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Cellphone Towers In Yellowstone National Park: A Flaw In The National Park Service Mission?

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When the National Park Service was created nearly a century ago, its mission seemed straightforward: to preserve the landscape for the enjoyment of today's and tomorrow's generations. As the agency nears its centennial, is there a need to recommit to that mission?

Those who believe so might point to ever-increasing fees across the National Park System, efforts to create deeper channels for boats at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, and ongoing snowmobile use in Yellowstone National Park.

But there also are groups that believe the Park Service should indeed re-examine its mission statement and focus a bit more on recreation in the parks and working with businesses that reflect an element of the human landscape in the parks, such as the oyster farm at Point Reyes National Seashore.

If you follow the writings and musings of Michael Frome, the man whom the late Gaylord Nelson said had no literary peer when it came to arguing for "a national ethic of environmental stewardship," you'll sense his belief that the Park Service needs to focus more on the environmental landscape of the park system.

That message was inherent in Mr. Frome's recent thoughts on the approval of a cellphone tower near Lake in Yellowstone.

Cellphone service originating from inside the boundaries of Yellowstone has been limited to the Mammoth, Old Faithful, Canyon, Tower-Roosevelt, and Grant developed areas. The Lake developed area is the one additional location in the park where park managers determined cellphone coverage could be added under the park’s 2008 Wireless Communications Services Plan Environmental Assessment and its associated Finding of No Significant Impact.

In July the park received permission to erect a tower near Lake. The new cellular site is to be located next to a buried water tank on a 100-foot rise above the Lake Administrative Area and 700 feet below the top of the Elephant Back Ridge. This site already has access via an existing service road and is near existing electric and phone lines. Antennas will be configured to minimize spillover coverage into Yellowstone’s backcountry.

In the September edition of his Portogram, Mr. Frome laments that decision.

"Changes made in response to comments were incorporated into a Finding of No Significant Impact. No significant impact — so the park administrators said. As they see it, the developed areas, with electric wires, phone lines, lots of automobiles, gas stations, hotels, commercial gift shops and sewage treatment, are 'sacrifice areas,' otherwise known as popcorn playgrounds or tourist ghettos," he writes.

"Before coming, you think of Yellowstone the way it is in the nature series on television. The Park Service tells you to unplug your ears and connect with nature — but when you arrive you can check your e-mail, the state of your stocks, and feel the conveniences of home," continues Mr. Frome. "Perhaps park administrators might have chosen not to allow those towers in the first place. They might have determined this was a strictly commercial service using public resources and public land, and that the signals the towers emit can spill into and pollute hiking trails away from developed areas.

"They might have decided that since hotels in the park get along without television, they can make it without wireless Internet service. When people come to Yellowstone, it’s one of the special times in their lives. They want to hear the splash of geysers and feel themselves in harmony with natural forces that over the centuries created the thermal features, peaks and canyons. That is what they come here for, and not having that sound drowned out by somebody conversing via cell phone."

As Mr. Frome goes on to argue against the cell tower, he says national parks "are presumed preserved to reflect the original America. Many National Park Service personnel want it that way. They care deeply, feeling their mission is to encourage us to embrace a lifestyle that treads lightly on the earth, and that doing so adds richness to all of our lives. They ought to be able to defend their park areas from overuse and misuse with a clear conscience. To deplete or degrade the visible physical resource does something to the invisible spirit of place as well."

To further drive home that point, Mr. Frome points to Zane Grey's 1925 book, The Vanishing American, in which "Nophaie most loved to be alone, out in the desert, 'listening to the real sounds of the open and to the whispering of his soul.”

"In short," Mr. Frome concludes in his column, "instead of treating a national park like any other place, the park professionals ought to say, 'If you can’t do without your cellphone or laptop or tablet, don’t come here!'”

Comments

Plenty of good discussion on this topic.

About 18 months ago, the Traveler had a Reader Participation Day question on a closely-related topic to the current story. It asked, "Are you anxious about being out of cell phone contact during a park visit? Would you actually decide to skip a trip to a park just because the answer to 'can you hear me now?' is ...'no'?

That article also described "nomophobia, a term derived from 'no-mobile-phone phobia,' or the fear of being out of mobile phone contact." As more and more of us have become accustomed (for better or worse) to constant access to electronic communication, this is a very real concern for some people.


These folks are of the standard liberal ilk.

ec, please don't do this. I, for one, have no idea of the political parties of the people posting, nor do I think it makes a difference. There are valuable opinions on both sides and to denegrate the ones you don't agree with with a broad 'brush stroke' is lazy and adds nothing to the conversation.


Thank you, Dahkota. Special thanks to Sara, who always adds a lot whenever she tosses a few facts into the mix.


Jim Burnett on September 27, 2013 - 9:51am;

Generally speaking, concerns or discomfort at having any component of our daily life interrupted (which can cover an awful lot of ground) is going to be comparable to the mobile phone question. The distress that such an inconvenience generates is normally not going to amount to a "disease".

For something to be a "phobia", takes more than for the person to prefer not to experience it.

A phobia is a disease; a medical condition. Anxieties over phones - which have been on the scene for neigh a century - rarely rise to that level.
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More pointedly, it's a tad bogus to pose a survey or investigation of public opinion or preference, making sure at the outset that our participants understand, that one of the responses or choices is the mark of a sicko. ;)


Sorry Dahkota "liberal" is not a political party, it is a mindset and unfortunately there are too many people that have the mindset that they know better how other people should live their lives.


Many times "liberal" can mean open to change and new ideas where someone conservative will want things unchanged.


OK, liberals and conservatives, the thread drift is getting pretty strong. Let's move on to another topic. Perhaps the closure of the parks come Tuesday?


I have my first vacation of the year planned and reservations made to see a couple of NPS parks. I will be really bummed if the Parks are closed when I arrive. Kurt, maybe a reader participation about possible park closing would be good.


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