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  • Federal Real ID May (Not) Be Required For Park Visit   5 years 37 weeks ago
    Even at Yosemite National

    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.
    -----
    The WildeBeat "The audio journal about getting into the wilderness"
    Download the MP3 programs or subscribe to the podcast at...
    www.wildebeat.net

  • Grand Teton Bears, Update   5 years 37 weeks ago
    Here, here J! This is a

    Here, here J!
    This is a HUMAN problem. Problem is these fines aren't big enough. $200.00 is nothing nowadays when folks don't bat an eye pouring 70 or eighty bucks into their SUV's gas tank. Make it $5,000.00 and people might start paying attention!

  • Grand Teton Bears, Update   5 years 37 weeks ago
    How did we, humans, get to

    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.

  • At Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, The Facilities Seem Almost as Old as the Fossils   5 years 37 weeks ago
    I generally prefer state

    I generally prefer state parks to national parks because they offer a more resource focused experience and are not managed by people who are just stopping off for a few years before moving on to another park, in another part of the country, to help complete a career punch-list. Some of the states with excellent park systems include: Florida, Texas, Nebraska, West Virginia, Nevada, South Dakota, California and Oregon.

    I find it ironic that Merryland is saying that turning these currently neglected fossil beds over to another controlling authority would result in not enough people being concerned with their fate. Isn't this article about NPS neglect of the Lorax's beloved fossils?

    P.S. Good for you Jr. Ranger. Love the JUST the parks and your career will go nowhere, but you'll have a better time and get to date more girls in the gateway towns. Believe me I know!

  • At Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, The Facilities Seem Almost as Old as the Fossils   5 years 37 weeks ago
    At least I'm not looking to

    At least I'm not looking to climb the ladder.....

    ---
    jr_ranger
    http://tntrailhead.blogspot.com
    http://zinch.com/jr_ranger
    http://picasaweb.google.com/north.cascades
    President, CHS SPEAK (CHS Students Promoting Environmental Action & Knowledge)
    Founder and President, CHS Campus Greens

  • At Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, The Facilities Seem Almost as Old as the Fossils   5 years 37 weeks ago
    The sentiment is well taken,

    The sentiment is well taken, but I'm not certain that the only tag that draws cross-country trekkers ends with National Park, National Monument, National Preserve, etc. While the majority of state managed facilities are indeed lacking in many areas of grandeur, most notably in their food and lodging aspects, what lies within the boundries of the parks (e.g. scenery, solitude) is more often than not well worth the extra time and effort. Bear in mind however, the main reason that the state parks do not offer these ammenities is the fact that they generate a minute revenue stream based largely on the fact that they don't collect admission fees, and the fees that they do charge are generally about half of similar NPS facilities. Not surprisingly, the proximity of ammenities to these "ugly sister" parks are many times conveniently located in the surrounding communities, many of which rely heavily on the annual influx of travel season tourist dollars, and are either adjacent to or a very short commute from the parks. (There are exceptions however, and you may find yourself literally stuck with either McArches or the gas station QuickieMart, which will probably be in the same building.) And VERY few state parks lack for tent and hard-side camping facilities, just pillow-top beds and in-room jacuzzi tubs. I guess it depends on which of the following options suit you best: 1) pack in your own meals and temporary residence, 2) camp at the park and head into town for breakfast and dinner, concentrating on the local cuisine to optimize your experinece, 3) complain to the staff that they are missing the opportunity of a lifetime by not having built a 5-star hotel / spa in anticipation of your arrival, or 4) miss out on the opportunity to expand your appreciation for some historically significant portions of the history of our country, highlighting the best and worst of our heritage on a national, regional and local level.

  • At Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, The Facilities Seem Almost as Old as the Fossils   5 years 37 weeks ago
    How does "Florissant Fossil

    How does "Florissant Fossil Beds State Park" sound?

    I´m the Lorax who speaks for the fossils
    which have been here since long before all the apostles.
    And I´m also in charge of the lizards and newts
    who played in the swamp in their lizard-skin suits
    and happily lived, eating fossilized fruits.
    NOW...thanks to your selling my park to the state,
    there´s not enough people concerned of their fate.
    And those people who visit from Kalamazoo
    just won't even stop -- they'll just drive right on through!

