made it far against the entrenched interests of
public management.
Imagine the National Park Service handing Yellowstone to the city of
Cody, Wyoming, or Yosemite to Modesto, California. That is what
Ecuador’s Ministry of the Environment did when it assigned control and
management of Cajas National Park to the city of Cuenca. It is a bold
change for a country whose constitution breathes not a word about
U.S.-style federalism and insists on central control over everything
from law enforcement to the price of bottled propane. Ecuador’s
experiment with local control leads the world. And Cuenca adds one more
accomplishment to its already impressive resumé: the city with its own
national park.
Tom Burnett, a freelance writer, is a retired manufacturer of sewn
products. He received a B.S. in Agricultural Science from Montana State
University. He operates Marathon Biological, offering insects for the
biological control of rangeland weeds. He can be reached at
burnett.tom@ gmail.com.
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- Privatization 
