Is our system for managing public lands broken? Has it become so cumbersome and susceptible to pushing and pulling by special interests that it is incapable of properly protecting the environment and all its resources? Can the National Park Service no longer properly manage the national park system as directed by the National Park Service Organic Act?
    The National Center for Policy Analysis would have you think so. It's just released a paper arguing that it's time a new management blueprint be cobbled together using a mix of non-profit organizations as well as private ownership of some of the public lands and ocean acreage managed by the Park Service, the U.S. Forest Service, and the National Marine Fisheries Service.
    "...government has poorly managed the public's natural resources," writes Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow for NCPA. "It has been unable to balance public land uses, such as logging and recreation, with preservation of lands in their original state. Because of shifting priorities, national parks and forests have at times been either overused or neglected. As a result, public lands have been degraded and the wildlife that depends on them destroyed."
    Tough statements, but are they deserving? Perhaps in some instances.

    Is there truly a need to replace the current land-management agencies, at least the Park Service and the Forest Service in this instance? Are they doing such a poor job that the country's public domain would be better off in private hands or non-profits such as The Nature Conservancy or the The National Audubon Society? Should the National Parks Conservation Association add actually managing parks to its current job of advocating for them?
    "...Some federal lands could be sold or auctioned off to private parties (individuals, companies or non-profit organizations). Or management could be transferred to congressionally approved boards or to states or counties that have demonstrated superior economic and environmental performance," writes Burnett.
    Now, the organization that Burnett writes for has a self-stated goal "to develop and promote private alternatives to government regulation and control, solving problems by relying on the strength of the competitive, entrepreneurial private sector."
    Simply put, it favors private enterprise, believing the entrepreneurial spirit is better at managing things than government bureaucrats.
    In the case at hand, Burnett isn't suggesting that there be a land sale of national parks. He realizes that iconic parks such as Yellowstone, Yosemite and the Grand Canyon the public simply would never agree to sell off.
    But he does believe there are quite a few units of the park system that "don't deserve to be parks in the first place" and could be better managed in the private sector, places like Abraham Lincoln's birthplace, which is managed by the NPS as a national historic site, or any of the 10 railroad-related historic sites also in the system.
    "George Washington's home is not a national park, it's run by a private organization," Burnett told me from his Dallas, Texas, office. "Thomas Jefferson's home, the same. Andrew Jackson's home, the same. ... (The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum at) Cooperstown is privately run, it's not run by the federal government."
    To a degree, Burnett has a point. Congressmen and women like to have NPS units -- it doesn't matter if they're actual parks or historic sites or battlefields or monuments or preserves or memorials -- back home in their districts. They just have a hard time funding them.
    But selling park units to the highest bidder? True, it could raise some money for the NPS and, really, the agency already is doing that to a certain degree, taking $95 million in return for a 60-year lease to Fort Baker in Golden Gate National Recreation Area and planning to take more money in return for a long-term lease to 36 historic buildings at Fort Hancock in Gateway National Recreation Area on the East Coast.
    Why not sell off some properties?
    "We think the report’s recommendations are not at all what the majority of the American people would like to have happen to their public lands, especially the national parks," says Bill Wade of the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees.
    And over at the National Parks Conservation Association, Andrea Keller, the group's senior director of media relations, tells me that "Congress and the American people have firmly repudiated the idea of selling off or privatizing public lands and the national parks."
    "Moreover," she adds, "while private philanthropy has and continues to play a key role in creating and maintaining national parks, these are national, cultural, and historic resources held in public trust. NPCA will continue leading the charge to have the federal government provide sufficient funding to sustain these American treasures." 
     Private philanthropy has indeed a long, and vital, history with supporting the national park system. And part of what Burnett is proposing doesn't seem too far removed from that history, or the Park Service's latest decisions involving Fort Baker and Fort Hancock.
    Specifically, in some instances he envisions congressionally chartered non-profit organizations whose members would not only be approved by Congress but also given "a narrowly defined fiduciary duty to protect and enhance the natural values of the land under their charge."
    "If you want to protect the environmental values (of a park), that's fine, just establish that that's going to be the primary purpose," he explained. "To take an absurd example, if Yellowstone was sold and if they set up a geothermal plant to drain Old Faithful, I think it’d be hard for anyone to argue that they’re protecting the environmental values.
    "If you put a McDonalds in next to the great falls of the Yellowstone (River), it wouldn't pass the laugh test in court that that protects the environmental values."