Yosemite Valley, as viewed and photographed from Inspiration Point, is one of iconic, instantly recognizable sights of Planet Earth’s geography. Excited park visitors will call out to the park ranger, “Have I seen this before?” The patient ranger will smile and politely agree that very probably the park patron has seen photographs or videos of this scene.
There is simply nothing quite like the Lost World symbolism of that view. The eye is drawn to the great gray cliffs and the soundless descent of Bridalveil Fall, the softening effect of the forests, and the gate-like presence of Half Dome. Once you see it, you will never forget it.
Unfortunately, closer inspection of Yosemite Valley, the infrastructure behind the trees, so to speak, reveals a threadbare patchwork of missed opportunities. One of the great dreams of the Sierra Club and other environmental groups is the restoration of Yosemite Valley to a condition free of the schlock of industrial tourism and National Park Service infrastructure and as close to the 1851 point of European discovery as is humanly possible.
Can the Yosmite Valley be returned to the way it looked when Albert Bierstadt painted it in 1864?
How Hard Can It Be?
The great sculptor Michelangelo was asked how it was that he was able to carve his masterpiece “David” from a single block of marble.
Michelangelo deadpanned, “It’s really very simple; all you have to do is chisel away all the marble that isn’t 'David' and then you stop!”
So, all you have to do is remove all the man-made objects and infrastructure that is not Yosemite Valley and then you are done; a task simple enough for the dimmest federal bureaucrat. You simply bulldoze and cart away everything that is not “natural.” That is, the jail, the various hotels and lodges, giftshops, grocery stores, restaurants, NPS offices and NPS housing (including, believe it or not, the superintendent’s house!), the maintenance garage, the bank, the liquor stores, the ice skating rink, the tennis courts, the horse stables, the three swimming pools, the roads, and the bridges, the powerlines and telephone poles.
Then you are done and can go home. Depending on the amount of funding, we should be able to get the job of infrastructure removal done in one summer season, two at the most.
How hard can it be?
Pretty darn hard as it turns out.
John Muir was indeed correct when he said Yosemite Valley was “One of God’s most sublime temples.”
Now the problem with God’s Temples, whether located in Palestine’s Jerusalem or California’s Sierra Nevada, is the temple concessioners; you can’t run a temple without ‘em. Or so it is said.
Consider the minutes of the April 5th, 33 AD meeting of The Jerusalem Temple Concessioners Association, recently discovered in a cave near the Dead Sea: “Friends and fellow businessmen, we are gathered together to discuss what steps can or should be taken against that damn carpenter from Nazareth who is currently raising hell with our concession in the Temple. He and his crazy, ne'er-do-well, and probably subversive, followers are telling the public that we don’t belong in the Temple! That we are defiling the Temple by doing a needed public service like changing money or selling sacrificial animals at a very reasonable price! I am going to recommend to the Roman authorities that this busybody be terminated as soon as possible! Remember! We’ve gottith a contract!”
And the rest, as they say, is history.
The moral of the story is, don’t mess with Temple Concessioners even if you’re God Almighty!
Fast forward a couple of thousand years to Yosemite Valley in the Sierra Nevada and we get to Ms. Barbara Moritsch, a natural resource ranger who wanted to reform the Yosemite Valley Temple and restore its natural rhythms. After all, how hard could it be?
Preservation's The Problem
Ms. Moritsch came well-recommended, having served in Sequoia, Kings Canyon,and Death Valley before accepting a position in Yosemite. Barbara was just chock-full of clever, innovative ideas on how Yosemite Valley could be at least partially restored to the period of BC (Before Cash). Alas for Barbara, while she was a good field biologist, she did not grasp the concept of Money Ecology, the seamless, natural flow of money and power between the National Park Service and its concessioners. Anything that is seen to potentially disrupt this symbiotic flow will be instantly attacked.
That “anything” happened to be Barbara.
According to Barbara, she was called into the chief of resource management’s office, where the Chief told her, “You are too preservation-oriented in your view toward resource management. That might have been OK in Sequoia, but Yosemite is different. I’m letting you go.”
Barbara was hurt and confused. All she had been doing was attempting to restore the Valley. After all, how hard could it be?
She did some research on how hard it could be, and that research melded into a very readable history of the various attempts to restore the valley as well as suggestions as to how that might be accomplished: The book is entitled The Soul of Yosemite: Finding, Defending, and Saving The Valley’s Sacred Wild Nature.
Pick it up at your library or bookstore, it is well worth your time.
The question still remains, “How do you preserve a talismanic mountain valley in a pristine state of nature while at the same time attending to the needs of millions of visitors and making oodles of money for the park concessioner and providing the necessary park infrastructure?"
Well, I don’t know, neighbors! But here is a somewhat controversial thought from the THUNDERBEAR ASSOCIATES, an environmental study group. The THUNDERBEAR premise is based on the wisdom of the National Rifle Association. You will recall, of course, that the NRA believes that the answer to the gun problem in the United States is MORE guns!
THUNDERBEAR ASSOCIATES believes that the answer to people and infrastructure in the Yosemite Valley is MORE people in the valley. Rather than a measly 4 million visitors a year to Yosemite Valley, the valley should be capable of handling over 40 million visitors a year, creating profits beyond the dreams of avarice for both the Concession and the NPS!
“But 40 million visitors would completely destroy the valley!” you say, understandably outraged!
