Revealed — secret changes to park rules
by Brodie Farquhar
Critics say the Bush administration is again subverting the public process
As
executive director of the Cody, Wyo., Chamber of Commerce from 1990
to 2002, Paul Hoffman regularly butted heads with officials in
neighboring Yellowstone National Park over the park’s efforts
to ban snowmobiles, reintroduce wolves, and block a nearby gold
mine.
"Paul is not a rookie when it comes to
controversial issues," says Hoffman’s successor at the
chamber, Gene Bryan.
It was good practice for Hoffman:
Now deputy assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of the
Interior, he has landed in the middle of a massive controversy over
the future of the national parks.
In recent months,
Hoffman quietly rewrote the National Park Service’s
management policy manual, but in late August, an anonymous Park
Service employee leaked the rewrite to an advocacy group. The
194-page revision, which was shelved by the Interior Department
shortly after it went public, would downplay preservation, and
elevate recreation and commercial development over other uses.
"This will completely alter the character of the National
Park Service since it was created in 1916," says Robert Utley, a
former chief historian for the Park Service who helped revise the
policy during the Nixon administration.
Hoffman’s
rewrite would have far-reaching effects on the kinds of activities
allowed in the national parks. The existing policy bans those that
"may constitute an impairment" to a park. Under Hoffman’s
rewrite, managers would have to prove that a proposed activity
would "permanently and irreversibly adversely" affect a resource or
value.
The Coalition of National Park Service Retirees
— the group that received the leaked policy rewrite and
revealed it to the press — says Hoffman’s changes would
be devastating. The coalition warns that the changes would, among
other things:
- Give off-highway
vehicles, JetSkis and dirt bikes virtually unrestricted access to
dozens of national parks and seashores.
- Allow
a huge increase in air tours of parks by airplane and helicopter.
- Allow activities such as rock concerts —
and even mining — in national parks.
-
Allow existing commercial activities — such as livestock
grazing and elk hunting in Grand Teton National Park — to
continue.
- Give governors and officials in
gateway communities more power to push for local interests over
national ones.
Brian Hawthorne, the
public-lands director for the BlueRibbon Coalition, a motorized
recreation advocacy group, says Hoffman’s changes are
overdue. The current policy manual, released in the final days of
the Clinton administration, put too much emphasis on protecting
resources, he says. "It allowed public-land managers to prohibit
anything at all if it might harm some resource," he says.
The Clinton-era policy changes came in response to changing times,
says Laura Loomis, senior director of the National Parks
Conservation Association. The broad policy revision came as the
Park Service was wrestling with problems on the ground, in places
like Yellowstone. "We had huge growth in snowmobile numbers, and
consequently huge growth in impacts," she says.
But Bill
Wade, executive director of the Coalition of National Park Service
Retirees, says preservation was the top priority long before the
Clinton era. The 1916 Organic Act, which created the National Park
Service, states that the agency’s purpose is to "conserve the
scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life
therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner
and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment
of future generations."
Interior spokesman David Barna
says the Hoffman rewrite was only crafted to spark a dialogue
within the Park Service. But he adds that an "official" rewrite is
under way, by order of both Interior Secretary Gale Norton and
Congress.
Past revisions included extensive input from
Park Service specialists and the public, and all were initiated
within the Park Service, not by political appointees, according to
Wade. Input to the current official revision has so far been
limited to 16 Park Service executives.
Barna says the
official revision will be vetted by Hoffman, and opened for public
comment in October.
Park advocates are not optimistic:
Another leaked memo indicates that the official revision seems to
be headed in the same direction as the Hoffman rewrite, albeit with
more diplomatic language.
"The National Park Service has
about 250 million visitors each year, and they’re surveyed to
measure visitor satisfaction," says Wade. "Every year, 90
percent-plus of visitors say they were satisfied or very satisfied
with their visit.
"So why are we changing policy?"