NEWS & PUBLICATIONS

 
The Changing of the Guard

Increasing demands placed on border parks and icon parks are draining funds intended for broader protection of historical and natural resources.

Visitor bag inspections at the St. Louis Arch and weapons wands at the Lincoln Memorial. Fewer backcountry patrols in the Grand Canyon and messier bathrooms at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. These are symptoms of a National Park Service (NPS) that has shifted some of its focus from a long-held mission of protecting natural resources and ensuring visitor enjoyment toward issues of security.

Park Service representatives hesitate to cite homeland security issues as a significant funding concern in light of war expenditures and broader budget issues. But park advocates believe the costs associated with beefed-up security infrastructure, more active law enforcement, and remediating the environmental impacts of U.S. Customs and Border Patrol place an undue burden on the Park Service (see sidebar).

Apart from the national icons that are likely targets for terrorists, public lands along the Mexican border are a top concern. The Interior Department manages 39 percent of the southern border, including seven national parks with a wide variance in the impacts of real and perceived security threats. Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona faces some of the biggest challenges.

Jesus Rodriguez is a supervisory border patrol agent whose territory stretches from the New Mexico border almost all the way to California, and includes Organ Pipe. According to Rodriguez, between October 2005 and June 2006, 2,400 agents arrested nearly 300,000 illegal border crossers and seized more than 460,000 pounds of drugs.

Border patrol agents can no longer assume that the average immigrant crossing in Arizona "is coming to work at a farm," says Rodriguez. "Now we’re getting rocks thrown at us. [Serious incidents] that never would have occurred a few years ago are happening on a daily basis. Aliens are sometimes robbed at gunpoint before they even reach the border." Nothing compares with the events of four years ago, when park ranger Kris Eggle was shot and killed as he tried to apprehend two armed drug runners, a nightmare that remains fresh in the minds of the staff at Organ Pipe.

Fred Patton, chief ranger at Organ Pipe, fears for the safety of his staff so much that he declined to confirm the number of rangers or the volume of illegal drugs they’ve seized. Organ Pipe’s law-enforcement rangers are aware they’re under constant surveillance by drug cartels, which know when each ranger is home or not. Patton’s law-enforcement staff is about half the ideal size, he says; staff turnover at the monument is about 25 percent.

Visitors to the park are feeling the effects, too. Some trails and roads are closed when hazards peak. Researchers who study wildlife in the unique desert landscape must be accompanied by law-enforcement officers, and their work is sometimes compromised when the park can’t spare an escort. Other researchers occasionally thwart the park’s rules, quietly packing guns for their own safety.

And Organ Pipe is only a part of the story. At Coronado National Monument, located on Arizona’s border with Mexico, increased costs have largely resulted from doubling the size of the ranger force from two to five, and funding overtime pay for rangers, who must now work in teams of two for safety purposes. Padre Island National Seashore, Big Bend National Park, and Amistad National Recreation Area in Texas are all tackling similar issues. There’s no telling how much the Park Service spends to combat drug trafficking alone, much less broader measures to counter human trafficking, remove abandoned vehicles, and repair the environmental damage caused by such illegal activities and efforts to fight them. Right now, these costs aren’t even being measured, although an amendment sponsored by Sen. Craig Thomas (R-WY) would direct the Interior Secretary to assess those costs as the first step toward reimbursing the Park Service and other agencies.

Karl Pierce, chief of interpretation at the 160-acre Cabrillo National Monument near San Diego, says the park is comparatively safe thanks in part to cooperative relationships between park staff and nearby U.S. Navy facilities as well as the Border Patrol. Because Cabrillo is located on a tiny peninsula 20 miles north of the border, it doesn’t get much in the way of illegal foot traffic—although officials do occasionally see attempts to cross into the country by boat.

Nevertheless, Pierce declined to say how many rangers are at that park, citing security concerns. He did say his staff is small enough that when even one ranger is called away for security detail at an icon park—as part of an NPS-wide system that pulls rangers from Western parks—it creates a strain on the other rangers. "Obviously, no leave is allowed during that period, so rangers work overtime," he says. "It does put a burden on the rangers who are left behind."

