NEWS & PUBLICATIONS

Climate Change
BY TODD WILKINSON

Last spring, President Bush was extensively criticized for his environmental and energy policies, but in the aftermath of the tragic events of September 11, conservationists fear environmental issues will suffer and park funding might become expendable.

   When President Bush took office last year, Rep. Jim Hansen (R-Utah) greeted him with an eight-page memo. It outlined an agenda to "correct the misguided direction" of the Clinton administration "in their attempt to manage natural resources."

   At the top of Hansen's priority list was halting the phase-out of snowmobiles from Yellowstone National Park; redrawing the boundaries of national monuments to accommodate energy developers; and overturning restrictions on personal watercraft and air tour overflights.

   Initially, it appeared that the Bush administration was in complete agreement with Hansen's agenda. Soon after Interior Secretary Gale Norton took office, she issued a temporary halt to the phase-out of snowmobiles at Yellowstone to allow time for more review, even though a multi-year review process had already generated thousands of comments, more than 80 percent of them in favor of the Clinton administration's phase-out decision. Prohibitions against personal watercraft use at parks and the use of all-terrain vehicles at Big Cypress National Preserve also came under review.

   Some of the administration's actions went beyond the Hansen memo. The president issued an energy policy that considered weakening the Clean Air Act; Norton pushed to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, despite evidence supplied by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service stipulating that it would harm the caribou population; and the secretary called for a moratorium on new parks even though the law stipulates new sites must be studied.

   This past spring, Bush's environmental policies were costing him political support among crucial groups of voters. While the president pledged $5 billion to eliminate the maintenance backlog in the national parks, his first year's budget did not follow through on this promise, and his policies on global warming, air quality, endangered species management, and motorized use in the parks have drawn criticism.

   The pledge for additional park system money was one of the few pro-environmental issues the president was promoting. Even though a majority of the money would go toward construction and not science or wildlife, the announcement was something environmentalists could hold out hope for.

   But on September 11, 2001, everything changed. The tragic events in New York City, Arlington, Virginia, and Pennsylvania and the specter of another federal budget deficit growing out of new anti-terrorism programs and economic relief packages changed both the political and fiscal climates.

   Conservationists feared that at best, environmental issues would take a back seat or at worst, environmentally harmful legislation might sail through Congress without much fanfare or opposition. In addition, given the tremendous military, security, and health costs associated with September 11 and subsequent events, conservationists began to fear that the administration might look upon park funding as expendable.

   Even though Bush was taking it on the chin for his environmental and energy policies last spring, groups are far more cautious in picking fights with him now that his approval rating is high.

   Even so, work remains to be done.

   "I believe we are at a pivotal juncture with respect to management of national parks," says former Yellowstone superintendent Michael Finley, who recently retired after 30 years with the Park Service. "In concert with members of Congress from some of the western states, the Bush administration has adopted a public lands policy that so far is nothing but smoke and mirrors where environmental protection is concerned."

   And one of the more pivotal issues for parks is funding. The National Parks Business Plan Initiative, a pioneering study by NPCA and the National Park Service, has revealed over the past four years just how deeply the decades of funding shortfalls have eroded the agency's capacity to protect parks. Fortunately, the initiative has also identified a series of management changes and creative strategies that would secure additional park funding from companies and individuals.

   The funding shortfall in scientific research is of particular consequence for natural resource protection. According to Mark Peterson, director of NPCA's State of the Parks program, the lack of an ongoing commitment to research and science undermines the National Park Service's ability to comply with its own Organic Act, which mandates protection of wildlife, plants, and historic artifacts. It also forces managers to make key decisions without understanding all of the consequences.

   In fact, the agency admits that not a single park has a complete inventory of all its plants, animals, and historic artifacts. As a result, the Park Service has been unable to control exotic, invasive species on 93 percent of its lands, which has dire implications for native flora and fauna; 63 percent of threatened and endangered species populations in parks are expected to decline over the next five years; and 67 percent of parks' cultural artifacts are estimated to be in poor condition.

