But this is one more reason why we NEED our National Parks.

Americans are growing further and further distanced from the natural world, other creatures and the land. Our Disney-ized, New Age-y image of animals as kindly brothers does not reflect the reality that animals, like people, deserve respect and distance and, when provoked, will act, not like Bambi or Balloo, but like the wild beasts they are.

The National Parks are places where over-civilized, over-malled and over-asphalted people can reconnect in a REAL way (in this case in a painfully real way) with nature as it is. If we lose the parks, we lose these places of contact and our culture will deserve all the bear maulings, hanta viruses and gila monster bites it gets.