THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, August 14, 1996 TAG: 9608140001
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A13 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: By Glenn Allen Scott
LENGTH: 96 lines
The Clintons - Bill, Hillary, Chelsea - are vacationing in the highly elevated valley of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, which in August seemingly is the coolest locale in the 48 contiguous states.
The Clintons are Baptists, but they attended last Sunday's morning-prayer service at the small, rustic Episcopal Chapel of the Transfiguration in Teton National Park. People of many faith traditions are found in the chapel every Sunday.
Our family was there three Sundays ago. We had gone to morning prayer at the chapel once before, eight years ago, and made it a point to return.
We arrived early, to improve the odds of getting inside. The chapel filled quickly, which is the norm in summer; the overflow crowd sat on benches outside.
The chapel altar bears a simple wooden cross that is silhouetted against a plate-glass window through which congregants look out on the glacier-topped, snow-draped Grand Tetons and ever-changing sky.
The jagged Tetons jutting up majestically from Jackson Hole compel contemplation of the glories of the natural world and, in believers, gratitude to the supreme being through whom all things are made.
This soul-refreshing setting is an appropriate place for a president to meditate upon Washington's stewardship of the national parks, which the federal government holds in trust for the American people - all 265 million of us. Washington could do better by the parks and us than it does. The National Park Service counts nearly 300 million visits annually to its natural, historical, commemorative and recreational treasures.
Like most other presidents since Ulysses S. Grant, Clinton seeks to preserve and expand the national parks to conserve natural resources and wildlife and for educational and recreational purposes.
Early in his presidency, Clinton proposed ways to generate more revenue for maintenance of the parks and their amenities without simultaneously destroying their beauty, compromising their naturalness or endangering their wildlife.
But federal funding for national parks has been shrinking on Clinton's watch - by $202 million (17 percent) since 1993, when $978 million was budgeted.
That shrinkage has had adverse consequences on a system that the General Accounting Office reported in 1992 urgently needed $2.2 billion in improvements.
Yellowstone National Park, the first vast acreage acquired by the federal government (in 1872) to be ``a pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people,'' illustrates the problem.
The park is about an hour's drive northward from Teton National Park. Made famous by its ``Old Faithful'' geyser, popular Yellowstone is denying visitors access to some of the park's delights this summer. Closed are a campground, a museum and the park's second-most-visited geyser site. The federal funding shortfall has forced cutbacks at other parks, too.
No one would sense the financial pinch from the cheerful greeting by the young rangers manning the Moose, Wyo., entrance to Teton National Park, where $10 purchases a week's pass for a carload of visitors ($15 buys access for a year).
Many friends of the parks, no less than critics, rightly contend the entrance fees are too low. Soft drinks from the vending machine near the Pilot's editorial offices cost 60 cents. Five dollars or so is a common charge for adult admission to a movie theater in Hampton Roads. Doubling visitation fees at national parks wouldn't be unreasonable.
The Clinton administration's initiatives for strengthening the park system call for higher entry fees. Another administration proposal would impose recreation fees on boaters and back-country campers.
But if individuals and families are to pay more to visit national parks, Washington also should raise fees paid by ranchers whose cattle graze on public lands and it should demand royalties from mining enterprises permitted to dig on public lands. Unfortunately, Western ranchers and miners always fend off efforts to make them cough up more.
Fees paid for mining rights are indefensibly paltry; Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt complained bitterly some months back when he had to grant mining rights on public lands to a foreign company in return for a pittance (as dictated by an 1872 federal law). Timber-cutting rights on public lands also go for a song.
Guess who loses? We do - Americans at large. That's our land.
Meanwhile, companies running land, air and sea tours into the parks also ought to pay more than a minuscule percentage of gross receipts for the privilege. The same goes for concessionaires who prosper from monopolies in wildernesses and other parklands maintained at taxpayer expense.
The government should charge film makers more than it does now for shooting scenes in national parks. And although many environmentalists are understandably wary of corporate links with national parks, what could possibly be misguided about inviting multinational corporations, such as IBM, Toshiba, Coca-Cola, GE and the Big Three auto makers, to make heavy annual contributions to the parks' coffers in exchange for permission to note their support in advertising pitching their products?
National parks clearly are in Clinton's thoughts in Jackson Hole. On Monday, asserting that ``Yellowstone is more precious than gold,'' the president announced a land-swap agreement between the government and a subsidiary of a Canadian corporation that will forestall gold mining near the park. Now, if Washington will agree to shake more gold for national parks out of some obvious pockets. . . . MEMO: Mr. Scott is associate editor of the editorial page of The
Virginian-Pilot. by CNB