Now the hard work begins. Congress needs to be cajoled to pass the president's Centennial Initiative, new-found friends need to cash-in, and the national park system needs some loving attention if the National Park Service's centennial nine years hence is to truly be noteworthy.
Two-and-a-half days of meetings in Austin, Texas, at the National Park Foundation's Leadership Summit on Partnership and Philanthropy were energizing and hope-inspiring. They produced excitement about the centennial, spawned thought-provoking panel discussions on how partnerships and philanthropy could provide a much-needed boost for the perpetually cash-strapped Park Service, and held out hope that, with some decidedly concerted efforts, the national parks won't begin to decay once the Baby Boom generation that loves them so dearly fades away.
First Lady Laura Bush spoke at the gathering, as did two cabinet secretaries -- Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Jr. -- Park Service Director Mary Bomar, captains of industry, and purse holders of foundations intrigued, if not yet entirely persuaded, about the prospect of giving to the parks.
"There's nothing like being awed by the grandeur of Denali, overwhelmed by the vastness of Crater Lake, or humbled by the centuries of human history in the cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde. We want everyone to have the opportunity to make memories in our national parks, especially our children," the First Lady said Monday during her keynote address. "Improvements to our national parks and historical sites benefit every state. ... I urge Congress to support, and that means fund, this very important (Centennial Initiative.)"
First Lady Laura Bush addresses Leadership Summit (1:26)
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Of course, the Centennial Initiative alone won't provide all the salve the national parks need. Most of the eligible products announced so far don't address long-standing problems. Most, if not all, parks are short-staffed; at Acadia National Park, for instance, one fifth of the 100 authorized full-time jobs are vacant due to funding woes. At other parks, positions of retiring personnel have been left vacant so the money for their salaries can be spent on operational costs. And, of course, there's the well-known $8 billion backlog in maintenance needs across the 391-unit park system.
Beyond that, questions hang over how partnerships and philanthropy will be married to benefit the parks. Where do you draw the line between helping the Park Service and replacing it with volunteers and concessionaires, and how do you engage common Americans to donate to the Centennial Initiative are just two.
Seemingly silencing that second concern is the fact that the American public is a very generous lot. One of the summit's speakers pointed out that $295 billion was donated to charitable causes in 2006 -- $222.9 billion from individuals. For fiscal 2007, that sum was projected to rise to $3.7 trillion. The trick for those supporting the Centennial Initiative is to corral just a fraction of those dollars for the parks.
Secretary Kempthorne told the conferees that he hopes the Centennial Initiative ignites a new era of philanthropy in the parks. At the same time, he and others stressed that philanthropic interests will not give to the parks if their dollars are used to replace, rather than supplement, federal funding. Too, they maintained that no corporation wants to advertise its presence in the parks, and that there are Park Service regulations in place to prevent that from happening anyway.
Mr. Kempthorne said the initiative, if passed, would provide funding to preserve lost Civil War battlefields, better protect cultural resources, and even create a fund dedicated to park land purchases, largely to close "holes" in parks created by inholdings.
"It's within our grasp to achieve excellence at all our national parks in America," he said.
Not everyone was convinced. Some of the smaller friends groups told me they worry they don't have the cachet to entice philanthropic funds to help pay for their needs. In response to that, however, was mention that if Congress approves the president's preferred funding proposal -- that private dollars be matched by federal dollars -- then whenever a dollar of federal funding is matched and released half be directed towards the project in question and half go into a discretionary fund for other parks' projects.
Beyond raising dollars for the parks, there must be successful efforts to entice the younger generations -- the Gen-Ys and their younger siblings -- into the parks.
"Our children have been seduced by the dark side of video games," Park Service Director Mary Bomar said at one point. "Is there anyone surprised that more Americans know Homer Simpson's home town than Abraham Lincoln's? Yes, Springfield (Ill.).
"... We are locked in battle to make sure that we get the hearts and minds of Americans back, to re-engage the American public with their national parks."
NPS Director Mary Bomar addresses Leadership Summit (1:45)
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As the centennial draws near, much work needs to be done. Strategies for raising public awareness of the centennial as well as for generating contributions will be necessary. Park friends groups will have to court philanthropies and convince them they have worthwhile projects. Urban, cultural, and historical parks must benefit as much as the Western landscape parks.
And then, of course, there's the issue of climate change. But that's fodder for another post.
Comments
Taking this to my ever ignorant next level, I thought that the protection was accorded to any and all "national" designations, be they park, monument, battlefield, wildlife sanctuary, or whatever. At least in theory, this was the letter of the law (or more properly, the Act) as it was written. But as we all know, and have recently seen, especially out east, these once sacrosanct partitions of land have been subjected to rezoning in the name of the almighty Developer, and deemed too valuable to remain as open-spaces in the midst of our ever growing urban sprawl. This is a small but poignant commentary on the lack of reverence this country places on its' collective history, be it architecture demolished in the name of "urban renewal", poorly chronicled and factually inaccurate written historical documentation, preservation of historical sites of significance or their ilk. But I'm sorry to say Frank that little or nothing in this land comes under the heading of perpetual protection. It remains in it's protected state only until enough graft and profit can be arranged to justify it's demise. Such will be the case with the lands we love. When mining, oil and gas development, and God forbid even grazing, elevate their priority and status in the proper governmental eyes, and proceed to press the proper buttons long and hard enough, in the words of the poet.....
