Park Service is shifting the focus of its mission to preservation

By Tina Hesman
Reprinted from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Thursday, September 14

More than 1,200 employees of the National Park Service are gathered in St. Louis this week, trying to determine the future of our national parks. While the debate promises to continue far beyond the end of the meetings today, what is clear is that park officials are looking to science in their effort to preserve the nation's natural and cultural treasures.

From the forest path to the campaign trail, the future of America's national parks is at stake.

More than 1,200 National Park Service personnel are gathered at the Regal Riverfront Hotel in downtown St. Louis this week to discuss the outlook for America's best-loved institutions.

The meeting, the agency's first major management conference in 12 years, could mark a fundamental change in attitude and image for the agency, officials say. The meeting ends today.

No longer will visitor services be the agency's top concern, they say. Instead, the major focus will be on protecting and preserving America's natural and cultural resources.

Although surveys show that Americans trust the Park Service more than any other agency in the federal government, critics charge that the service is weak and in need of reform.

"The American public does not understand how many areas of fundamental weakness exist within the Park Service," said Ron Tipton, the senior vice president for programs of the National Parks Conservation Association, a watchdog group in Washington that monitors the Park Service.

The Park Service itself is only beginning to understand the magnitude of its problems, Tipton said. Part of the difficulty is that the mission of the 84-year-old service has never been clear.

But Park Service leaders say they have finally decided what the service should be. The National Park Service is now a conservation agency, said Director Robert G. Stanton.

That might seem like an obvious mission for an agency charged with preserving the nation's natural resources, but Park Service officials admit they have put more effort into keeping visitors happy than managing the nation's natural and cultural treasures. That focus is now shifting, Stanton said.

The agency is spending about $20 million a year to bring science back into the parks. Known as the Natural Resources Challenge, the program is designed to give park managers a scientific basis for decision-making, said Michael A. Soukup, the Park Service's associate director for natural resources and science.

Without good data, the service was often forced to base decisions about how to use resources on hunches, Soukup said. "But those vague answers aren't good enough when there are dollars on the table," he said.

Most people mistakenly assume that the parks are unchanging oases that will last forever and don't worry about the health of the parks until they are ready to visit one, said biologist Edward O. Wilson of Harvard University.

National parks should be centers for environmental research in much the same way that the National Institutes of Health and NASA are for biomedical and space science, he said.

Visitors don't realize that the biggest threat to natural resources is a lack of knowledge, said Michael Finley, superintendent of Yellowstone National Park.

Finley said he has no idea how many black bears inhabit Yellowstone. He also can't tell you the status of the songbirds in the park. Most parks are in desperate need of an inventory of their plant and animal populations and other resources, he said.

"If you don't know what you have, you don't know that you've lost it," Finley said.

Different concerns

Park visitors are more concerned with other issues, said Constantine J. Dillon, superintendent of Fire Island National Seashore in New York.

Visitors to Fire Island complain that there aren't enough rangers or lifeguards or that the bathrooms aren't clean.

"People rarely complain that you don't know all the invertebrates in your park," Dillon said.

The Park Service has begun a cataloging effort at Great Smoky Mountains National Park on the borders of Tennessee and North Carolina and plans similar efforts throughout the park system.

But the problem is worse than just knowing how many salamanders slither through a particular park. Many natural parks don't have even a single biologist on staff, Tipton said.

That's a problem Park Service officials recognize. The agency, part of the Department of Interior, employs only seven paleontologists. But it has at least 120 parks that contain fossils.

There are also not enough archaeologists, geologists, hydrologists and other scientists to go around, Soukup said.

Without important staff members, the parks will fail in their mission to educate the public about the natural and cultural history of the nation, Soukup said.

National park politics

On Wednesday, the state of the parks became a campaign issue when Texas Gov. George W. Bush said he supports giving the National Park Service $100 million over five years to bring back scientists. The Republican presidential candidate also proposed handing out $4.9 billion over a five-year period to help maintain and restore the parks.

Bush charged that the Clinton administration cut funding for the service even while adding new parks to the system.

Campaign officials for Vice President Al Gore, Bush's Democratic rival in the presidential race, said that Bush's charges are misleading. They also point out that Texas ranks 49th out of 50 states in spending on state parks.

Funding for the national parks has actually increased under the Clinton administration from $1.38 billion in 1992 to $2.04 billion this year, said Nat Wood, assistant director of external affairs for the Park Service. That increase is in addition to $416 million the service collected from admission fees in the last four years, he said.

"We feel very good about the things that have gone on for the Park Service in the Clinton administration," Wood said.

The Bush proposal would shift funds to preserving the system's 379 existing properties and away from acquiring new lands.

Park Service supporters say it is important to add to the park system to preserve the nation's cultural heritage. Many of the parks added in the last few years honor minorities and women who helped shape American history and culture, Stanton said.

The new parks are part of the agency's plan to make the parks more relevant in people's lives and draw more visitors.

Almost 300 million visitors are expected at the national parks this year.

A survey commissioned by the Park Service shows that the public thinks there are already enough visitors - 17 percent said a lack of elbow room is the most important issue facing the park system. Only 8 percent thought that preservation is the most pressing issue, and 10 percent are concerned about funding.

Overcrowding at the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial on the downtown riverfront is often a problem during the peak summer tourist season, said park superintendent Gary Easton. More than 4 million people visit the Gateway Arch and Old Courthouse on the site each year.

While visitors may be more concerned about a three- to four-hour wait to go up in the Arch, Park Service personnel have to think about preserving the structure for the visitors who will come 100 years from now, Easton said.

But the agency's responsibility extends beyond caring for the needs of visitors, said Gary E. Machlis, the service's chief social scientist.

"The parks can't just be for the people who will visit," he said. "They're too important for that."

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