Recent comments

It is whacko; are people serious about organizing a movement not to comply? Why do I get the sense that if this happens and a boycott is organized that people will still find themselves putting themselves through this absurdity?

Just brand us now; that would save the government a lot of time and money.

Jim Macdonald
The Magic of Yellowstone
Yellowstone Newspaper
Jim's Eclectic World

I sincerely doubt that anyone actually intends to require ID at all National Parks. All the other examples, federal buildings, courthouses, planes and trains, are secure environments, so we can expect that the ID might be required at similar sites. The Washington Monument, for example, has metal detectors and x-ray machines. The Liberty Bell requires some level of security check. I don't know whether ID is particularly useful in those places, but I think we can agree that it makes more sense to require ID at that sort of monument than at Wilson's Creek or Hovenweep.

However, for the sake of historical context, I'll note that back in the sepia-toned early days of the national parks, visitors had to give their names and home addresses at the entrance stations as a matter of course. That's what entrance stations were for.

Yet another reason to reclaim our public lands from the federal government.

The lack of restrooms is a definite problem on the National Mall - although I wonder how the NPS will deal with the situation without turning additional restrooms into de facto homeless shelters. The other major problem is that all of the Smithsonians and Federal Buildings surrounding the Mall effectively shut down around 5pm, creating an effective dead space in the heart of the City. Hopefully the Park Service's plans for the National Mall will allow for additional restaurants, cafes, coffe shops, ice creameries, etc. that could add some cultural vibrance to what should be the heart of the Nation's capitol.

Pardon my puritanical instincts, but I personally don't see the correlation between museum facilities and the NPS budget. On the other hand, if Yosemite is granted a disproportionate amount of the budget as suggested within the Centennial Initiative, all bets are off. I don't care WHO has the deepest pockets, and trust me, Grand Teton has about the deepest pockets you'll ever encounter. The entire fabric of this initiative was supposedly intended to bring about rapid and long overdue NEEDED improvements, as from what I've read regarding who gets what, the whole project is a farce. What can I say, just another shining example of your government in action.

The NPS has enough blueprints and acronym laden initiatives to clog Crater Lake and cover the Everglades. How many more studies, working groups, panels, visioning sessions, conferences and official reports does it take to see very clearly that NPS is a dysfunctional, self-perpetuating, politically befuddled bureaucratic morass. The parks and the visiting public deserve better!

Now don't go and jump on Arnsberger, he doesn't know any better. Reports and studies were the lifeblood of his career. He just can't countenance the awful truth that this agency is too broken to fix. More money will NOT help. It hasn't helped public education and it sure won't fix the systemic weakness that is inherent to all agencies of the federal government, especially those of the corrupt and ineptly run Department of Interior. The people writing these reports and initiatives are simply clinging to power and secure jobs.

To better serve the interests of the national parks in the future will require a whole new paradigm shift towards smaller more locally focused management that is both public and private and often will be a combination of the two. The 100 year-old model is officially dead. No one needs a WASO sanctioned report to tell us that the flat hatted green & gray has seen its final days of relevance.

Now, Haunted Hiker, before you can fix something you have to know what's wrong with it, no? And I agree, the NPS seems to have more than enough bureaucracy in it. But how can you fix something if you don't have a blueprint or know exactly what's wrong with it?

The agency's asset management program was long in coming, but we finally have a pretty good idea of what's wrong with the park system's infrastructure and a metric to determine where to start in fixing things. Shouldn't similar efforts go into, for instance, trying to assess how the regional offices function, whether there's a need for a full-fledged staff in each and every park unit (they share superintendents and staff in places like Sequoia and Kings Canyon and the Southern Utah Group, why not elsewhere?), and even whether the number of NPS units should be trimmed?

I don't like the sound of "reports and series of reports" any more than you, but how else can things get corrected? I like the idea of a free-standing committee that would assess things across the board and help guide the NPS. Of course, for that to happen I think we'd have to have a drastic makeover of the NPS hierarchy. Specifically, the NPS director could no longer be a political appointee, for such an individual would no doubt be quick to ignore a committee's recommendations.

Perhaps such reports have already been prepared. If so, let's give them some daylight.

Beamis,

You nailed it again. Could Arnberger's statement sound more bureaucratic? By God! This crisis calls for reports, reports and "a series of reports!" Reminds me of a scene in the movie Office Space where there's a bulletin board in the background with a flow chart titled "PLANNING TO PLAN."

Would some DOING TO DO be too much to ask for on this go around?

Anne, thanks for adding your studied perspective!!! I worriy less about where the funds come from as I do about how efficiently they will be managed. And will we remember and see the results of the Centennial Initiative more than 50 years later as we do the Mission 66 projects?

Bears let me know when the apples and pears are at their prime.
Deer let me know when the strawberries are juicy.
Raccoons remind me it is time for a dump run.

Even at Yosemite National Park, the entry gates on the roads are only staffed during normal office hours. There isn't the budget for staff to manage visitor entrances and exits at other times.

I was once told by someone at another park that hikers entering and exiting the parks on foot from adjacent forst or BLM wilderness areas were still liable for park entry fees. But of course, there is no way they could justify the manpower to enforce that either.

It may be some security bureaucrat's dream to identify every park visitor, but there just aren't the resources to ever make it happen.
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The WildeBeat "The audio journal about getting into the wilderness"
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How did we, humans, get to be so arrogant? Why do we think that the 'bear' (or any other animal) needs to live with us? We are suppose to be 'smarter than the average bear' and yet we still crowd them out of their habitat, feed them when they have plenty of food of their own and in general, feel we can change them to 'our ways.' I say write those citations! Why kill a 'problem bear' when the problem is actually the human. I agree with the joke about 'relocating' the humans out of the area, to bad it is a joke.