    -- with apologies to Theo LeSieg ;-)

  • Yosemite Falls All Dried Up   5 years 37 weeks ago
    It is typical for the falls

    It is typical for the falls to dry up at the end of summer. This year with 25% snow pack, things shriveled up earlier. There are no aquifers to feed these streams – all we see is snow melt. Bridal Veil Falls usually runs longer due to its larger watershed (mentioned above) AND the fact that the snow fields feeding it face more north and thus melt slower. In late June, even this fall was mostly spray.

    Besides the fire concern, another issue is the bears. With their natural food supply not growing in abundance, they migrate more towards the easy pickins – campers. Even nearby Tahoe is seeing more bruins heading to populated areas and garbage. Many have been hit by cars. Life is seasonal – this too, will pass.

  • Centennial Projects: Do They All Prepare the National Parks for the Next 100 Years?   5 years 37 weeks ago
    Dear MRC: I'm the author of

    Dear MRC:

    I'm the author of the post Kurt pointed you to that compared the Centennial Initiative to Mission 66. As you can see, Mission 66 was a ten-year effort to pour funding into the National Parks in advance of the Park Service's 50th birthday in 1966. Compared to the proposal under the Centennial Initiative, Mission 66 was a mammoth program for the parks, and 100% of the funds came from federal coffers. Mission 66 definitely had its critics (there were those who thought it focused too heavily on "visitor centers" and other park infrastructure, for instance, to the neglect or detriment of the environment). But there is no doubt that it represented a very different way of thinking about funding the parks than what we are seeing now with the Centennial Initiative and its "matching funds" requirement.

    Thinking more broadly about National Parks funding, the parks' history has been marked by long periods of underfunding, punctuated by briefer periods of more generous infusions. The two major eras where there was a lot of money put into the park system were the New Deal period and the Mission 66 period. The early years of the Park Service -- after its founding in 1916 -- were pretty lean; at times, Park Service Director Steve Mather actually funded some of the fledgling agency's needs out of his own pocket (he was wealthy from his previous career selling borax)!

    If you want to learn more about Mission 66, as well as about the history of National Parks funding, here are some sources that might interest you:

    Ethan Carr, Mission 66: Modernism and the National Parks Dilemma (Amherst: Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 2007). New history of Mission 66 by a very insightful professor of landscape architecture.

    Conrad L. Wirth, Parks, Politics, and the People (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press; 1980): this is former NPS Director Conrad Wirth's own history of the National Parks. Wirth was the Director who dreamed up and presided over Mission 66, and he devotes considerable attention to the program in his book.

    Richard West Sellars, Preserving Nature in the National Parks: A History (Yale Univ. Press, 1997): an excellent history of the National Park Service, with a focus on natural resources conservation. But has great material giving overview of the history of park funding.

    Dwight F. Rettie, Our National Park System: Caring for America's Greatest Natural and Historic Treasures (Univ. of Illinois Press, 1995). Also has a comparison of Park Service budgets in 1990 constant dollars.

    Roy E. Appleman, A History of the National Park Service Mission 66 Program (January 1958). Online at http://www.nps.gov/history/history/hisnps/NPSHistory/mission66.pdf. Appleman was a longtime historian with the Park Service, and this history, of course, was written while the Mission 66 program was unfolding.

    For primary documents, you might see the records of Mission 66 at the National Park Service Harper's Ferry Center site: http://www.nps.gov/hfc/products/library.htm (go down and click "Mission 66").

    Good luck!

    Anne Mitchell Whisnant, Ph.D.
    Historian & Author of Super-Scenic Motorway: A Blue Ridge Parkway History
    Chapel Hill, NC

  • At Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, The Facilities Seem Almost as Old as the Fossils   5 years 37 weeks ago
    I hope you dropped a few

    I hope you dropped a few bucks in the donation box... every dollar counts. Sounds like a few extra mouse traps could make or break your experience there... ;-)

    -- Jon Merryman

  • At Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, The Facilities Seem Almost as Old as the Fossils   5 years 37 weeks ago
    As a National Park

    As a National Park completist, I took the trek from Denver to "tour" Florissant and I was embarrassed by the "visitor's center" and the unfliching pride of the only on-site ranger who put on his best face while enduring the limitations of his position there. This is the shame of the NPS and I could not recommend this park for visitation as it reflects badly on our nation.

