How do you think the National Park Service's Centennial Initiative (or Challenge, depending on whom you ask) should be funded? And how do you think those funds should be spent? There were quite a few suggestions tossed about in Washington today as both the House and Senate held hearings on legislation proposing ways to fund the Centennial Initiative.
One thing everyone seemed to agree upon: The Park Service needs more money, and not simply to celebrate its centennial in 2016.
We can only hope Congress can get it figured out before the birthday arrives. But there are a few impediments.
For starters, there are at least two versions of legislation that aim to provide $1 billion or more for the National Park Service to spend in commemoration of its centennial. A main difference between the two bills pending in the House of Representatives is that the administration's proposal calls for upwards of $100 million a year for the next decade -- but only if $100 million is raised annually from private sources -- while the version introduced by Representatives Nick Joe Rahall of West Virginia and Raul Grijalva of Arizona would provide $100 million a year without the need for a match.
And the Bush administration is not at all happy with the billion-dollar funding proposal laid out last month by Misters Rahall and Grijalva.
"We have serious concerns about the funding mechanisms and certain other provisions contained in H.R. 3094," NPS Director Mary Bomar told Rep. Grijalva during a hearing his House subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands held on that legislation and the administration's proposal, H.R. 2959.
And then there's big business, which was represented at the hearing by Gary Kiedaisch, the president and chief executive officer of The Coleman Co. His testimony made it quite clear that the parks should be run more like a business, like destination resorts probably not too far removed from Disney World, than as national parks, touchstones of America's natural, cultural, and historic treasures.
"Imagine recruiting executives from the country's most successful entertainment companies, health-care companies, travel companies, outdoor companies and auto companies, as well as countless others, and setting them to the task of repositioning the national parks as destinations, not just places to visit," said Mr. Kiedaisch. "I ran a four season ski and golf resort and know, all too well, the painful difference. Marketing is what drives business and marketing, along with park revitalization, will be the driving force behind this campaign's success."
Marketing, marketing, marketing. Just imagine the possibilities.
Unfortunately, I couldn't attend the meeting nor listen to it on the web, but I wonder if Mr. Kiedaisch volunteered that his company is a sustaining member of the American Recreation Coalition, which would love to see more ATVs and other motorized toys in the parks?
"Coupled with the right park offerings, visits and length of stay will increase," he said at one point. "By identifying and funding new activities that will attract today's consumer to the parks, participation rises and everyone wins."
Everyone? I wonder what "new activities" The Coleman Co. would like to see in the parks? Perhaps the survey by the Outdoor Industry Association, the one in which two-thirds of the respondents said they preferred a national park vacation filled with solitude, not motorized toys or even bikes, failed to reach Mr. Kiedaisch's desk.
Fortunately, there were others who offered testimony at the two hearings.
Thomas Kiernan, president of the National Parks Conservation Association, made it quite clear that while the current funding attitude in Washington is nice to see in terms of the parks, Congress has a looonnnggg way to go.
"Let me emphasize at the outset ... that this proposal alone will not solve the problems and address all the long- and short-term needs of the parks which have resulted from decades of funding shortfalls during many administrations and Congresses," Mr. Kiernan told the subcommittee. "It must be thought of as one part of a concerted, comprehensive, multi-faceted, multi-year effort to restore and adequately fund the nation's parks. Substantial increases in park funding, particularly for operations in addition to this bill, sustained over many years, will be needed to make the parks whole."
For those who believe the national park system is hurting for visitors, perhaps, just perhaps, a better-funded Park Service could not only buff up the park system but create interpretive programs and activities within the agency's mission statement that would attract more visitors and so do away with the need to turn the Yosemites, Yellowstones, Shenandoahs and Everglades of the system into destination resorts.
"It is essential that the Park Service focus ... on how it needs to evolve in order to fulfill its mission in the next century and to integrate the parks into the lives of more Americans and keep them relevant to the communities in which we live," said Mr. Kiernan. "If that occurs, Congress can be fully justified in making a ten-year commitment to enhanced park funding."
While some folks are concerned that the the philanthropic component of the Centennial Initiative will be tainted by commercialization, Vin Cipolla of the National Park Foundation tried to allay those fears.
