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My Turn Burl Burlingame |
There’s revolt
in the air at our
national parksIf ever a government agency felt like a square peg in a round hole, it must be the National Park Service. Created to preserve and interpret America's natural and historical treasures, the NPS resides within the Interior Department, the arm of government dedicated to squeezing the last drop out of national resources and keeping native people under its thumb.
It was no surprise when President Bush nominated Gale A. Norton to the director post at Interior; Norton attorneyed for years at a conservative anti-native rights lobbying organization -- where she was James Watt's Girl Friday -- and she's sympathetic to private business "solutions" to environmental catastrophe.
Unlike overpaid and mean-spirited government employees -- don't say you've never met one -- the rangers who manage and nurture our national parks tend to be highly educated, sensitive and motivated professionals who view their public service as a kind of higher calling. Most are poor as dirt.
One thing the rangers could count on was support at the top. Past directors of the park service zealously safeguarded the department's conservation and preservation initiatives from the forces of exploitation.
The battle lines have been drawn since the beginning. Only a few years after the NPS was created in 1916, Interior tried to force legislation to divert Yellowstone National Park's water to Idaho potato farmers. Stephen T. Mather, the first director of the NPS, cried foul. It was a "desecration of the people's playground for the benefit of a few individuals or corporations." Commercial exploitation of the national parks should be denied by Congress, he lobbied. He largely succeeded, and set an example for directors to follow.
The current director of the National Park Service is Fran Mainella. A big-haired Florida bureaucrat from the inner workings of Gov. Jeb Bush's state government. Mainella, like Norton, is the first woman to head her department. I guess true sexual equality has been achieved, as both Norton and Mainella have proved to be as shrewdly callous as men in powerful positions.
Mainella's "accomplishments could be determined by decisions that get wrested away from her by other political appointees higher up in the Interior Department," explained Destry Jarvis, head of the National Recreation and Park Association, at the time.
Like Secretary Norton. Last week, on the National Park Service's 87th birthday, Mainella received a scathing letter signed by more than a hundred non-political career professionals now retired from the service.
It begins, in part, with "today, it seems that the National Park Service is no longer being run 'wholly in the interest of the public which it serves.' Today, the national parks face a number of threats, many exploitive in nature that seem intended to favor special and commercial interests. Unlike Mather, and most directors since, we have not seen you speak compellingly in support of the values and purposes of the parks and their resources. To the contrary, you sometimes voice support for the policies and proposed legislation that threaten the purposes of the parks and their resources."
The letter goes on to itemize several instances in which Mainella has reinterpreted long-standing NPS policies to favor private businesses.
She's not getting advice from veteran NPS leaders. The letter notes that "several senior career leaders in the NPS have left (or are leaving) the NPS prematurely, or have been reassigned to positions that reduce their contribution. ... Morale in the NPS is the lowest that many of us can remember in the past 50 years.
"Those we talk with are far more dejected by the barrage of policies and legislative initiatives that these dedicated, career professionals believe will weaken the mission of the NPS, and cause harm to the collective values that the national park system represents."
Revolution in the usually loyal ranks of the rangers? Many will leave, and we'll lose some of the best and brightest in this nation's public service. Of course, that may be the idea all along.
When he retired in 1933, Horace Albright, second director of the NPS, admonished his colleagues with this legacy: "Do not let the Service become just another government bureau." Looks like Albright's dream is fading away.
Burl Burlingame is a Star-Bulletin writer.
My Turn is a periodic column written by
Star-Bulletin staff members expressing
their personal views.
