Ten Most Endangered
For the fourth consecutive year, NPCA identifies ten national parks in greatest need. Lack of sufficient funds and pollution remain primary challenges.
The 385 units of the National Park System constitute an intricate collage reflecting the natural beauty, biological diversity, and cultural history of America. They are among the nation's greatest gifts to itself and its future. Sadly, this majestic collection of historic sites, monuments, and wild lands is challenged by a variety of threats.
Not a single unit within the park system is untouched by a problem: ever-growing visitation, encroaching development, or a lack of funding. Nearly all of the parks face some monetary shortfalls. For more than two decades, national parks have not received the financial support they deserve, creating a nearly $5 billion backlog that has delayed research projects, stalled restoration and infrastructure repair programs, and put on hold efforts to update and improve educational exhibits. But others face additional threats as well.
Some problems are ongoing—air pollution continues to plague Great Smoky Mountains and Big Bend national parks—others were impossible to foresee. The collapse of the World Trade Towers on September 11 sent a seismic shock through lower Manhattan, worsening a long-developing crack in Federal Hall National Memorial, the stone and marble building where President George Washington first took the oath of office.
For the fourth year in a row, NPCA is highlighting the most needy through its Ten Most Endangered list.
Noisy, polluting snowmobiles will keep Yellowstone on the list for the fourth year. After more than a decade of scientific study and years of public process, the Park Service adopted a plan to phase out snowmobile use. When the snowmobile industry sued to overturn the phase-out, the Bush administration did not defend the plan and instead settled the case, forcing the Park Service to consider snowmobile use as part of its winter management plan.
Four-year veterans, Big Cypress National Preserve and Everglades National Park, comprise more than 2 million acres of wetlands and bay waters in South Florida. After more than 50 years of water diversion and drainage, half the historic ecosystem has been lost to development, 68 native species are endangered, and the wading bird population has decreased by 90 percent. The water that does reach the parks is often polluted by industrial and agricultural runoff.
A plan to restore desperately needed water flows to the Everglades has received support from the Army Corps of Engineers, the Bush administration, and the state of Florida. However, the 40-year, $8-billion project is not guaranteed. The Corps' strategic plan has not been unveiled, and Florida, responsible for half of the money to pay for the project, may lack the necessary funds.
Big Cypress faces another challenge from a private company proposing exploratory drilling and seismic testing. The company's plan includes building miles of new roads, drilling an 11,800-foot exploratory well, and detonating dynamite charges in 14,700 holes to gauge shockwaves for evidence of oil deposits.
At Great Smoky Mountains, one of the most visited parks in the system, air pollution from coal-fired power plants and other sources poses a health risk to visitors, staff, and nearby residents, damages trees and wildlife, and obscures majestic views by as much as 80 percent. Although the park has some data on the effects of pollution, it lacks the funds to monitor air and water quality.
Air pollution returns Big Bend to the list. Chronic air pollution reduces scenic vistas by as much as 90 percent at Big Bend, home to the greatest variety of mammal and reptile species in the country. In addition, water diversions have lowered the Rio Grande—the core of the park's ecosystem—to dangerous levels, yielding increased concentrations of water pollutants.
Glacier Bay National Park in Alaska, home to 200 species of fish and marine mammals including the endangered humpback whale, is threatened by water, air, and noise pollution generated by cruise ships. Last year, a U.S. District Court ruled that Alaska must roll back to pre-1996 levels the number of cruise ships entering Glacier Bay, while completing a comprehensive environmental study of the effects that traffic would have on the park. Unfortunately, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) pushed through an amendment that nullified the ruling. It returns traffic to levels 30 percent higher than the court ordered, insists on a two-year wait before an environmental impact statement is done, and provides no funding to do the study.
Although the outlook for Glacier National Park's Going-to-the-Sun Road may improve if infrastructure repair funds are allocated, its scenic North Fork of the Flathead River, running along the park's western edge, remains threatened by Canadian coal mines and timber harvesting.
In addition, housing developments both inside and around the park could pollute the watershed while eliminating wildlife habitat, and a state proposal to double the width of a highway through the southern portion of the park could block historic migration paths of bears, elk, and mountain goats.
Federal Hall National Memorial in New York is new to the list. Funds are available to repair decades-old damage worsened after the collapse of the World Trade Towers, but the memorial's 30-year-old educational exhibits do little to inform visitors about the significance of the site. Inadequate operating funds also mean the memorial lacks critical staff, including a public safety officer.
At Valley Forge National Historical Park in Pennsylvania, a development company wants to build on 80 acres of private land within the park. About 250 of the park's 3,466 acres are privately owned. Rep. Joe Hoeffel (D-Pa.), who opposes the housing development, together with Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), introduced legislation last year to build a 200-acre veteran's cemetery on much of the same land. That proposal has been decried as an inappropriate use of the park but has not been abandoned.
Development also threatens Mojave National Preserve in California. The largest proposed development involves a 50-year, $150-million project to import water from the Colorado River and store it in a natural aquifer that provides water for a portion of the desert preserve. The plan would allow Cadiz Incorporated and southern California's Metropolitan Water District to pump out natural water as well. Researchers do not believe natural flow can replenish the water fast enough to support the vegetation and animals that depend on it.
A proposed road landed Ocmulgee National Monument on the list. The Georgia Department of Transportation wants to build a highway directly through an adjacent flood plain known as the Ocmulgee Old Fields, which, along with the park, was declared in 1999 the first Traditional Cultural Property in the eastern United States. The privately owned land, ancestral home of the Muskogee Creek American Indian tribe, should be protected because of its historic significance and its ability to enhance the park's story. An alternative highway route would ensure that the small park is not cut off from the flood plain.
Several of the parks listed in 2001 have been removed from the list. Alaska's parks were removed as a category to highlight individual parks in gravest danger. The others are:
- Biscayne National Park, Florida: the plan to turn Homestead Air Reserve Base into a commercial airport has lost support from county officials. The Department of Interior vetoed a proposal to swap state land for the controversial private structures known as Stiltsville, and the park's managers may create no-fishing and no-motorized-boating zones, which would diminish damage there.
- Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, Washington, D.C.: funds have been allocated to begin repairs.
- Fire Island National Seashore, New York: the Army Corps of Engineers' plan to augment the beach was revised.
- Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona: the state's congressional delegation plans to introduce legislation to expand the park's boundaries, which would protect paleontological resources, unique archaeological sites, and scenic vistas.
- Stones River National Battlefield, Tennessee: the city of Murfreesboro agreed to relocate a potentially destructive proposed highway.
"Increased funding would address many of the threats that place parks on this list," says NPCA President Thomas C. Kiernan. "NPCA aims to work with Congress and the administration to ensure that the parks' needs are met so that fewer of our nation's treasures reach endangered status."
