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About the critique my writing (a low blow and a diversion from weaker arguments): Modern standard English practice does not reflect the between less and fewer. When not followed by than, fewer is more frequent only in formal written English, and in this construction also the use of less is increasing: This year we have had less crimes, less accidents, and less fires than in any of the last five years. As for formality, old practice forbids starting a sentence with a conjunction. And I'm here to write colloquially, not formally. Enough with this trifling.
Here are some selective numbers for you (all from 2006):
$143,388,000
The approximate amount (I may have left out a park on accident) spent to operate all the "national park" national parks (not seashores, monuments, historic sites, etc.). Note that it's about 8% of total NPS budget that year ($1.7 billion). It's also about 14% spent operating NPS units.
$307,784,000
The amount spent on NPS support programs (bureaucracy) including multiple field offices. Note that it's twice as high as what was spent on maintaining national parks.
$513,804,000
The approximate amount (again, with possible error) spent to operate all the national monuments. (When NPs and NMs are added, it amounts to about $350 million for places like Joe Blow National Historic Site and Fear Island National Seashore that in my opinion could be managed more effectively at the local level. Again, this number is not "pennies".)
$1,052,853,000
The cost to operate all units.
$1,718,591,000
NPS budget for FY 2006.
Bottom line: NPS is bureaucracy heavy, and decentralizing management (in addition to helping parks adapt to local needs and being more responsive) would eliminate the "need" for multiple service centers, saving hundreds of millions of dollars. These are not pennies.
But I see no point in continuing this thread. There are those who see no problem with waste and bureaucracy and will continue to use slippery slope arguments to defend inefficiency and calcified government.
Jon, your really on a roll tonight. Keep florishing!
Note to rescue rangers Aidan Assist, Rocky Rappel, and Reese Essitate: If I ever fall off the edge of something and die, please just leave me there. The vultures and condors need to eat too.
-- Jon
Maybe she just wanted to be alone and doesn't want to be "found"...
Kinda interesting -- her name translates to "Prosperous, good attempt"
-- Jon
I just got back from backpacking the Under the Rim Trail at Bryce. In two days I saw only 2 other people. Several times my wife and I would just stand still and do nothing but listen to the silence...something that is impossible in our everyday lives. Unfortunately that solitude was broken a couple of times by a low flying helicopter doing tours of Bryce Canyon. That was bad enough, but at least it only lasted a few minutes. But having to deal with the constant buzz of motorbikes, possibly even having to share the trail with them? I'm not sure Bryce would ever see me again. And that would be one of the saddest days of my life.
Again, selective numbers to bolster your argument. I didn't visit EUON last year or the year before. I still find it worthwhile. If I remember correctly, they had recent (meaning the past ten years) earthquake damage to repair yet didn't receive a budget increase to specifically deal with that issue. Why is acreage an important number to bring up as though that's some measure of a place's worth, value, or bang for the buck? Let's see the acreage numbers for Ford's Theatre as a comparison. Acreage is meaningless unless you're just trying to sensationalize to make some sort of point. If you want to go down that road, let's give back all the useless acreage at Yosemite where people don't actually hike. All they do is look at it, why should the feds own that land, eh? How much is a view worth anyway? Heck let's just replace all the National Parks wth Imax theatres... Why should we keep all that land in the national trust just so people can stand there and look at it? Sure sounds like a waste of money and lost business opportunity to me. I'm all for consolidating positions and marrying up nearby parks with a single superintendent and other roles as well. That's a good idea. Those North Carolina outer banks seashores could easily be one big park under a single name (U.S. Grant and Truman in Missouri, Fort Raleigh and Wright Brothers in North Carolina, Franklin D. and Eleanor Roosevelt sites in New York -- the possibilities are endless).
Interior IS experimenting with new arrangements for ownership and upkeep of new park entities (Chesapeake in MD/VA, Pinelands in NJ, Valles Caldera in NM to name a few). Once places like that are evaluated for efficiency, effectiveness, accessibility, and any other criterion you wish to examine, then perhaps it's time to consider changing the formula for existing parks. You don't jump into that sort of thing just because it feels right or props up your political leanings, because once you go down that road it's very difficult to undo.
Your $133 dollar question is a bogus question. The park has no admission fee and the shuttle is also free. Now factor in the same figures for Yosemite or another park with high entrance fees and your extreme example isn't so extreme any more. Again, selective numbers and an incomplete picture to support your argument. And as Eugene O'Neill probably would have pointed out to you if given the opportunity, it's 40 fewer employees, not less.
-- Jon Merryman
I'm really surprised that there hasn't been more comments on Kurt's article here. It such a critical issue that needs to be address now. If the general public doesn't give a living damn about the future management policies of the National Parks...so goes the parks. Interesting in put Frank!
