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Conservation Groups Urge National Park Service to Reinstate Jet Ski Bans

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Are Jet Skis, also known as Personal Watercraft, appropriate for national seashores and national lakeshores? Photo by Will Pate via Flickr.

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne and National Park Service Director Mary Bomar are being asked once again to stand behind their pledges that science will guide management decisions in the national park system.

While that was the request when Yellowstone National Park officials were debating whether to allow recreational snowmobiles to continue on in the park, now the focus is on Jet Skis (generically known as personal watercraft, or PWCs).

Earlier this year, when the Park Service kicked off its Centennial Initiative, the Interior secretary and Park Service director spoke glowingly of protecting the park system's resources for future generations.

* Stewardship and science will guide decisions, Mr. Kempthorne said in his cover letter regarding the Centennial Initiative to the president. An inventory of all wildlife in parks will be completed, a vital baseline to monitor change and adjust management. Strategic acquisitions will protect landscapes.

* Much has been accomplished and more remains to be done to fulfill a common American dream -- to leave things better for those who follow us, added Ms. Bomar in her own letter.

* This is not only a report to the president, but a pledge to the American people, who are the shareholders in the greatest system of parks and special places in the world ... a pledge that the men and women of the National Park Service will continue in preserving these wonderful places for the generations yet to come, Ms. Bomar added a bit later.

But with the Yellowstone snowmobile decision on its way to being finalized despite scientific reports from the park's own staff that Yellowstone's resources would be better off without snowmobiles, those pledges are being questioned.

Today a trio of conservation groups is asking the Park Service to reinstate bans against personal watercraft in Gulf Islands and Cape Lookout national seashores as well as Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. If the agency balks, the groups say they'll take it to court over the matter. (See attachment)

Back in 2000 the Park Service found that PWC use was inappropriate in most units of the national park system. At the time it said PWCs were "high-performance vessels designed for speed and maneuverability and are often used to perform stunt-like maneuvers." In March of that year the agency, which also found that PWCs can be harmful to the environment, conflict with other users, and constitute a safety concern, issued a final rule prohibiting the use of PWC in national parks.

However, shortly after the Bush administration took office the Park Service cited 21 parks where PWCs had been allowed and gave them two years to finalize rules to continue the use, if they thought it was appropriate. Six of those parks decided to ban the watercraft. In fact, at Cape Lookout, Gulf Islands, and Pictured Rocks, PWC use was discontinued from 2002 to 2006. Last year, though, the Park Service reversed itself and began finalizing regulations to allow PWC use back in these park units.

At Cape Lookout, a much more peaceful and secluded national seashore than its big brother just to the north, Cape Hatteras, visitors can enjoy 56 undeveloped miles of beach front along with four barrier islands. While the lack of development is a big plus for marine life and shore birds, PWC use seemingly conflicts with that setting and even the seashore's mission.

In February 2006, when Cape Lookout officials were going through the process to draft PWC regulations, they noted that:

"Some research suggests that PWC use affects wildlife by causing interruption of normal activities, alarm or flight, avoidance of degradation of habitat, and effects on reproduction success," read the Federal Register notice. "This is thought to be a result of a combination of PWC speed, noise and ability to access sensitive areas, especially in shallow-water depths."

A bit further the report notes that "...experts from around the country have voiced concern that PWC activity can have negative impacts on marine mammals, disturbing normal rest, feeding, social interactions and causing flight."

"Toothed whales (included dolphins) produce sounds across a broad range of communication as well as echolocation, a process of creating an acoustic picture of their surroundings for the purpose of hunting and navigation," the narrative continues.

"Watercraft engine noise can mask sounds that these animals might otherwise hear and use for critical life functions and can cause temporary hearing threshold shifts. Bottlenose dolphins exposed to less than an hour of continuous noise at 96 dB experienced a hearing threshold shift of 12 to 18 dBs, which lasted hours after the noise terminated. A hearing threshold shift of this degree would substantially reduce a dolphin's echolocation and communication abilities."