"I can assure you that both the foundation and its partners understand and share the concern that corporate support for parks not become confused with and not lead to commercialization," he said. "We will work carefully within Director's Order 21 to ensure that corporate involvement adheres to this guideline. Over the last number of years, we have looked at this issue far too conventionally. Today's media environment creates multiple opportunities for donors and parks to work together in new and creative ways that do not lead to the commercialism of parks."
At the same time, Mr. Cipolla told the subcommittee that corporate partners and philanthropy in general can do wonders for the national park system.
"This renewed interest in encouraging park philanthropy and partnerships creates many opportunities. First is the opportunity to connect and strengthen the fabric of support for parks on a national and local level," he said. "Our parks offer the best investments in the areas of youth-enrichment, education, health, and volunteerism, yet philanthropic potential on a grand scale and in line with contemporary thresholds has not yet been realized."
However, philanthropy should not be viewed as a panacea, cautioned Bill Wade of the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees.
"While we strongly believe in the concept of philanthropic support to national parks, and note the huge values and benefits accrued to the national park system since its inception, we have been very skeptical of the administration's proposed efforts to generate additional funding by including a matching provision in the proposed legislation," said Mr. Wade. "Given what we've all witnessed over the past decade or so relative to the increase in greed in the corporate sector and declining ethical behaviors by both corporate and government officials, it is hard not to be suspicious about the motives of the 'giving' organizations -- especially commercial and some special-interest organizations -- and the quid pro quo expected from, and sometimes provided, by the recipient organizations.
"When coupled with the increased pressures placed on park managers to take advantage of the incentives offered by private money to offset declining budgets, we are very concerned about keeping national parks public and national."
This game is just in the first half, folks, and it will be quite interesting to see how the two pieces of legislation are squeezed, prodded and poked as they move through Congress. Will the politicians be persuaded that the parks should really be operated as destination resorts, complete with all the "marketing" that entails, or will they agree the parks should continue to operate -- hopefully with better funding -- to preserve the unique tapestry of America's natural, cultural and historic resources?
Comments
Jim, thanks... Guilty as charged. I really think all the sniping that goes on between people in a forum such as this happens because people aren't required to be fully accountable for their statements, and the presence of anonymity brings out plenty of inappropriate behaviours as well (primarily from but also toward anons). Your comments, coming from an unnamed source, would have certainly carried less weight.
Regarding EUON, from the Foundation's website:
"The enabling legislation stipulated that the National Park Service is responsible for operation, maintenance and public programs. The Eugene O’Neill Foundation, Tao House is responsible for artistic and educational programs. The National Park Service’s General Management Plan, signed into the Federal Register in 1991 describes the plans for the site: small scale theatrical performances, an artist in residence program, full public access, seminars and interpretive tours. Through the efforts of the foundation, Tao House became a National Historic Site. The National Park Service has shown tremendous commitment to the project and has restored the house to its original design."
Add to these facts the additional knowledge that EUON is co-managed with both John Muir's home and Port Chicago, it seems on the surface as though NPS is being somewhat responsible in attempting to keep costs down. So my next question is this -- were the budget figures quoted earlier specifically for EUON only, or was that a combined EUON/JOMU budget figure? Here's another question -- all the people that visited EUON for the Foundation's artistic and educational programs, were they included in the visitation numbers? Admittedly, the reservation requirements for visiting the site make it difficult if not impossible for a spontaneous visit to EUON. Heck they don't even give you directions to the place until the reservation is confirmed.
-- Jon Merryman
OK, so back to the Centennial Initiative... :-)
I hope C&O Canal gets all the money they want and then some. I own property adjacent to the canal so that'd be a great windfall for my property values.
-- Greedy Bastard
Mr. Gary Kiedaisch's vision of marketing the parks as competitive businesses is truly frightening. And the reference to "destinations" rather than "places to visit" -- ya lost me there, Gar... The entire collection of parks is its strength -- that which allows smaller, otherwise independently unsustainable areas to remain in the national collection of important places to visit (or destinations or whatever you want to call them) -- and the fact that we do some things out of principle, not because there are shareholders to please. Do we need to do more with less? Sure, good idea. Does that mean we need to kill NPS to accomplish it? Heck no.