Last summer when I was up in Tuolumne, I heard hikers tell about an 85 year old woman doing the High Sierra Camp loop by herself. It's not your age, it's your condition. Some 25 year olds aren't in good enough shape to be at that altitude doing that kind of exertion.
I've read this news with more than a slight twinge of regret; when I was a student at Gettysburg College, I found that the Electric Map was always a good first stop when family or friends visited and wanted to get a feel for the vast sprawl of the battlefield. I'm sure that the effect can be translated into this great digital age, but as the other folks have noted here, I will surely miss the old, technologically simpler presentation, and recall such effects as the little orange lights that were lit, as the lights in the auditorium dimmed, to simulate campfires behind the Union and Confederate lines at night . . .
And a quick side note . . . the historian Martin Duberman wrote a brief, one-act play about a fictional guy who was in charge of running the map, back in the 1970s, called "The Electric Map."
Why Not ? Because they come up Missing !!!
Why not??
Why was an 80 year old woman way up at Vogelsang High Sierra Camp?
No anecdotes here. Just numbers. And they aren't my numbers; they're the fed's lifted from the NPS Green Book.
Funny that you never answered my question (would you pay $133 to visit EUON?). I'll take your non-answer as a no.
EUON is just one example of the wasteful pork barrel spending attached as riders to major legislation.
Take Steamtown NHS for another example. In a NYT article:
Steamtown's budget is over $5 million a year to administer a 62 acre site that is suffering from drastically declining visitation. By comparison, Crater Lake administers a 183,000 acre site that receives half a million visitors a year and does it with $1.5 million LESS and 10 more employees than Steamtown. Does Steamtown really need a superintendent making over 100k a year? What about an assistant superintendent? A public affairs specialist? An IT specialist? A chief of visitor services and public affairs AND a supervisory park ranger? Lava Beds, which received about 40,000 more visitors in 2006, managed to serve visitors and preserve the resource with 40 less employees. And sadly, this isn't just an isolated case. There are hundreds of leaches bleeding the national park system, sucking its lifeblood. Scrape off enough parasites, and you'll saved more than just a few "pennies".
You insinuate that declining budgets are forcing EUON to cut its staff and operation hours, but if you look at the Green Book, the site received a budget increase every year except one since 2000, and the increases seem at a glance to be in line with inflation.
Yes, about 3000 visitors from California enjoy this park a year. I'm not saying the park isn't worth saving; I'm saying let California or a private trust save it.
Your anecdotes and numbers are fascinating but don't begin to present the whole picture. The idea that Yosemite entrance fees are funding a war in the Middle East is ridiculous. That war funding will likely be taxed from your great grandchildren who aren't even born yet. And the fat you'd want to trim to make visiting Yosemite cheaper would wipe an existing historic site from the map so you could save a penny or two, if that. EUON is difficult to visit because there's no parking next to the house, and that's as it should be. We don't need to keep adding asphalt so we can get the $133 number down and make it so much more convenient for people to see the place. At EUON you make a reservation, in advance, you park elsewhere in Danville, and get a shuttle up to the house. Controlled visitation -- what a concept. It's what you do sometimes when preservation is a high priority. The park is also closed two days a week, and many parks that found themselves in the position of having to make maintenance the highest priority (thanks to this administration) have been forced to cut back their hours. You don't find the park worthwhile while thousands and thousands of others do.
-- Jon
All this talk of "Soviet-style bureaucracy" and "Big brother" and "Who's Eugene O'Neill?" is getting tiresome. The old "repeat your mantra often enough in the hopes that people will eventually stop rebutting it" has gotten out of control... Privatizing everything will just make it more expensive for everyone as these companies attempt to raise enough cash to pay their exhorbitant contractor salaries.
The market for the National Park Service does not change over time. The same principles for the Park Service's existence did, do now, and always will apply... They're not there to entertain you like a birthday bash at Chuck E. Cheese. The notion that the Park Service needs to adapt to today's consumers is utter nonsense. So you'd have Yosemite competing against Yellowstone, Everglades, and Grand Canyon to attract the tourist dollar? Give it 20 years and we'll have casinos, thrill rides, and movie theaters with buttered "cave popcorn" popping up all over the NPS system.
Whether you can manage to appreciate a playwright's work, an artist's scuplture, or a former president's policies, it's all part of our national heritage and with 391 units in NPS, pick and visit those you find interesting. I don't expect white supremecists to visit Frederick Douglass' home in Washington DC, nor do I expect people who haven't read much beyond Dr. Seuss to visit Longfellow National Historic Site. To each his own, and with the variety and depth and breadth of the American experience that the Park Service encompasses, everyone can find something to enjoy, while at the same time, realize that others find value in things they might not. I support the existence of Isle Royale National Park and Aleutian National Historic Area, whether or not I ever visit there or even plan to visit there. Just knowing they're there is good enough for me.
