As a historian of the national parks, I followed with interest stories of how the government shutdown – thankfully concluded now – played out in the parks.
From World War II vets “storming” their D.C. memorial, to the private operator of Blue Ridge Parkway’s Pisgah Inn resisting closure in leaf season, to visitors complaining about canceled weddings and wrecked vacations, to state governments rescuing Grand Canyon, Mt. Rushmore and the Statue of Liberty, the parks garnered attention during the shutdown that they rarely get in regular times.
The boisterous public and political pressure for park access seems, at first glance, to validate the common perception (supported by poll data) that the national parks are one rare thing people across party lines agree on.
As lead author of a 2011 study “Imperiled Promise,” which documented problems created by longstanding underfunding of Park Service history programs, I hoped the closures were galvanizing support for public reinvestment in our parks as we approach their 100th birthday in 2016.
But the situation did not produce a clear consensus. Many of my colleagues rallied to NPS’s support, but fellow historian Larry Cebula pointed out that the closures also fed right-wing attacks on the Park Service. The National Review Online vilified rangers as “Park Service Paramilitaries.” In a tense House hearing titled As Difficult As Possible: The National Park Service’s Implementation of the Government Shutdown, Republican congressmen scolded NPS Director Jonathan Jarvis for his handling of the shutdown, while focusing on minor issues like tickets given to joggers running in the closed Valley Forge National Historical Park.
For me, the shutdown called to mind historian Bernard DeVoto’s 1953 Harper’s article, Let’s Close the National Parks.
In DeVoto’s era, the traveling public was “loving the parks to death” while parks funding remained anemic. The irreplaceable parks should be shuttered, DeVoto argued, until the federal government funded them adequately.
The mere specter of closed parks struck a chord. In short order, Eisenhower’s Republican administration crafted the 10-year, $1 billion Mission 66 program that upgraded park facilities in time for the Park Service’s 50th birthday in 1966.
But in 2013, the parks did close. And while people who love them and communities whose economies rely on them pleaded for them to be reopened, it remains to be seen whether closure will produce a groundswell of public support for increased funding.
To ensure that it does, we need to look carefully at who said what during the shutdown.
To my knowledge, Republican calls to reopen the parks were accompanied by no vision to address the parks’ severe (decades long) underfunding. Instead, those demands were wrapped in attacks on the Park Service itself – whose rangers were told that they should “be ashamed” for keeping the public out of the parks.
Meanwhile, commentators on the left noticed that the state leaders busily moving funds to open parks (such as Arizona’s Grand Canyon) were the same ones who initially stopped welfare payments in their states during the shutdown.
These observations remind us that many political leaders who cried the loudest for re-opening the parks are not reliable friends of the parks. They are not advocates of a robust notion of a “public good” that under-girds the park idea, nor protectors of parks’ resources, nor allies of visitors from all walks of life who clamor for access to them. They are demagogues who cynically used the parks’ popularity and patriotic symbolism for political gain while repeatedly kicking an agency that was already down.
This is no way for America to treat its Park Service on the eve of its centennial. It is the Republican Party – whose (Theodore) Rooseveltian fore-bearers created many of the early national parks – that should be ashamed. Meanwhile, those of us who love our parks must recognize that the greatest threat to them lies in the systematic demolition of our nation’s public sector. In coming days, we should watch vigilantly for those efforts to intensify, building on hyperbolic tales of “Park Service mismanagement” during the shutdown.
Park supporters should redouble our efforts to build a country in which reliable long-term investment in our parks is part of a broader recommitment to our nation’s public interest. A good starting point could be immediate action on a Mission 2016 national parks investment plan that can assure that our national parks always remain protected, staffed, maintained, enhanced – and open and accessible – for the benefit of all who look to them for economic survival, inspiration, education, recreation and renewal.
Anne Mitchell Whisnant is a historian with long experience writing about the National Park Service. Her essay appeared first in the News and Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina.
Comments
Unfortunately, absolutely no surprises in that selfish list, based on what you've exposed of yourself on the boards.
Kurt - sorry about the tangent. Moving back to funding of the NPS now.
Unless you have some more recent statistics, this would suggest that while 750k may have been "eliminated" more were added.
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0496.pdf
Selfish? Other than benefiting (like everyone else) from an overall improvement in the economy - and the availability of more funding for the parks, how do I personally benefit from any of those items?
Perpetual Seasonal has my sympathy. Perhaps a little historical perspective would be of interest.
NPS management corruption was common during my career, especially where seasonal hiring was involved. My initial application at Rainier was for seasonal ranger; I was hired as a seasonal laborer, even though I was not on the proper register. My very first day, I learned I was a last minute replacement for Watergate figure John Erhlichman's son. My NPS housing roommate's father was head of the Border Patrol in Texas. I was surprised to hear locals refer to park management as 'those crooks', but slowly came to understand they were refering to a long-running pattern of favoritism, cronyism, and nepotism in hiring, surplus sales, and small contracts. After the political appointments were filled, most remaining seasonal jobs went to relatives and friends of the park Administrative Officer.
I found Olympic NP had this petty corruption down to a science when I transferred there for a permanent job years later. Most of the Maintenance shop foreman were from the same local high school clique. They avoided the national seasonal laborer registers and used some obscure student hiring authority to employ each other's relatives and friends every summer.
tahoma, I remember once looking at a list of personnel at a park and about half the HQ staff had the same last names and those were quite a few more where the wife just hadn't taken the husbands name.
If you are an outsider who gets into this environment and dares to mention it in the open. There is a good chance you won't be back.
Unless the rules about who can supervise whom (nepotism) have changed significantly, the situation that perp seasonal describes is highly unlikesly. If he/she is so disastisfied with the NPS, I suggest the he/she not accept any more sealsonal appointments. It is obviously making him/her upset, and no 6-month job is worth that.
As to Tahoma's corruption, I worked in 7 parks, the Washiingon DC office, and two regional offices and never found any corruption in those places. Maybe I was lucky and Tahoma wasn't. I certainly nerver heard the management of any of those places referred to as crooks. I hope Tahoma woriks in a place now where he is more content.
Rick
Anne's guest editorial was excellent and has generated much comment here. Among those comments were criticisms of seasonal hiring and benefit policies, nepotism, etc. I must admit that I observed many of these "abuse's of the spirit and intent of these policies, among others" during my own tenure with the NPS, though I still believe they were the minority of my experiences. Needless to say, I do not need to recount them here, but, as has been pointed out in some excellent books, the Robert Danno "Worth Fighting For" and the Paul Berkowitz "The Case of the Indian Trader" (as well as Barbara Moritsch "The Soul Of Yosmite"), are worth the reads and detail some of the needs for improvement within the NPS. I also agree that the cause of the current shutdown can be laid on the shoulders of the anti-government crowd. Their general hostility toward the concept of taxation, a social safety net and regulations in general create much public resentment against the very idea of the government in general, not just the NPS.
A total mischaracterization of the right. The only thing they are "hostile" to is expanding taxation, social safety nets and government regulations beyond the parameters of the Constitution and to points where they become counterproductive - i.e high tax rates discouraging economic output, safety nets discouraging work and regulations dampening economic activity with no real incremental benefit.