Chapter 7
A House Divided: The National Park Service
and Environmental Leadership (continued)
The Vail Agenda
The National Park Service's success in ecosystem management will be
determined in part by the level of commitment to ecological preservation
within the parks themselves. By any measure, going into the 1991 Vail
conference the National Park Service had not achieved a distinguished
record in scientific resource management, despite six decades of
prodding from concerned professionals within the bureau and three
decades of pres- sure from external groups. Sponsored by a number of
corporations, charitable trusts, and national park support
organizations, the conference was intended as a means for the Service to
undertake "constructive criticism, self-examination, and commitment to
greater responsibility." In addition to "environmental leadership," the
other "broad areas of concern" addressed by the conference were
organizational renewal (analyzing personnel and career concerns and
related aspects of the Service), park use and enjoyment, and resource
stewardship. The last was especially pertinent to the question of
environmental leadership.
However, the published report of the conference, the Vail Agenda
(drafted mainly by Service staff ), revealed the substantial
shortcomings of self-examination and criticism, even when external
authorities on national parks were involved, as they were at Vail. The
most important review of the Service's management and operations since
State of the Parks, the report nevertheless presented a confused
analysis of what the bureau's true focus had been, and of what had and
had not been accomplished in threequarters of a century. For instance,
perhaps in an effort to assure the environmental community that the
Service was right-thinking, the report declared flatly that to "preserve
and protect park resources has from the beginning been the primary goal
of the National Park Service"a statement that overlooked
seventy-five years of mainly tourism-oriented management and sixty years
of refusal to adopt a truly ecological perspective. The report also
claimed the highest of resource management credentials for the Park
Service, stating that it had "long been acknowledged as the country's
leader in resource preservation" and was "being looked to as a model of
conservation and preservation management" worldwide. [20] Such remarks demonstrate a clear
presumption of environmental leadership by the Service, specifically in
resource management.
In contradiction to such self-commendation, the Vail report sharply
criticized the Service for "sporadic and inconsistent" support of
science overall, it was "extraordinarily deficient" in scientific
matters and even "in danger of becoming merely a provider of 'drive
through' tourism." In such comments, however, the report implied a
positive record of past accomplishments, stating that the Park
Service was "no longer" a leader in natural resource and environmental
issues, and that it must "regain" its "former stature." This could be
achieved by "reestablishing . . . respect and credibility" within the
professional resource community. [21] These
statements about regaining former status glossed over several
decades of often harsh criticism leveled by scientists and other natural
resource professionals of the Service's very failure to have achieved
such status.
As in many previous instances, official rhetoric blurred the Park
Service's response to criticism. It also obscured differences between
the bureau's true historic strengths and its demonstrated weaknesses.
The Vail Agenda combined claims of excellence with admissions of serious
negligence and in so doing it failed to distinguish
tourism-oriented park management from scientific, ecologically based
resource management. The Agenda's statement that the Service should
strengthen its world leadership in "park affairs" reflected a more
accurate understanding of the bureau's accomplishments and status in the
field of general park management that which is focused mainly on
tourism, including attracting, accommodating, educating, and managing
visitors. [22] Certainly, the Service was
"being looked to," even internationally, as a "model" of general park
development and management; yet it was admittedly "deficient" in
scientific and ecological matters. The desire to regain its "former
stature" more properly harkened back to the pre-environmental era of the
New Deal years and even early Mission 66, halcyon days of park
development for recreational tourism. At that time, before national
concerns about ecological preservation escalated, the Service had
enjoyed high statusnot just with the general public but also with
conservation groups. Then, such groups were less confrontational, rarely
questioned natural resource management policies in the parks, and
focused on the appearance of park development rather than its ecological
impacts.