  • Centennial Projects: Do They All Prepare the National Parks for the Next 100 Years?   5 years 37 weeks ago
    Mrc, I'm afraid I can't

    Mrc, I'm afraid I can't answer all your questions off the top of my head. They will indeed require some research, but I'll see what I can pull together.

    In the meantime, check out this post that compared the Centennial Initiative to Mission 66. That should answer some of your questions.

  • Centennial Projects: Do They All Prepare the National Parks for the Next 100 Years?   5 years 37 weeks ago
    Kurt, can you dig into some

    Kurt, can you dig into some archives to find out about the 1966 50-year-anniversary initiative? From my very limited knowledge about the NPS in that time, between 1958 and 66 substantial funding went into many or almost all units, the agency had at that time. Some units, that were neglected for quite some time got their first decent installations.

    What else could be found in the history of the NPS? The first real boost was in the late 1920? When Union Pacific and others lobbied for new parks, to promote travel in the West? Then the New Deal, with the CCC building roads, bridges, trails, campgrounds, pick nick areas, lodges, cabins and what ever, the 50-year-initiative 1966. Was the expansion of the National Park System in the 1970s coordinated? Or did it happen from individual and decentralized initiatives? Would that be a tpic for this website? Or can you point me to a historical sketch somewhere on nps.gov?

  • Centennial Projects: Do They All Prepare the National Parks for the Next 100 Years?   5 years 37 weeks ago
    Very nice read, Kurt,

    Very nice read, Kurt, thanks.

    I think its probably difficult to find anyone associated with actual on-the-ground work at NPS or other land management agencies that think the Centennial Initiative (in its current incarnation) is really the best thing to move NPS into the future. Anytime you open up a big pot of money, people are going to sneak in well-written proposals that sound great but don't always fit in with a well-thought long-term plan - I know because I do it all the time. Unfortunately, it is the way the game is played, and certain parks (and agencies) play it better than others. Thus you have money for another jazz museum while other parks are shut out because either they don't know how to play the CI money grab game or cannot meet the requirements.

  • At Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, The Facilities Seem Almost as Old as the Fossils   5 years 37 weeks ago
    It's also not a "dream park"

    It's also not a "dream park" for NPS career ladder climbers but an out of the way backwater unit that might possibly serve as a place to get your first "permanent" assignment and then onward and upward. The funding is certainly not there nor is the respect and pride that might come from more localized management. To most agency professionals this is the proverbial Siberian hinterland assignment. I'm sure that many of the dedicated staff members of this park must certainly feel at times like an unwanted step-child in the vast far flung NPS empire.

    How does "Florissant Fossil Beds State Park" sound? It's worth looking into. Lord knows Colorado has more money than the Federal government does these days.

  • Centennial Projects: Do They All Prepare the National Parks for the Next 100 Years?   5 years 37 weeks ago
    Beamis - For what it's

    Beamis -

    For what it's worth, I've never thought your comments come off as 'disgruntled'. My initial impressions about this Centennial Initiative mirror yours in some regards. No matter what happens, a big deal will be made in 2016 for the NPS 100th anniversary. It makes sense to want to do something special, like this 10 year agenda. But, if the next 9 years are anything like the last year, any sense of a special agency wide initiative will have been lost. So far this thing looks like a rag tag collection of per-park projects designed with the single intent to get extra congressional funding thrown into the system. At this rate I believe you will be proven correct, that without a strong focus, this thing will "remembered by few and seen to fruition by even fewer."

  • Centennial Projects: Do They All Prepare the National Parks for the Next 100 Years?   5 years 37 weeks ago
    "Beamis, no offense but was

    "Beamis, no offense but was there anything that you liked or enjoyed about the NPS? Sounds to me you weren't one happy camper!"

    I was a very happy camper or else I wouldn't have stayed for 10 years. The bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo was a constant source of amusement, that I can now recollect with fondness and much mirth.

    Unfortunately my career success was seriously impeded by the fact that I was far more interested in the actual land under my feet and the plants and animals that inhabited it, rather than glomming onto the latest acronym laden initiative or "diversity enhancement goal" handed down from WASO. Most of my compatriots were far more interested in job advancement than nature and thus felt compelled to sit through the endless rounds of meetings where these "blueprints for change" were monotonously drilled into their skulls. Most of these programs were soon forgotten and the expensive training notebooks sat unread on the shelf next to the others that had been expensively produced and gone unrealized. We used to say that if you stayed in the agency long enough you could stack your training manuals up high enough to see into the next cubicle.