Waiter, there's a fly in my soup. Your options:
1) Eat the fly with the soup (denial)
2) Pluck it out and eat your soup (pragmatism)
3) Make a huge scene, blame the waiter, the cook, the busboy, the hostess, and the people at the table next to you, inisist on a new bowl of soup, a new spoon, a new napkin, write a letter to the editor calling the owner "Communist Big Brother", call the health inspector, and never eat out at a restaurant or ever have soup again for the rest of your life (slight overreaction)
I don't know what national park site the two former employees who posted earlier worked for, but as a former employee of 7 different sites, I must say that I am shocked at the level in which you criticized management of the NPS. I'm sure that there are individuals, and even entire units, that are mismanaged, but to say that the NPS in general is the biggest threat to park lands is incredible. I worked with hundreds of dedicated, responsible employees who operated at the highest levels of fiscal responsibilty all while doing an incredible job protecting resources and promoting proper visitor use and appreciation. I worked in mega-parks and small parks. I worked in natural settings and historical settings. In no park did I see gross mismanagement and in every park I saw employees at all levels who did their jobs well. Bad employees and bad supervisors exist in any agency, but unless I lived 5 years of my life in a happily oblivious bubble those types do no dominate the NPS.
No, I'm not the NPS cheerleader for the day, I just don't want those previous comments to define NPS 'insider' opinion on the matter.
Snowbird06
I don't understand why all the sudden "swift boating" of the NPS. As they would say in the corporate world...they were just disgruntled employee's!
Certainly, the tension between humans, between humans and non-humans, and the value judgments and rationalizations we make about all of those things will matter a great deal on our world view and our sense of parks management. If we don't believe in humans first, we still have to come to grips as humans deciding what we as humans ought to do, how to come to terms with our place in the equation (that's why I think that the wilderness purists are actually anthropocentric in many respects). If we do believe in humans first, we still must come to terms with the way everything else relates to us. We have to understand the boundaries and the rationale.
I don't believe that humans have any more intrinsic value than anything else, not as far as I have ever been able to prove to myself. Unfortunately, others who share my belief have sometimes not understood that anthropocentrism is a curse toward preventing humans from loving each other. Instead, they have sometimes created new hierarchies with human beings at the bottom. Then, we see racism and classism, especially, seen as secondary ills to the environmental ills.
One of the puzzles constantly in my mind when coming to a site like this or thinking of my own site on Yellowstone is whether it's possible to focus on such important ethical questions with only a parks-only focus or a Yellowstone-only focus, and of course, one can't get around the reality that these places are political realities, human creations, of places that seem to be created by acts of God (keep the historical sites alone for a moment). Yet, the more we learn, the more we realize the human component for the last many thousands of years of the human role in all of our national parks, the more we realize that humans continue to have impacts on the ecosystem within and without those places. That's the way it was; that's the way it is, naturally or unnaturally for better and for worse. We cannot parcel off questions to a place, to a policy unit, to a before or a present state. We are bound to consider the whole. Yet, at the same time, if we simply spoke of the whole, without reference to a place, we wouldn't be speaking about anything at all. We need focal points, experiential reference points, a tree here, a person there, a touch there, a smile there.
All of this is to say that however we take the value of humans and the value of what's not human (the romantics called nature the "not me"), which is in itself an important question, we have to realize that we cannot draw too many conclusions without also recognizing the relationship of the one to the other and the values implicit in that both at the macro and micro scale. To recognize that humans are not at the top or that they are worth something hopefully will not lead us to some of the conclusions we see (like that AIDS might wipe out most of humanity - forgetting who is hurt most by AIDS, like hoping that user fees will keep more people out of the parks - forgetting who that hurts most).
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On a vision for the Centennial Initiative, I don't have one. There are far too many visions for a tomorrow we cannot control with too many variables. We don't need any more vision than our eyes provide for us; if we realize that our eyes aren't performing as well as we'd like, then life must be spent deconstructing the obstacles that have made us more interested in abstractions like bureaucracies and ownership rights. This isn't to say I advocate blissful ignorance of what government is doing, or what corporations are doing, or what people do in the name of abstraction (actually, quite the opposite), it is to say that I see them as obstacles to clarifying my relationship (smelling that lodgepole off the Grant Village employee boardwalk) with all that's "not me."