The chief strengths of the Vail conference may have been its
recommendations concerning park use and enjoyment and organization; but
regarding natural resources, the Vail Agenda broke little if any new
ground. Most of its recommendations reflected those of previous studies,
such as the perennial call for inventorying and monitoring park
resources. Others included addressing external threats, improving
cooperation with universities and with managers of neighboring public or
private lands, educating the public on environmental issues, increasing
and professionalizing Park Service staff (in part through better
training for both park managers and specialists), increasing funding for
science and natural resource management, and securing a legislative
mandate for scientific research in the parks. The Agenda was, it
acknowledged, confronting "challenges" that were "long-standing"in
truth, problems that a reluctant Park Service had never confronted
wholeheartedly. [23]
Yet the Vail Agenda revealed that such reluctance might continue,
particularly in light of the Service's refusal to give full-faith
compliance to the National Environmental Policy Act, considered by many
to be the keystone of environmental legislation. Addressing the
important topic of how the Park Service might make "wise decisions
regarding park use and enjoyment," the Agenda called into question the
increased "legislative requirements" for the Serviceespecially the
public involvement requirements stemming from the National Environmental
Policy Act and related laws. Although it recommended that the Service
"improve the public involvement process," its discussion of the issue
actually showed little genuine enthusiasm. Perhaps reflecting on prior
experience, it stated that the Service would accept increases in public
involvement "either willingly or by legal and political coercion."
Further vacillating on the matter of compliance with such legislation,
it declared uncritically that "many park managers view the resource base
as their client rather than society, and would prefer to make decisions
about resources with little interference from the public that owns
them." Indeed, the Agenda noted that the conferees were "unsure and
divided" on this issue. But, implying support of the park managers'
views, the report added that many believed that "there is already too
much public involvement in NPS decision making." [24]
In the section on environmental leadership, the Vail Agenda
recommended that the Park Service become "the most environmentally aware
agency in the U.S. government," noting that it could demonstrate this
through "leading by example." Yet the Agenda itself refrained from
leading by example by not insisting on full-faith compliance with the
National Environmental Policy Act, one of the country's most important
environmental laws. As recently as 1990, the year before the Vail
conference, an internal Park Service magazine published a special issue
on this act, which included commentary by outside experts on the
Service's record of compliance with the act. All of the commentators
found fault. Most commonly criticized were the "attitudes of park
managers and decision-makers," in the words of University of Utah law
professor and environmental law authority William J. Lockhart. His
impression was that far too many times the Park Service approached
compliance "grudginglywith the intent merely of going 'through the
hoops,' " and he recommended "managerial humility" as a means of
achieving "meaningful compliance." Similarly, Jacob J. Hoogland,
Washington-based head of the Service's environmental compliance
programs, noted deep-seated indifference, observing that the act had not
produced a change in "the attitudes of . . . the National Park
Service." [25]
Truly, the Park Service's irresolute compliance with the National
Environmental Policy Act reflected a patterna long history of
ambivalence toward the environmental movement, marked by failure to lead
at crucial times. Cooperating with the Bureau of Reclamation in planning
Colorado River Basin reservoirs (including the Echo Park dam proposal in
Dinosaur National Monument), the Service had helped bring about the Echo
Park conflict, then was reduced to a negligible role in the final
decision not to build the dam. It had withheld genuine support for
passage of the 1964 Wilderness Act, then implemented it less than
enthusiastically. And despite questions raised long before by its own
biologists, the Service did not provide "leadership by example" through
decisively curtailing pesticide application in the parks after pesticide
use had become a major national issue in the 1960s. With such weak
responses, Park Service management had remained largely out of step with
the environmental movement. [26]
It is significant also that well before the Vail conference posed
the question of leadership by the Park Service, the role of the national
parks in environmental affairs had diminished nationwide. Such issues as
elk and grizzly bear management in Yellowstone, the discovery and
management of Lechuguilla Cave, the decline of the wolf population on
Isle Royale, and the 1988 fires in Yellowstone at times brought national
park management front and center among public environmental concerns.
Yet in recent decades other issues, such as population growth,
pesticides, toxic landfills, depletion of natural resources, accelerated
loss of species, global warming, and clean air and water, have
intensifieda reflection of the ever-expanding interests of
environmentalists, far beyond specifically park-related matters. [27] The parks are not forgotten, but other
concerns dominate; and although many of these concerns affect the parks,
they are much broader in scope. Moreover, given the political
circumstances within which the Park Service has had to function and
survive, and given its fundamental interest in accommodating the public,
it has always been unlikely that it would become a leading national
voice on environmental issues not closely related to the parks. As a
bureau of the executive branch, it has been very cautious in speaking
out publicly on the specific actions of other federal (or state) land
management bureaus. This has been true even when lands adjacent to parks
are involved. [28] By contrast, the Service
has been much more assertive in promoting environmental awareness in a
broad, generic way, principally through its interpretive programs.
|