This is how the world ends, this is how the world ends,
This is how the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper
At least as the world pertains to the preservation of the parks, etc. But don't worry.....everything will be put back just as they found it, right?
Beamis & Frank: Perhaps, it was stretching it bit about the visitation of "priviledge rich kids" to the National Parks. Nobody is bashing the rich and the well do for their merits in attaining great wealth. Let me rephrase my sentence, I think we are all rich and priviledge to have the opportunity to visit our crown jewels called the National Parks. Perhaps that sounds like a trite sentence to you two (aka as two-peas-in-a-pod think alike). There's countless thousands of childeran in are inner cities that never heard of the expression (crown jewels) before, or had the slightest opportunity to visit one. I'm deeply aware of Ms. Bomar position and responsiblities as the parks top resource manager. Consider this, what is the greatest resource this country has? I would definitely select and choose our youth today. The National Parks should tap into this resource and give it all the energy that it needs to make the parks better. I'm not a doomsayer like you two-peas-in-pod, but I do advocate more emphasis on youth opportunities with the National Parks. Such as getting these kids educated with a good solid wilderness experience, and lessen the baby fat that's slowly killing them. Why doesn't the Bush Administration advocate higher standards for physical fittest. I can remember the famous Kennedy 50 mile walks for a certicate of merit for physical fittest. The inner city kids need this! I whole hardily share and support any direction that the National Parks wishes to go to bring forth more youth into the educational process of learning what is truly wilderness experience. Yes, the iPods are fine, but also have them read between the lines what Henry David Thoreau had to say: "In the wilderness is the preservation of the world". Not a bad line for youth to nourish on!
Frank, you're incredibly adept at tossing stones, some of which are more on target than others. But please put down your slingshot and take a minute to tell us how the national parks and wilderness areas should be managed without the government. As one other has noted, the current system ain't perfect, but it's a lot better than most, and I currently don't see any viable alternative.
As I've noted many times before, a goal of this site is to encourage constructive debate and discussion of issues revolving around the national parks. Your incessant flogging of the Park Service suggests that you have some ideas of how the current scenario could be improved upon. Please, share them with us. How would YOU run the national parks? How would YOU provide access to, and management of, wilderness areas?
What group, organization, or company out there has the capacity and financial resources to conduct science in the parks, be stewards to the wildlife, forests, rivers and streams, provide law enforcement, and perform road work? Whom would you have take over the tasks of maintaining campgrounds and trails, of managing fisheries against non-native species, of rescuing those who go lost in the wilderness, of addressing the impacts of climate change within the parks?
Who would you have hold the public lands of this nation in the best interests of the folks who own those lands, the general public?
Should the parks and wilderness be given over completely to for-profit companies that will charge even more for access to these places and the activities they provide and, in the process, cater to an even more elitist crowd? You in the past have railed against ever-growing rates for lodging in the parks. Should we toss out the Park Service's efforts to contain costs and let these concessionaires charge what the market truly will bear?
If there truly is a viable alternative to working within the existing system with hopes of improving it, I'd love to hear it and would gladly get behind it.
I'm not denying all your castigations of the Park Service. Politics do a severe injustice to the Service and the park system. Past surveys (and my own conversations with folks within the agency) have shown dead wood can be found within the agency's ranks. Management in various sectors is somewhat of a morass.
But I would offer that it'd be a great and tragic mistake to toss away the Park Service out of bitterness without identifying a viable, realistic, and sound alternative.
Frank, your intellectural wit slays me, but what do you advocate in fixing the NPS system...since you've been there? I can quote from great books (like you) and refute much in what Thoreau had to say about "Civil Disobedience", but that's not my bag...parks and kids are! So again, how do help the next generation to be more knowledgeable about one of our greatest resources called the National Parks? Sorry to pigeonhole you. Oh, you poor man!
Kurt, you beat me to the punch with this one. Excellent response, it couldn't be better expressed.
Are you suggesting the free market would have banned snowmobiles from Yellowstone? And how would a private owner of a wilderness benefit if they didn't sell access?
Let's not delude ourselves with the "wonders" of the free market. There are many instances of corruption and taking advantage of the public. Remember Enron? Here's a snippet from a story that ran a few years back in the Guardian of London that might be of interest.The author? Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Laureate in Economics and Professor of Finance and Economics at Columbia University. I would venture his thoughts are just as true today as they were then.
