Recent comments

| "...consider that the Navy's budget (not including the Marines) for the Blue Angels (about $20 million a year) and the cost of the planes themselves ($22 million EACH) are used for "recruitment" purposes. That money could fund several Yosemites and Grand Canyons."

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Have you stopped to consider that without our military, we wouldn't have any Yosemites or Grand Canyons to enjoy? What is your freedom worth? How much do you think it should cost? At any rate, national parks like Yosemite and the Grand Canyon have become so commercialized that I doubt one could walk more than a mile in solitude without bumping into someone else along the trail.
When you take hikes in the wilderness, you like to take pictures saying "I was here"... why shouldn't the military have the same right? Last time I checked, the people serving in the military are citizens too.

Don't tell me that there are people out there that DON'T bend the law every once in awhile to suit their needs or purpose. For example... late for an appointment, speeding, stopped by a law enforcement officer... "but officer! "... : )

Don't tell me that's different... the LAW is the LAW.

Art,
First, I wouldn't compare apples and oranges.

Secondly, cooperative associations are NGOs, and they have a good track record in national parks.

I think every park should be managed locally, not by the Soviet-style bureaucracy that the NPS has become. I think local NGOs, currently formed or yet to be created, could do a better job of managing local resources and responding quickly to changing needs than the bureaucrats thousands of miles away in the petrified government who have never even been to places like Crater Lake. Speaking of Crater Lake, I think the non-profit Crater Lake Institute could do a far better job than the current sinecurists entrenched in the park.

Labor would come where labor comes from: the free market. Without federal red tape, local parks will be able to hire fairly according to the need of the individual park.

Wishful thinking, Matt. The problem is systematic and not party-specific. Politicians, of any leaning, are beholden to the transfer-seeking parasitic economy. No reform will occur as long as every federal program is an entitlement, or at least behaves like it is. By removing parks management from the federal government, we can prevent or reduce interest groups' influence. By decentralizing park management, it becomes much more difficult and expensive for interest groups to operate (imagine the difficulty lobbies would face if they tried to get subsidies in each of the 50 states rather than from just DC).

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Consider physicist Freeman Dyson, who urged us to:

That last line seem familiar? It describes the latest survey on NPS job satisfaction, which if I remember correctly, was below that of prison workers.

Finally, for those who take offense at the suggestion breaking up the NPS monopoly on park management, I quote David Osborne and Ted Gaebler, authors of "Reinventing Government":

These reserves should held in reserve only to be used when or if other resourses have beed exhusted.

I have read several references to Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO's) with the idea that somehow they could do better than the National Park Service. Do you compare their possible success with the abundance of NGO's operating in Iraq?

OK, let's get specific.... Who are these NGO's that could move into the parks and do it better? Do you have an organization/ company in mind? Where would the managers, maintenance specialists, cultural and resource managers, architects, landscape architects, planners, Law Enforcement, Interpreters, administrators that are working in the parks come from?

IMHO, the problems we all bemoan usually derive from folks without adequate background in the natural sciences or history or training in resources management. The NPS has been recruiting people from career fields far removed from park operations, and this lack of understanding is beginning to show up.

Frank, you could not have stated the case any better. The sooner the parks are administered by non-governmental entities the better. I'll also answer your question: it's the parks that we love, not the dysfunctional self-perpetuating bureaucracy that pretends to be in charge of them. The days of the green and gray should be fast be coming to an end because there's a brighter vision for these lands just over the horizon. I have every reason to feel great optimism that a completely new era of management and stewardship will emerge from the old and outdated methods of top down incompetence emanating from Washington, DC.

I await the coming evolution of the national parks with great anticipation.

Kurt:

Excellent article. I can think of one other major example of just what you are talking about.

Rocky Mountain NP and Theodore Roosevelt NP both have an overpopulations of elk. Both are trying to survive public comment on how best to cutback on the overpopulation which is damaging the park.