    That I can reflect back on the silliness of the whole organization and the constant state of crisis management that many in the agency tried to perpetuate in no way indicts me as a sour grapes type of guy. I was heavily awarded by my bosses and throughly enjoyed my time as a ranger. That I needed bigger challenges and eventually decide that a life-long career in the agency was a joke makes me more like an independent film-maker who realizes that Hollywood is nowhere to make good movies. I'm much happier being a lone ranger.

    It's always easier to digest what I'm laying out as just the ravings from a disgruntled ex-employee. I left happy and remain so. I'm just telling you how it was and that I know it hasn't changed. Many current rangers contact me and tell me so.

  • Centennial Projects: Do They All Prepare the National Parks for the Next 100 Years?   5 years 37 weeks ago
    Makes me think of No Child

    Makes me think of No Child Left Behind - good concept, terrible way to go about it.

    ---
    jr_ranger
    http://tntrailhead.blogspot.com
    http://zinch.com/jr_ranger
    http://picasaweb.google.com/north.cascades
    President, CHS SPEAK (CHS Students Promoting Environmental Action & Knowledge)
    Founder and President, CHS Campus Greens

  • At Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, The Facilities Seem Almost as Old as the Fossils   5 years 37 weeks ago
    Sounds like a project for

    Sounds like a project for the Centennial if I ever heard of one. But I suppose that FLFO doesn't have any friends with money....

    ---
    jr_ranger
    http://tntrailhead.blogspot.com
    http://zinch.com/jr_ranger
    http://picasaweb.google.com/north.cascades
    President, CHS SPEAK (CHS Students Promoting Environmental Action & Knowledge)
    Founder and President, CHS Campus Greens

  • When Nature Calls, It's Hard to Find a Restroom on the National Mall   5 years 37 weeks ago
    For locals, this can be a

    For locals, this can be a deterrent to visiting the Mall, though the biggest deterrent of people I know is a disdain for the crowds of tourists. There are so many other things to do in Washington as well; we've been there and done that. There are prettier parks (also mostly NPS-administered), there are interesting museums, and there certainly are monuments (in fact, people feel that there are far too many monuments littering the Mall and the rest of the city).

    If you come to Washington, I hope you won't be too scared to take in the rest of the city. Walk through Rock Creek Park, check out Dupont Circle or Adams Morgan, visit the National Arboretum, check out cultural programs spread out throughout the city (check out calendars on DC Indymedia http://dc.indymedia.org and the City Paper http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com . There's neat stuff going on at almost all times in corners of the city people never visit (from Anacostia to Petworth to Capitol Hill--talking about the residential neighborhood, not Congress). This Friday is the monthly critical mass bike ride that starts out at Dupont Circle at 6 PM and will bike as a kind of protest statement ("we are traffic") - the ride is slow and leisurely, and people stay together. We usually go by places like the White House and the Mall and through the neighborhoods and can always use more bikes. It's nice to be able to bike slowly through the streets once in awhile and not have to be afraid (the police leave us alone 98% of the time, and the angry motorists can't really do anything about it because we stick together - you'll see small children on the rides, too. Anyhow, that's just one example. Washington isn't just the Mall, and there are plenty of toilets throughout the parts of the city you aren't visiting and the activities you aren't doing in a city that's far more interesting than monuments to dead people and the official government versions of U.S. history that you'll see subtly in the various museums (and not just the American History museum).

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

  • Centennial Projects: Do They All Prepare the National Parks for the Next 100 Years?   5 years 37 weeks ago
    Beamis, no offense but was

    Beamis, no offense but was there anything that you liked or enjoyed about the NPS? Sounds to me you weren't one happy camper!