When the decision was made in 2001 to ban PWCs at Gulf Islands -- a 160-mile stretch of barrier islands in the Gulf of Mexico, off the shores of Florida and Mississippi -- the Park Service supported that decision by explaining that “PWC use poses considerable threats to estuarine flora and fauna, pollutes waters essential to estuarine and marine health, poses unacceptable risks of injury to operators and bystanders, and conflicts with the majority of other longstanding uses of the Seashore.” Nonetheless, in May 2006 the Park Service reopened Gulf Islands to jet skis.

Today Friends of the Earth, The Wilderness Society, and the National Parks Conservation Association claim these reversals violate both the recently adopted Park Service Management Policies and a settlement agreement reached by the Park Service and Bluewater Network, a division of Friends of the Earth, in 2001. And they are calling on Mr. Kempthorne and Ms. Bomar to honor the Park Service's 2000 decision by reinstating the previous decisions to discontinue jet ski use at Gulf Islands, Cape Lookout, and Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.

“The Park Service largely banned jet ski use based on findings that these machines threaten wildlife, damage water quality, and spoil other people’s visits,” says Danielle Fugere of Friends of the Earth. “The 2006 decision to re-open these parks to Jet Ski use without any new data appears to have been based on politics, not sound science.”

At The Wilderness Society, Kristen Brengel says that, “The mission of the national park system is not debatable. From the shores of Cape Lookout to the waters of Lake Superior at Pictured Rocks, these special places must be conserved for future generations. We hope Secretary Kempthorne and Director Bomar uphold their commitment to the mission of the Park Service and restore the protections for these park units by reinstating the bans on jet skis.”

“Our national park system holds some of our country’s most renowned beaches and wild lands,” adds Mary Munson of the NPCA. “All Americans should be able to enjoy these special places, not just for specific activities and definitely not for motorized recreation that damages waterways and disturbs the natural atmosphere.

"Jet skis are fine for some water bodies and can be enjoyed in lakes, seashores and rivers throughout the country, but in the national parks at issue here, their use violates a national standard of protection. We hope the Interior secretary and National Park Service director will allow future generations to visit the parks free of disturbances by ending damaging and dangerous jet ski use in Cape Lookout, Pictured Rocks, and Gulf Islands.”

Comments

I say we just sell off the parks since we can't enjoy 'em anymore. I don't want a cent of my tax dollars supporting them either.


The parks were not created for us to enjoy,they were created to preserve natural habitat.Any use we get is and should be ancillary to that mission.


Anon's lament arises from a popular misconception about what Congress intended the national parks to be. Providing for public access and recreational use of the parks is most emphatically not ancillary to the central mission, it is a central OBLIGATION. Preservation and public use are explicitly identified as co-equal concerns. Here is the gist of it. Congress passed the Organic Act in 1916, creating the National Park Service. Two years later, Congress issued a Statement of Administrative Policy that instructed the fledgling agency to operate on the basis of three clearly enunciated principles, to whit:
• The national parks must be maintained in absolutely unimpaired form for the use of future generations.
• The parks are to be set aside for the use, observation, health, and pleasure of the people.
• The national interest must dictate all decisions affecting public or private enterprise in the parks.
Adhering faithfully to both of the first two principles is clearly impossible, of course, and therein lies the rub.
.


As a tax-paying citizen, I care about the effect jet skis, snowmobiles and other wildlife disturbing activities have on the environment. Wasn't the purpose of establishing these National Parks so that they could be kept in a natural and pristine order for the enjoyment of all, including future generations? If activities that disturb these conditions continue, what will be left? Certainly, there are other places to jet ski and snowmobile outside the NPS. I think ignorance plays a factor here and the only cure is getting more information out to the public. Who knows, maybe if Director Bomar and other key NPS people hear an outcry from the public, it may change their minds.