The situation is even stickier for Western parks that are also national icons. Chris Pergiel became the chief ranger at Grand Canyon National Park in the summer of 2002, after acting chief rangers filled the position for more than a year. Almost immediately, he was sent to Washington for three months to be the acting branch chief for law enforcement and emergency services.

He’s had to send his staff all over the country, to secure dams at Lake Mead and Glen Canyon, among other sites. And that puts a park like Grand Canyon in a tough spot. At the same time that his staff of about 50 rangers is expected to step up security, an average of ten fewer rangers are available to do it.

"As we get smaller staffs, we tend to concentrate our rangers into the most crowded parts of the park with the most public: the South Rim, the river corridor, the cross-canyon trails," he says. That makes for fewer patrols in the large park’s remote backcountry, where natural and cultural resources get less protection and backpackers have a slimmer chance of being rescued if they run into trouble. Fortunately, security details have diminished as the fedeeral government has issued fewer orange alerts in recent months. And in their wake, Pergiel said, Grand Canyon security has emerged stronger and more focused.

On the other side of the country, visitors to the Statue of Liberty go through a screening process more elaborate than that in most airports. And at the St. Louis Arch, the first ranger visitors encounter might not tell them the inspiring story of Lewis and Clark, but may instead be standing guard, solemnly carrying a large weapon. On the National Mall in Washington, D.C., access is limited, parking is restricted, and security barriers and construction fences interrupt scenic vistas. Since September 11, NPS says annual security spending has increased by $29.7 million at parks designated as icons like the National Mall, Statue of Liberty, Independence Hall, Mount Rushmore, and the St. Louis Arch

Other costs—like the impacts on visitor experiences—are harder to quantify. Catoctin Mountain Park—home to more than 1,000 native plant and animal species—has nine fewer staff positions than it did five years ago and is subject to increased security measures stemming from its location next to the presidential retreat at Camp David. According to a report by NPCA’s Center for the State of the Parks, budget concerns have affected the staff’s ability to catalogue historic letters exchanged during the New Deal period, photographs of presidential visits, and artifacts used during the era of rural industry and agriculture. Additional funds are needed to hire an educational specialist. And the park would benefit from staff and funding to combat diseases attacking park plants, such as dogwood anthracnose.

The annual Park Service budget is $2.5 billion. After September 11, Congress authorized an additional $90.9 million in one-time emergency and construction funding for icon parks plus $17.7 million at border parks, according to NPS figures. In addition, Congress has added $5.5 million per year to base operations funding at the border parks.

Still, National Park Service Director Fran Mainella testified before Congress in May 2005 that the parks’ unfunded homeland security costs total $43 million annually. The overall cost is likely much higher. For instance, security upgrades at Independence Hall National Historical Park in Philadelphia alone are estimated to cost the park $5 million. A 30-mile-long vehicle barrier at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument cost approximately $14 million to build.

According to Dave Barna, a spokesman for the Park Service, that pinch is likely to be seen in longer construction timelines that delay the completion of new facilities and repairs to older buildings. Superintendents have to make cuts in their operating budgets, which often means leaving positions open indefinitely or filling them at a lower pay scale. And the nation’s current focus has changed the types of staff hired system-wide—another potential blow to visitor experience. "Most of the job announcements tend to be law enforcement instead of interpretive rangers," says Barna, adding that there aren’t as many educational programs or campfire talks available for visitors.

That’s a problem that could steer the park system away from its very purpose of protecting—and showcasing—our national treasures.

"Most of the parks were created for particular purposes," says Sen. Thomas, who introduced the legislation to identify the costs of the Park Service’s role in homeland security. "The water in Florida’s Everglades, Grand Teton National Park, with its mountains. Each of the parks has significant resources—that’s why they’re parks. More and more, we are going to be required to [allow for development on] other federal lands. As that happens, it becomes more important to protect these special places we’ve set aside as national parks."

Of course, the most valuable gems in need of protection can’t be guaranteed by officers toting machine guns or security wands, but must be watched over by botanists and biologists who know the land and whose words and deeds preserve that inheritance for the next generation.

Anne Minard is a freelance writer and journalism teacher who lives in Flagstaff, Arizona.