  • Pot Farmers Tilling Ground in Yosemite   5 years 37 weeks ago
    From the NPS website, 31

    From the NPS website, 31 August:

    Whiskeytown National Recreation Area (CA)
    Grower Arrested In Marijuana Plantation Raid

    Acting on information received from a California National Guard drug interdiction helicopter pilot returning from a reconnaissance flight in an adjoining county, an NPS special agent and deputies from the Shasta County Sheriffs Office marijuana eradication team conducted a ground reconnaissance of a suspected cultivation site complex operated by Mexican nationals near the west boundary of the park on Willow Creek. Agents located and entered a 6,428-plant cultivation site and apprehended Francisco Huato Sanchez of Michoacan, Mexico, when he exited a living structure where he was cooking breakfast. Sanchez was contacted from a distance of less than six feet and immediately surrendered. He was armed with a loaded .45 caliber Llama Model 1911 semiautomatic pistol. A .22 caliber revolver, a pellet gun and two 12 gauge shotgun rounds were also located at the site, but no shotgun was found. It’s possible that a second grower fled the scene during the arrest of Sanchez. Prosecution is pending in federal court in the Eastern District of California. A significant portion of Whiskeytown NRA remains closed for visitor safety due to the possibility that a second grower armed with a shotgun is at large. [Submitted by Alan Foster, Special Agent]

  • Centennial Projects: Do They All Prepare the National Parks for the Next 100 Years?   5 years 37 weeks ago
    This is just another in a

    This is just another in a long list of mostly forgotten initiatives that are always touted as "cornerstones of a new century for the National Park Service and a new era of partnership with the American people". The balderdash is always the same and you can be certain that it will be delivered with all of the self-righteous zeal of an evangelist. I sat through many a meeting as a park ranger listening to the same bloated hyperbole about the Vail Agenda, Ranger Futures, Mission Renewal, VERP and many other soon to be discarded and completely forgotten "bold new blueprints for the future". The NPS churns this stuff out like sausage. Will anyone really remember what was said or proposed in 2007 in the year 2010? Much less in 2016? Not likely. Will anyone even remember Mary Bomar and Dirk Kempthorne? Even less likely.

    I always caused sweat and consternation when I would earnestly ask my supervisors how these past initiatives were now propelling us forward towards our next new "paradigm shift of stewardship excellence"? Often they would marvel at my ability to even remember these useless programs and initiatives from the past. They'd say "are you kidding?" It was like being in a Dilbert comic strip, but much funnier. Many of us referred to our ranger careers as "Dilbert in a flat hat."

    The Centennial Project is no different. It will be remembered by few and seen to fruition by even fewer.

  • Black Bear Put Down in Grand Teton. How Many Visitors Ticketed For Providing Food?   5 years 37 weeks ago
    Why couldn't the bear be

    Why couldn't the bear be relocated or placed in a refuge? The Smoky Mountains National Forest has a bear refuge for such bears...this "put down" was murder...just plain wrong, wrong, wrong. How can they do such a horrible thing when so many alternatives are available?

  • Black Bear Put Down in Grand Teton. How Many Visitors Ticketed For Providing Food?   5 years 38 weeks ago
    It would appear that,

    It would appear that, opinions to the contrary regarding Darwin's hypothesis, evolution is indeed strictly a physiological phenomenon. It also is evident that behavioral, or intellectual evolution is lagging well behind in the human species. The instances sited by Merryland and Jon are unfortuantely not unique, and there is a growing attitude by many to "piss on the environment", consequences be damned. By the same notion, in all fairness, thankfully these exhibits are not the norm either. But I cannot find fault in the children's actions when sanctioned by their very own allegedly responsible caretakers. But I'm afraid that as time goes on and they relate tales of their NPS adventures to their children, that specific instance is the one experience that remains the enduring memory from their excursion into the "wild". As for the buffoon at Badlands, bad taste knows no bounds, and as a card-carrying member of our society, he does indeed have the same right to place himself in this geography as do the rest of us. Personally, I believe that at this point a person's rights terminate. If you cannot modify your behavioral urges to comply with the decency of your fellow travellers, PLEASE stay away. We all know that in vitrtually no instance do these human "urges" develop instantaneously. I'm aware that certain medical conditions exist, as I've personally experienced after a recent surgical procedure has altered my life-long rhythms, but you make the required adjustments and move forward. I'm curious how many malted beverages contributed to this immediate need for relief. But I offer no excuse to anyone, as I have managed to experience these many of our parks with the four youngest of my six and still avoided these trapping of immediate convenience. I do disagree about being "forced" into attitudes and behaviors that are deemed unnatural. It's a choice that individuals consciously make, and there is a tremendous lack of thought, caring, or as I refer to it, COMMON SENSE that enters the decision making process. It leaves me questioning what form of life actually represents the most evolved species in this world.