I, for one, want to commend Bob Janiskee for elevating the tone of comments on this site. I have great respect for the work that Kurt and Jeremy have done to raise issues about the parks and the NPS, yet have grown increasingly frustrated with the negativity of some commenters. The National Park Service is a political institution, subject to all the same forces that affect every other government agency. While many of its employees are absolutely outstanding, it is also a government agency and its employees are therefore subject to all the forces that affect every other government agency. Let's not be shocked or blame all of the problems that the parks have on either the agency or its employees. Instead, let's insist that the agency and its employees meet the highest standards.

And please, despite the cynicism that pervades so many posts, distinguish between the political appointees and the career civil servants, most of whom work hard for conservation and to fulfill the organic act ideals despite the "starve the beast" and "sell it out" mentality of our political masters.

Yes, I work for the NPS, and have done so for many years. It, like me, has its flaws. But I am proud to work for the agency and proud to be doing my part to make it better, and proud to both protect parks and to do what I can to help people enjoy them.

So thank you, Prof. Janiskee, for what you add to this blog.

AND, since the topic of the thread is supposed to be jet skis, over my dead body will they be allowed in any national park unit I am responsible for.

JLongstreet
a national park superintendent


I have spent a good portion of my career in water parks, Beamis, but I am not going to tell you which one I work in right now. All I will say is that I'm proud of what has happened under my tenure and the resource has come out consistently first in my decisions. I've also managed to get public support for most of those decisions because I understand that the parks are in a political context and success comes from building coalitions. My park has shown up periodically in NPT and, I think, looked pretty good in the process.

I choose not to work in places like Lake Mead or Glen Canyon, however. But however any of you may dislike those parks and their compromises, I suggest you sharpen your arrows for the Congress, which inserted them into the National Park System, rather than at the employees of those parks, who you seem to want to fall on their swords, time and time again. It's more valuable to fight the injustices of the recent Yellowstone and Big Cypress decisions, where big things are at stake and the superintendents there gave away far too much.

Some of us rail quite regularly at the inefficiencies of the system and work our damnedest to make things better. I'm proud of that and proud of my staff. In fact, I reflect quite often, Frank, about Horace Albright's admonition, and do whatever I can to fight the bureaucracy; but I choose my fights carefully so I can be effective and make actual changes, not simply rant for the sake of ranting. The Service has sunk to become a bureaucracy, I regret, but you confuse defense of the many fine employees with denial of the problem. We have lots of problems in this organization -- but you two seem to believe that every one of those problems is either the fault of the political system (and many are, I agree) or spineless employees or corrupt or overbearing supervisors. Are the only noble employees the ones that left, in your minds?

I was once a seasonal GS-3, a GS-4, a GS-5, etc. and never would have believed that someone who bucks the system as often as I have would succeed in the NPS. But I did, and there are more of us than you might believe. What I have learned, though, is that what seems like constructive criticism is often ineffective or based (and I speak from my own experience) on what we wish the NPS was under a law that doesn't exist, rather than what it is under the laws that do exist. In my park, I encourage discussion and ask my entire staff for critique; but the most valuable critique is from those who understand the legal and political context of the decision that needs to be made and recognize that to be considered, the input needs to be timely and focused on the issues, not simply ideals. I now understand that some of the dumb decisions I thought I saw superintendents make weren't so dumb; but of course, some were. Perspective comes from experience.

So: bottom line. Let's have a discussion. Let's respect other opinions. You're certainly free to rail against the NPS and its employees all you want, but if you continue to do so you'll drive away the few remaining insiders or retirees who believe -- as I hope you do -- that the parks, and the National Park Service, are not a lost cause. I participate in NPT because I choose to and I have no ability to stifle your comments. But I may give it up because I spend all day at my park trying to focus on the things that make a positive difference and I can only spend so much of my evening arguing with you over the things that don't.

JLongstreet


And yet, every once in a while, criticism and cynicism are inextricably linked...


Geez, I hate to see these four guys working in the same park: Longstreet, Beamis, Frank and Merryland! Could be utter chaos! With each quoting something from Muir to Bernard Shaw, all trying to out do each other rhetorically, if not poetically or politically in words or deeds. Amazing bunch! Long Live The Parks!
P.S. I think Longstreet is on to something positive.


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