Think the snowmobile and personal watercraft manufacturers would be so concerned about the special places known today as national parks and seashores that they wouldn't place rental shops within their borders at a moment's notice?
And do you really believe that the struggling state park systems across the country are up to the task of managing national parks? How would they go about funding that endeavor? Boost their state's taxes or build bigger entrance stations with higher entrance fees?
That said, I agree there should be a close look at all those places that constitute the national park system and perhaps some spinning off of units that could fit better someplace else. And much good also could be arrived at by overhauling the civil service system. But gutting the Park Service as you and Frank propose would be akin to tossing the baby out with the bathwater.
Bermis, finally were getting somewhere instead of this anti everything. Some of your ideas do provoke good thought, but I do question in how we might set up such a non partisan commission (or God Squad) that will pick and choose who should go or stay in the NPS. This isn't quite like a pawn shop where we trash something that doesn't benefit or appeal to us, but to a select priviledge few...like developers, gas and oil monopolies...etc... I get the general feel that your more comfortable with strong thoughts of privatization of the NPS. I think Kurt has answered this very well about such thoughts. Why is it that we can't have a ad-hoc commission composing of prominent citizens, environmental groups and the busness community all working together to re-tool the whole (interna and external) apparatus of the National Park Service, but keep the original framework which it stands for. This is not saying destroying the concept of the parks, but to enhance the virtue which it should stand for: to best serve it's people and maintain it's resources to the highest degree of sacred perpetuity for future generations. Not to tear down Frank, but to embolden a new frame work of refreshing ideas that youth might inject. Maybe the next generation has the keys, the ideas, the brains to make it work with less demeaning individuals who rather tear down system then make it work. I say give the keys to the next generation with there cute iPods.
Beamis, you're starting to sound like an anarchist, not a free-marketer;-)
Do I look forward to April 15? Of course not. But it's not because of the basic system, but rather the way the system has been bastardized by politicians over the decades. The tax code, and Social Security, both need dire revisions to make them more user friendly, rational, and productive. But as long as those with pockets much deeper than mine control the Congress it's not likely to happen any time soon.
And really, as easily as you toss out a litany of federal government woes -- "illegal spying, wiretapping, indefinite detention, torture, transporting live nuclear warheads over civilian airspace, burning banned toxic substances in the Nevada desert, suspending habeas corpus, political assassination, supplying dangerous weapons to rogue nations and lining the pockets of corrupt corporations that manufacture products no one in the free market place has any use for" -- one could just as quickly assemble a list of corporate malfeasance starting at Love Canal, running through countless Superfund sites, touching on the manipulation of the electricity markets in California a few years ago, subprime mortgages and more.
I'm sure we could go back and forth all day, but am equally sure we both have better things to do. (The gorgeous autumn afternoon here in Park City is insisting on a bike ride). Just as the free market has its place, so, too, I believe, does government, be it local, state or federal. In all sectors public and private, though, we need checks and balances to make them work. I would agree that the checks and balances at the federal level are not working as best they could, but would suggest it's the process, not the underlying system, that is at fault.
And who is controlling the process? Is it not the very free market system you so tightly embrace? I think a sound argument could be made that many of the problems you cite with the government can be laid at the feet of the corporations at play in the free market.
Yellowstone snowmobiles? This ping-pong case is fueled by one industry, the snowmobile industry, which somehow has gotten the ear of the administration, which has kept this beast alive despite best science that says snowmobiles are not in the park's best interests.
ORVs at Cape Hatteras or Big Cypress National Preserve? Hunting brown bears in Katmai National Preserve? Anyone want to venture how the Park Service might have come down on these issues had someone in the free market not complained loudly to Washington?
Frank, I actually think we both have many of the same concerns and desires for public lands management. And I wouldn't be surprised if you would hold the Park Service in higher esteem if the agency were fully funded and civil service were wiped out.
That said, trusts are an intriguing option for public lands management, but I still have to wonder if they have the capabilities to take on a place as big as Yellowstone or Yosemite or Canyonlands. Bryce Canyon and Arches probably would be more "bite-sized" for such an endeavor, and possibly Acadia, just to name three.
However, who would be responsible for erasing the backlogs that are spread across the park system? If Congress can't erase them today, where would it find the funding to create endowments for each park? Who would take on such assets with such financial baggage? Would you look to the existing friends groups to take on the responsibilities of trusts in managing the parks?
Again, it's an intriguing proposition, and one I think could be employed with your previous suggestion that a good, hard look be given to the park system to determine if some units could be shucked off. A move in such a direction perhaps could reduce the size of the national park system as managed by the NPS and thus make it more manageable, and affordable, for the agency, while also creating a network of other public lands/sites managed by trusts.
Finally, I'll ask you the same question I asked Beamis: What, or who, is behind the failures of the current political system? In addressing the problems of the NPS, we should look beyond the symptoms and get to the root cause.