   "We have an administration that still professes its desire to do good by national parks, but they have not yet recommended significant increases in funding," says Ron Tipton, NPCA's senior vice president for programs. "The $91 million increase in the fiscal year 2002 Park Service budget resulted largely from congressional initiatives."

   Yet beyond specific funding issues, challenges to the parks arise out of the Bush administration's lack of commitment to environmental protection. Back-pedaling on the snowmobile ban provides just one example. The administration has also sent signals it may retreat from regulations on personal watercraft in park waterways.

   "In effect," says Finley, "the president, through Interior Secretary Gale Norton, is reversing hard-fought gains that have been won for park protection, and she's doing it under the guise of 'local control.' The problem is that this administration says it believes in the wisdom of local citizens, yet when locals rise up and reject activities that are being promoted at the expense of park resources [such as with snowmobiles], they [the president's advisors] turn around and say local control isn't good."

   But the Bush administration's approach is not the only political challenge facing the parks. The congressional delegation of Alaska is in a league of its own when it comes to attempting to decide how individual parks are managed. Until Vermont Sen. James Jeffords left the Republican Party to become an Independent, shifting control of the Senate to the Democrats, the Alaska congressional delegation controlled three of the four committees in Congress most crucial to national parks.

   Together, Rep. Don Young, who still oversees the House Resources Committee, Sen. Frank Murkowski, and Sen. Ted Stevens hatched a flurry of bills and riders that attempted to mandate taxpayer-supported construction of a road and hotel complex in Denali National Park; grant off-road vehicles rights of way in several parks; and authorize use of helicopters and other motorized vehicles in some park wilderness areas.

   The tool of choice for getting anti-environmental legislation through Congress is the rider, a provision that is frequently attached to key funding bills and often difficult to detect. Stevens, for example, attached a rider to the 2002 Interior Appropriations bill that overturns the opinion of a federal court judge who upheld a reduction in the number of cruise ships in Glacier Bay.

   "The Stevens amendment sacrifices park resources and endangered species in favor of an industry that has demonstrated repeated environmental insensitivity and disregard of U.S. pollution laws," said Kevin Collins, NPCA's director of government affairs. The court ruled that the number of cruise ships could not be increased until an environmental impact statement (EIS) was done. Stevens' rider allows the number of ships to increase immediately, insists on a two-year wait before an EIS is done, and provides no funding to do the study.

   In his eight years as president, Bill Clinton vetoed more than 70 such anti-environmental riders attached to general spending bills. In 2002, when similar riders are attached to spending bills that reach the desk of President Bush, the outcome may be very different.

   Former National Park Service director Roger Kennedy says that shortchanging the park system will be a costly mistake for the president and his allies in Congress. He points to Jeffords' leaving the Republican Party as proof that moderate politicians, who represent the majority of voters, consider the administration's pro-business, anti-environmental agenda out of step with mainstream America. Public opinion polls agree, as does Deb Callahan, president of the League of Conservation Voters.

   "Where once President Bush saw smooth sailing for his anti-environmental agenda," she says, "he now faces a strong headwind from the Senate Democratic Leadership, which he must navigate with regard for the many members of both parties who stand for strong environmental protection."

   Further, Kennedy suggests, preserving the integrity of national parks is a patriotic issue in the eyes of citizens, who revere places like Yellowstone and Gettysburg as cultural icons. Recently, the proposed freeze on creation of new parks was rejected by Virginia's Republican senators, John Warner and George Allen, who are behind the campaign to protect the Cedar Creek Civil War battlefield and other sites in the Shenandoah Valley against sprawl. Their efforts to create a new national historic battlefield in the valley enjoy support from adjacent landowners, history buffs, and business officials.

   Year after year, Kennedy says, the Park Service consistently ranks among the federal agencies held in highest esteem by citizens. Politicians who place the economic interests of a few ahead of national support for the parks risk alienating constituents at the voting booth. "There's nothing more American," he emphasizes, "than to support America's national parks."

TODD WILKINSON lives in Bozeman, Montana, and is a regular contributor to National Parks.