Jim Macdonald
The Magic of Yellowstone
Yellowstone Newspaper
Jim's Eclectic World
But, I'm not a postmodernist or value neutral. That's the fallacious jump you make about my views; I would argue to the contrary that totalitarian dictators throughout history have expressed a value not different than the one that sets one being without reason over another; they just happen to draw the line irrationally at a different place. Yet, when it's not reason that sets those lines, then nothing prevents the slippery slope that ends up with racism, classism, sexism, and all kinds of elitism.
I am a rationalist; the closest thinker you can find to my own is Leibniz. One can be a pluralist, one can be humble about the extent to which our view on reason can extrapolate certain values, without being value neutral.. I have nothing but disdain for relativism (the postmodern champion) and dogmatism, which I think are largely the same because neither position sticks to claiming to know what one can know. Please don't confuse my own sense that we cannot determine arbitrary values with a belief that all values are neutral. How does one logically make that leap? Show me how my view entails relativism. I do not think I would make such a value claim if I didn't have a strong sense of the value of reason; in fact, that's what I appealed to in throwing my arms up in the air on that question.
What is the argument?
Jim Macdonald
The Magic of Yellowstone
Yellowstone Newspaper
Jim's Eclectic World
Snowbird06
Beamis, you stated in response to Jim's blog: "Again, the sad part is that many others feel that way as well", in what way or ways are you referring too. I trying to read between the lines on this one, can you please be more specific. It's interesting what's being said here between both parties.
Yes, but that's not the same as value neutral or postmodern or relativistic. Yes, I don't believe there is any case for speciesism at all. Yet, from the particular case that I don't think that there is a reason to value one species over another (though certainly, as a living and breathing person, I do assert myself) does not entail that one is value neutral on all questions. In fact, I have framed this issue in terms of what I take to be the highest value of all, which is reason. There is no reason to presume that a human being is worth more than any other being; there is no reason to presume less. That is quite far from what the postmodernist says; reason is more of a fad of convenient expression for the postmodernist, not value par excellence. I further claim that speciesism is dogmatism, that is a claim made without reason, an arbitrary assertion (essentially the kind of assertion that relativists and postmodernists make all the time; the reduction of value from reason to the human being was the modern revolution; the reduction of reason altogether was just the postmodernist extrapolation - a pox on both houses for usurping reason.)
Secondly, in a world where I as a human denounce anthropocentrism, denounce speciesism, does not mean that I therefore denounce humans or the value of human beings. That, I argue, is also speciesist. In fact, I hold humans to the highest value possible, one among many in a community of inter-related beings, a community where worth is determined not based on what something is but rather why something is done. I eat and breathe not because I am more just, not because I am more rightful on the basis of being human but rather because that is who I am and what I am inclined to do in relating with the environment we all inhabit. The value, then, exists in the actual senses, in the actual acts of beings, not because we are members of a class of beings, but because we are. What more profound thing does reason point to but Being itself (to God, if you will), and to the great dynamism and diversity of being.
You have spoken fallaciously because you took a particular instance where I denied a value and derived a universal about my stance about values. Your quote only confirms your fallacy.
My original intent on replying to what you wrote was not to disagree with you but to suggest that you raised an important point about misanthropy, to suggest that whatever one's beliefs about the value of people, that we gain little if we don't recognize the human role in the environment. It just so happens that I take misanthropy to be an extension of speciesism, not a valid consequences of my view, though many who have called themselves anti-speciesist have ended up being anti-human (that is an internal inconsistency in their view). I wanted to suggest that whatever side of that value continuum we are on, that the point you raised was important.
In any event, I don't think either of us really believe that the government should be pronouncing grand visions of what the Park Service's centennial is, though perhaps for quite different reasons. I don't believe that reason provides anyone with that kind of foresight and that the dogmatism that these kind of visions often lend themselves to is quite dangerous. In your case, you would not leave a vision to a group of people you've judged to be misanthropic, unaccountable, and incompetent. In effect, it's not terribly different. In truth, you are right, that there is a big difference, though you haven't said anything which makes me confident that I have communicated my actual view to you (do postmodernists talk about anything actual or real? I suppose like dogmatists they assert anything that fits into their arbitrary template from which they've pre-ordained the world)
Cheers,
Jim Macdonald
The Magic of Yellowstone
Yellowstone Newspaper
Jim's Eclectic World