Having the NPS pendulum sway back and forth from left to right, from administration to administration, is more of a problem than ANY of the superlatives I've seen mentioned here. No, that doesn't mean privatize it. It means create some buffers to protect the parks from the direct influence of a potential idiot in the oval office, whether left or right. In all their haste to make the president du jour happy, in the long run, NPS can easily wind up going nowhere and having spent a lot of money in the process. Perhaps consider installing NPS directors in the same way that Federal Reserve or CIA directors are... subject to approval by congress, and largely independent of the whims of politicians.
-- Jon Merryman
Thoreau also wrote in Civil Disobedience:
A better government would be cleared of excessive regulation and would allow competition. To use an ecological analogy, the government has become like modern forests: dense and overgrown to the point where nothing can grow; it is a tangled mess making navigation through it nearly impossible. It needs a fire to clear out the overgrowth (Director's order this and Director's order that) and to return nutrients (money) to the soil so that the trees of the forest (national parks in this case) may grow stronger and so that new plants (innovations and competition) may take root in the ashes of the forest to replace older, dying plants (outdated ideas, programs, laws--such as the Organic Act).
To speak in Darwinian terms, species have evolved through a kind of trial and error process. Mutations occur, but not all are useful. The key is to find the useful mutation while understanding that most mutations will fail. There is no longer true trial and error, adaptability, in federal government. Programs are allowed to continue (interest groups demand their continuance) long after their usefulness has ended.
I'm glad the author is reconsidering reforming park management. I'm not sure if these "principles" are the best-suited to operate parks, but doubt we'll ever find out due to the government's reluctance to engage in the trial and error process. It seems that the ten principles were drafted and signed by interest groups, which are part and parcel of the problem of a parasitic, transfer-seeking economy. The principles advocate administration of parks "in an unbiased manner, free of conflict of interest" but in the same breath mandate government bureaucracy ("institutional legacy of experienced public servants") and funding through taxes. As long as park management is funded and regulated by government bureaucrasy, parks will never, ever be free of politics and interest group pressure.
Snowbird06
Kurt, hopefully will get some good critical and constructive dialogue on your article, Principles Of Parks. I think Henry David Thoreau said it best: "In wildness is the preservation of the world"...let this be a start for constructive in put.
Err, to reiterate: The road up Surprise Canyon is not, and never has been since the day Panamint City was built and the roadbed was dynamited out of the rock of the canyon, wilderness. It was explicitly cherry-stemmed out of the wilderness area when the wilderness area was created in 1994 because of the rights of valid mine owners in the Panamint City area. Indeed, the only reason the road was not re-built when it washed out in 1984 was because the price of silver had fallen to a point where it was no longer economically viable to work the mines up there, but the mines are still up there, and they are still private property, and the mine owners still have the legal right under U.S. laws to go up the canyon to their mines and did so as late as 2001 by hitching rides with the 4x4 types -- well, they did until the lawsuit closed the road anyhow. If the price of silver goes back up the mines would be viable to work again, well, except for one thing -- now that the road is blocked by the Center for Biodiversity's legal actions, you can't get there from here because they wouldn't be able to get their bulldozers and ore trucks up the canyon.
I realize that stealing private property using lawsuits in government courts because of a belief that private property is evil is typical behavior for environmental organizations, but that still doesn't make it right. I applaud those environmental organizations which work with landowners to purchase their lands for environmental restoration purposes, or which work to organize land swaps so that land like that at Panamint City isn't seized without compensation, and if the Center for Biodiversity was one of those organizations I would applaud their work. But they aren't. They're in the business of stealing people's land without compensation by filing lawsuits to cut off access to private property based upon frivolous notions such as that a county road is somehow "wilderness" and must be "preserved". Rather than go at it the ethical way by working with landowners, they instead use the power of government to steal from landowners without compensation, which is just plain wrong.
It's all hush hush at the Navy Yard regarding the contract with Amelia Occasions - dont think the park receives anything in return. Management turns a blind eye about everything which is why there are so many problems.
Someone should really investigate into this further - there are still many events that have happened after the
McKesson incident which involve alcohol and partying.
On an earlier comment, the "guy in the yellow shirt" who stopped a visitor from entering the Navy Yard, that
was one of the law enforcement fellows...funny they have "POLICE" on the back of their shirt..they wish...
