Water-draining golf courses, chronic underfunding, and air pollution land some of America's national parks on NPCA's Ten Most Endangered list.
By Kate Himot
On nearly 9,000 acres outside Joshua Tree National Park in southern California, where stream beds are usually dry and waterholes are few, a private developer has proposed building a resort that would include 12 golf courses, three hotels, and as many as 7,000 homes. The 12 new courses alone would require an estimated 6 million gallons of water a day in a land where the average annual rainfall barely surpasses four inches.
The massive development, which includes industrial and retail space, would eliminate a wildlife corridor between the 800,000-acre park and nearby Coachella Valley Preserve, hindering the movements of wildlife that rely on the park.
The proposed development is among the most egregious examples of the kinds of threats that have landed some of our national parks on NPCA's Ten Most Endangered list. Among the threats are encroaching development, air pollution, the infiltration of snowmobiles, and not enough money.
In addition to inadequate financial support for more than two decades, the national parks are facing elevated threats from harmful new regulatory policies of the Bush administration, which is allowing industries with outdated smokestacks to continue poisoning the air. Another regulation allows for giveaways of land throughout the park system, which could punch new roads into parks from Denali to Dinosaur. And attempts by the administration and Congress to weaken or undermine other key laws that help guard parks, such as the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act, add up to a wholesale attack on the underpinnings of national park protection.
Potential developments threaten both Big Thicket National Preserve in Texas and Virgin Islands National Park on St. John, Virgin Island. The 97,000-acre Big Thicket is split into 15 small, mostly disconnected sections, which are surrounded by dense forests owned by timber companies. More than 1.5 million acres are for sale, but at least one of the timber companies appears unwilling to sell its holdings to those interested in protecting the preserve. Conservationists fear that sprawl could reach the edges of the biologically sensitive Big Thicket if the land is sold to private developers.
A proposal to build a resort on St. John threatens dry tropical forest—a critical migratory bird habitat—as well as mangrove shoreline and fragile coral reefs at Virgin Islands National Park. Clearing hillsides for development increases soil erosion, destroys habitat, and intensifies water pollution that affects fish, plants, and corals, already suffering from a failure to enforce a no-take zone established in 2001 with the formation of the adjacent Virgin Islands Coral Reef National Monument.
Air pollution plagues both Shenandoah National Park in Virginia and Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina and Tennessee. The annual average visibility at Shenandoah has dropped from 100 miles to less than 25. Ranked the country's second most polluted park-according to NPCA's Code Red: America's Five Most Polluted Parks—Shenandoah was surpassed only by Great Smoky Mountains in the amount of haze, ozone, and acid precipitation affecting it. Researchers at Shenandoah found 40 plant species, including green ash and American sycamore, that are sensitive to ozone, and scientists recently predicted that losses of even the acid-tolerant brook trout will be substantial unless emissions are reduced.
Ozone exposure at Great Smoky Mountains National Park rivals that of major cities. On the list for the fifth consecutive year, Great Smoky Mountains continues to be shrouded in air pollution, reducing summer views by as much as 80 percent. In addition, a lack of funds impedes work to protect natural resources and historic structures. The park contains nearly 200 historic structures, including pioneer log cabins and grist mills, and must rely on donations to pay for necessary preservation work. Other threats include proposals to build a road across one of the most remote portions of the park—a route abandoned by the Park Service in 1962 as environmentally damaging—and a proposed land swap.
In Denali and Yellowstone national parks, snowmobiles remain a threat. Yellowstone returns to the list for the fifth year. This winter, many Yellowstone rangers are wearing respirators and hearing protection to lessen health risks from the thousands of snowmobiles roaring through the park. The Park Service, under pressure from the Bush administration, is reversing a phase-out plan adopted in 2001, despite more than a decade of scientific study that showed snowmobile use threatens wildlife, air quality, and employees' health.
In addition, America's last free-roaming bison herd faces danger under the terms of a joint-management plan between the state of Montana and the park that allows the state to kill bison that wander out of the park to protect cattle from brucellosis.
Although more than 95 percent of public lands surrounding Denali National Park in Alaska are open to recreational snowmobiling, legal and legislative attempts to open the park's wilderness core persist. The machines would pollute the air and harass wildlife in the oldest portion of the park. Allowing the machines in wilderness would set a dangerous precedent that could jeopardize other parklands.
Wildlife at Glacier National Park, which returns to the list for the third year, face a variety of threats, from plans to widen a highway along the southern border to proposals for commercial and residential development, hard-rock and coal mining, and extraction of oil and gas on lands near the park and neighboring Waterton Lakes National Park in Canada. The highway proposal could block historic bear, elk, and mountain goat migration routes. The other proposals could scar and pollute the majestic Crown of the Continent ecosystem. Expansion of Canada's Waterton Lakes National Park could avert many of the development threats north of the border, but the expansion is not yet certain.
Everglades National Park, faced with obstacles to its long-term health, returns to the list for the fifth year. The park's biggest challenge is overcoming impediments to implementing the Everglades Restoration Plan. Plagued by problems that range from hard-rock mining permits approved for areas just outside the park to vague regulations that lack enforceable quality standards, the plan continues to falter. The owners of land critical to restoring water flows to the park refuse to sell, halting many of the major restoration projects.
Chronic underfunding returns Ocmulgee National Monument in Georgia to the list. A monument to 12,000 years of human habitation in the Southeast, Ocmulgee possesses the second-largest museum collection in the park system, yet does not have the money to hire a museum curator to care for the priceless artifacts. A lack of funds also leaves visitors without ranger-led tours of earthen mounds, sacred to American Indians. In addition, the Georgia Department of Transportation plans to build a four-lane highway through an adjacent, archaeologically rich flood plain called the Ocmulgee Old Fields. American Indian tribal councils representing 29 federally recognized tribes have passed resolutions opposing the road construction, including three resolutions from the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.
Six of the parks listed in 2002 have been removed from the list because their conditions have improved or threats facing them have changed.
- Mojave National Preserve, California: The proposed Cadiz, Inc., groundwater storage and delivery system, which would have mined groundwater from an aquifer beneath the Mojave Desert, was voted down by Southern California's Metropolitan Water District.
- Federal Hall National Memorial, New York: The House of Representatives and the Senate Appropriations Committee approved the largest increase in history for the operation needs of parks, such as Federal Hall.
- Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, Alaska: An environmental impact study, under way for vessel quotas and operating requirements, will allow park managers to set scientifically sound limits on the number of ships in the bay.
- Big Bend National Park, Texas: A trust has been formed to buy water rights from willing irrigators to maintain instream flows.
- Valley Forge National Historical Park, Pennsylvania: The Park Service is working with the state transportation officials to create traffic flow least damaging to the park, and negotiating to buy land that was set for development.
- Big Cypress National Preserve, Florida: The Bush administration pledged $235 million to buy the preserve's mineral rights.
"Several serious park problems can be solved with adequate funding and a sincere commitment to let scientific findings, not commercial interests, dictate park policy," says NPCA President Thomas C. Kiernan.