Around 40-50 years ago there was a huge controversy on who had the "right" to conduct wildlife management activities in National Park Areas. After a decade of fights with various state wildlife agencies, individuals, and numerous studies it was generally accepted that the NPS could and should control their wildlife populations.

Recently we had the decision come under question when a NPS Regional Official suggested "the NPS will consider public hunting as a means to control wildlife". Immediately the media picked up on that statement and all hell broke loose. Now we have both Colorado and North Dakota legislators involved with trying to allow public hunting.

Yes it is very true - Unlike Las Vegas, What happens in One Park doesn't stay there! It affects all the parks.

Amen!

My, my such heated debate over something as simple as be nice and don't attack other people. There is a difference between cantankerousness and rudeness. Maybe we should learn that one.

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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

Wow how cool. Even more cool was to find my video displayed here for hang gliding. Thank you. I wanted to show the beauty of modern hang gliding. You can see that a modern hang glider is stable enough to fly with no hands while taking photos of the beauty below. The record distance for a hang glider flight (no engine) is 436 miles. I have a friend who is over 65 who hang glides, been flying in Yosemite many times. That flight for me was the embodiment of a long dream to fly I've had since childhood. Come join us- it's the friendly skies.
There's more of my hang gliding videos here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/JoMama33
and leave a comment on my video log. I have some high resolution copies of several of the videos, watching the water fall is spectacular at Yosemite (it's lost on the web version).

David

Are we splitting hair over this, and forgetting to dot the i's and crossing the t's? I admire the journalistic in put of Frank and Glenn's, but is this getting to be a frivolous discussion now? Regardless, how strongly you feel about your view points, I believe the law of the jungle will prevail...that is, stifled voices will be heard over the gun shots...stifled speech should not tolerated at any cost. Crusty speech is colorful, but to put your words into a spin of a drunken sailor without intelligent reasoning only becomes counter productive...and looses it's point quickely. I alway's did admired old Ed Abbey (now deceased) and his cantankerous behavior, a master of a writers crust that coated his guts with literary fury. I sort of miss that kind of fire in the belly journalism.

There's certainly nothing wrong with passion (see my original post). But when passion and outspokenness becomes personal, it can change the debate from something constructive and problem-solving to something merely mean. Reading the above conversation seems to prove this point. My post was simply to say that this place could use a bit of civility... that the point of the comments often get sidetracked by personal, vitriolic attacks.

There are plenty of maverick, thought-provoking people (Edward Abbey and Gary Snyder definitely come to mind) who didn't need to sink to vindictive, snide personal attacks to get their points across. Instead they used poetry and muscular prose and the strength of their argument. If a writer can't avoid petty nastiness, I wonder at their power to write.

We are living in a cynical, nasty, bloggy culture. My point is merely that we try to rise above the teenage-level, me-vs.-you dialogue so prevelant on the web and talk about the parks, their problems and their solutions like (passionate, opinionated, maveric - but civil) adults.

Thank you, Kurt, for working on some "codes of conduct" for the site. This may help provoke more passionate and (com)passionate speech on the web.

This serves my point exactly, though. By putting the commentary outside civility, by making the argument about the arguer and by using tones that beg for irrational, emotional response, you cease the flow of creative ideas altogether.

I don't want to put words into Kurt & Jeremy's mouth, but I think this was what they were getting at in the "blog vs. webzine" post. There is a blogosphere culture which says it's about the anarchy, about the chaos of words and the cleverness with which we express them. Blogs are inherently about the personalities of the commentators. But this is, if I understand the point correctly, the reason why they are distinguishing the site from a blog. This site is inherently about the parks themselves and we are presenting ideas not simply out of gut-reaction but from thoughtful, reasoned and studied places.

Unless we engage some sense of civility in these discussions, the free flow of ideas is actually stymied and the site becomes nothing more than a huge public personality conflict. And there's plenty of webspace for that.