Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, September 28, 1995 TAG: 9509280013
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHARLES LEVENDOSKY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
An arrogant House Resources Committee attached the previously defeated ``Park Closure Bill'' to the Interior Department's budget-reconciliation bill. The bill puts smaller park areas of the National Park System in jeopardy.
True, some national-park areas suffer disrepair because of lack of funds. But there are ways to make the parks pay for themselves without divesting ourselves of our national treasures. Only half of the 368 parks in the National Park System charge entrance fees. The Park Service has recently devised two different strategies to deal with overcrowded parks: a transportation system to bring visitors from staging areas to tour the Zion National Park in Utah; and a plan in the Arches National Park in Colorado and Utah to restrict the number of visitors at one time at a site if the crowding is found to diminish the experience of the park.
Zion had 2.3 million visitors in 1994, according to the National Park Service. Arches had more than 750,000 visitors. And these visitor rates are relatively small. The Great Smoky Mountains National Park had 8.6 million visitors in 1994. Grand Canyon had 4.4 million visitors last year; Yosemite, 4 million; Yellowstone, 3 million.
What further proof does the U.S. House need to understand that the American people do not want their parks eliminated?
Besides the 54 national parks, the National Park System includes battlefields, historic parks and sites, monuments, preserves, scenic trails, seashores, wild and scenic rivers, lakeshores, rivers, recreation areas, and military parks.
Approximately 315 of these areas would be vulnerable to removal from the National Park System and open for sale to the private sector, according to a spokesman for the National Parks and Conservation Association, a nonprofit citizen organization in Washington D.C.
The House bill would create a commission that could recommend that Congress close, privatize or downsize most of the sites administered by the National Park Service. The bill would not jeopardize the 54 national parks, but the other sites within the jurisdiction of the National Park Service would be at risk of becoming commercial ventures.
Rep. James Hansen, R-Utah, has been persistent in attempting to close national-park areas. Six sites in Utah could be targeted for privatization. It shouldn't surprise you that Rep. Hansen's PAC received $35,250 from mining interests in the past two years, according to Project Vote Smart, a nonpartisan congressional watchdog organization.
Rep. Bruce Vento, D-Minn., received $86,284 in PAC money from real-estate interests in the past two years. The sites at risk in his state: Grand Portage National Monument, prime land off Lake Superior, and the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area, right off the Mississippi River. Makes you wonder.
If the bill passes, we could lose some of our historic heritage: battlefields like Antietam, Cowpens, Kennesaw Mountain, Brices Cross Roads. We could lose our historic parks: Appomattox Court House, Harpers Ferry, Valley Forge.
Why turn them over to Disney World to be turned into phony history?
But more than that loss, there would be a loss of a connection to the land, that spiritual feeling all of us have experienced by walking into a forest, or down into a grasslands valley without the obvious trappings of civilization, strolling along a seashore, or river. A country without access to its natural resources is a land that has lost its center.
There must be some areas of our landscape that are free of commercial exploitation.
The American people want more national parks, not fewer. They have spoken eloquently to this issue every single year by their visits.
Charles Levendosky is editorial-page editor of the Casper (Wyo.) Star-Tribune.
- New York Times News Service
by CNB