RS2477 is a joke, just an arcane tool twisted to undermine necessary protections for special places. It's hard to find a single place that those southern Utah counties believe should remain unroaded. It's amazing to me how much money travelers seeking primitive recreation deposit in those counties' local economies compared with how much those counties care about making sure their special places stay protected and continue to draw the crowds of hikers.
rscottjones.com | scottspics.com
Frank it is an uphill battle but someone's got to do it! The new paradigm of self-sustaining market friendly parks is a no-brainer. It is happening in every other sphere of modern life. Yet most people have been taught to distrust the benefits of self-interested action and to look instead into the all enveloping arms of Big Brother to take care of what they believe true freedom of action would never accomplish. The fact that government fails at every endeavor never diminishes their capacity for believing in Him.
"...they [maintenance workers] provide better visitor information than the fee collectors."
"We need to find ways to build consensus, support each other..."
Yeah, the first statement, a slam against fee collectors, is very supportive.
"Before you criticize the maintenance divisions in the national park service units, go and spend a day walking in their shoes."
I spent a decade doing dirty work for the NPS like cleaning up dog poop, human vomit, human blood, performing first responder duties, removing stinking rotting 800 pound pygmies sperm whales from the beach, busting trails, busting fire lines, breathing thousands of cubic feet of forest fire smoke, picking up trash, and so on. Don't give me the old cliched "spend a day walking in their shoes" bit because a lot of NPS employees (well, those who don't spend their days in air conditioned offices) have seen the "trenches". So I--or anyone for that matter--have a right to criticize the sense of government entitlement (and the "good enough for government work!" attitude) that I've observed in maintenance and other divisions.
The Park Service spends $133 dollars per visitor to operate the O'Neil. Would you pay $133 OF YOUR OWN MONEY to visit it? That's the point being made about such entitlement sites.
.So, if Eugene O'Neill's home or a site which led and supported women's right to vote are not worthy of National Park status, what is? O'Neill's writing influenced American writing (He was the only American playwright to win the Nobel Peace Prize) and giving women the right to vote was a National movement, both would seem to meet the National part of the National Park system?
We have lots of parks run by local authorities....they are called city, township, regional and county parks.
Before you criticize the maintenance divisions in the national park service units, go and spend a day walking in their shoes. They have faced some of the highest cuts at the field level. That’s why campgrounds are understaffed; not as spiffy as they once were. They work harder than anyone else in the park, clean the poop off the walls, pick the rotten food out of the bottom of the trash cans and still provide better visitor information than the fee collectors. All I see here are a bunch of people who are willing to offer up a bunch of "if I ruled the world" statements without spending any time in the trenches. This never accomplishes anything. We need to find ways to build consensus, support each other and find ways to create the strongest park service--especially in light of things we all see as bad (like private parties). Throwing the baby out with the bathwater isn't the solution.
Maybe it's the August visitor stress of answering the same questions hundred times a day, but I used to enjoy the traveler. Now I just see it as a bunch of old white men whining about their entitlements.
I'm not so sure throwing more money at a non-responsive bureaucracy will help. It didn't help with public education; post WWII, spending doubled every 20 years, average class sizes fell, and the proportion of teachers with master's degrees increased, yet public schools are in a terrible mess.
The NPS, instead of looking for more money, should do more with the money it has.
I just found out a very interesting fact about Eugene O'Neill NHS. In 2004, the park's budget was $358,000 and hosted 2684 visitors. After doing the math, I realized the NPS spent $133 PER VISITOR to run the site. Would any of you pay that much to go the site? Yet the government does, because it's wasteful. The NPS should trim the fat; how many of the 390+ units are like O'Neill? How many of them spend an outrageous amount per visitor?
I just checked Yosemite, and the cost per visitor is about $7. Guess most of the $20-$25 entrance fee is going to fund the war and to subsidize other parks. Trimming the fat would lower the cost of visiting Yosemite for everyone and allow the NPS to manage what it has far more effectively!
I think that one very important point needs to be made: NPS is severely underfunded, and cannot have the same number of interpretive programs that it did in the past, hence the visitation declines. I know that Great Smokies used to have day-long, ranger-guided hikes every Saturday in the summer. Now, it's once or twice in a season 9and this year, the summer interp schedule didn’t even start until the 3rd week of June!) I would go to the park just for those hikes, but they've stopped offering them, so I've stopped going as often.
It's direct cause and effect. Give NPS the money it needs!
---
jr_ranger
http://tntrailhead.blogspot.com
http://picasaweb.google.com/north.cascades
http://zinch.com/jr_ranger
President, CHS SPEAK (CHS Students Promoting Environmental Action & Knowledge)
Founder and President, CHS Campus Greens