The World's Largest Mall
But not if the visitors and the valley infrastructure were buried 50 feet underground. The surface would be restored to roughly 1850, the time of Chief Tenaya (There would be continuing debate on whether the Ahwahnee Hotel and a few other historic structures should remain. Everything else would be underground.)
What we are talking about is the Yosemite Mall; a mile-wide and seven-mile-long mall beneath the floor of Yosemite Valley. It would be, by far, the largest mall in the world, larger than the West Edmonton Mall in Canada, larger even than the Dubai Mall in the United Arab Emirates, which at 55 square hectares is currently the largest mall in the world. The Dubai Mall attracted 54 million visitors in 2011, surpassing New York’s Central Park (38 million) and Times Square (39.2 million) as well as Niagara Falls (22.5 million)
The Yosemite Mall would have unlimited possibilities: Not only tennis courts and a double Olympic-size pool with wave-making machine, but also the world’s only underground golf course, located conveniently under the Ahwahnee Hotel. All NPS and concession infrastructure, including the 1,200 retail outlets and other activities, would be located underground in the mall.
The surface of Yosemite Valley would be painstakingly restored to its 1851 status. Needless to say, no mechanized vehicles would be allowed. Transport would be by horse, carriage, or Shank’s Mare. With automobiles removed, the Valley would again be huge, a one-by-seven-miles scenic swath of hiking trails.
"Outrageous! Sacriligious! What would John Muir say?" you demand.
Muir, being an innovative inventor and successful Republican businessman, would probably be wondering how he could invest in Yosemite Mall.
Besides, unlike today’s schlock jungle of industrial tourism and government buildings, you would not have to visit Yosemite Mall in order to visit Yosemite Valley. You would first drive your car into the world’s largest underground parking garage where you would park. Shuttles will whisk you to a Decision Point where you will make a choice: one sign will direct you to YOSEMITE MALL and all its shopping and recreational pleasures, another sign will direct you to YOSEMITE VALLEY, where an escalator will lift you to the joys of God’s pristine Nature.
Undecided? No need to fret! There will be unobtrusive, well-concealed, escalator connections every mile or so, should you tire of either Mammon or Nature!
How hard can it be?
PJ Ryan is a retired 30-year NPS veteran having served at Jewel Cave National Monument, Bandelier National Monument, Navajo National Monument, Bryce Canyon National Park, Petrified Forest National Park, Joshua Tree National monument, John Muir NHS, Jean Lafitte NHP and the Washington Office of the NPS. You can read more of his thoughts on the parks at Thunderbear.
Comments
In answer to PJ's fine commentary, I suggest the answer to the question "How Hard Can It Be?" is pretty hard if not impossible. To my way of thinking, there are at least two approaches to thinking about the question.
A Legal/Policy Approach
The NPS Organic Act has been affirmed and reaffirmed in its exact words many times since 1916 by Congress, courts, and the NPS. The affirmation has always been that "preservation" (sometimes the word "conservation" is used) is the primary fiduciary responsibility of the NPS regarding parks' resources.
None of the words in the Organic Act have been defined by Congress, the courts, or the NPS.
The NPS is not an "expert" agency (e.g., like the EPS) but rather a "stakeholder" agency, which means its duty is as much as it determines appropriate to respond to various stakeholders with interests in NPS matters.
All of the above means that the common interpretation that the NPS has two (primary) duties, i.e., preservation and use, is wrong. The only primary duty is preservation.
However, given the lack of definition of the words in Organic Act, the Administrative Procedures Act pretty much grants a huge amount of discretion to NPS decision making unless it is arbitrary and capricious. Plus, the legal bar for demonstration that the NPS has been arbitrary and capricious is high. Thus, automatic deference is given to NPS decisions.
In a sense, absent proof of being arbitrary and capricious, the NPS can have things both ways regarding preservation and use. As long as it has a reason that an action is not inconsistent with preservation or causes impairment (sound science is not required) NPS decisions will hold up. Given the ambiguity of language of the Act, a related but more complicated explanation is that actions a party may try to use to demonstrate a park manager’s failure to carry out the prescriptive mandate of use may in defense be characterized as ‘preservation’, and thereby arguably comply with the Act.
To a different point, it is true there has been tremendous and successful lobbying by park concessioners. I have made this point in a number of published papers. However, I'm not sure where to spread the blame: the concessioners, the NPS, or the American public.
Unfortunately, it seems clear to me that in most cases the NPS can do pretty much what it wants. Why it has not been more bold in a preservationist sense is not exactly clear to me. My guess is that we have not had a true democracy in this country for quite a while, given the impact of money in elections (and this predates the United decision), and that the conservation organizations long ago began a descent into compromise of preservation in order to attract and keep members. This is one reason David Brower was fired from the Sierra Club (I was in the Board Room when it happened). Then, too, the American public share blame because by and large what exists in parks is what they desire.
Philosophical Musings
Recall that the NPS has not defined in any concrete manner ‘conservation.” But Joseph Sax, a professor of law at the University of California, did. In his remarkably short but insightful and still relevant book Mountains Without Handrails published 33 years ago he managed to distill a lot of the essential problems that had been plaguing national parks since their inception, and still do.
Many people hold a memory of experiences in some of the world’s national parks. These memories have produced impressions that have helped sustain them through good times, or more mundane or even difficult times, providing another value national parks and other special places can provide even as we are distant from them. The point, though, is that quality park experiences are comparable to moments of sensory or aesthetic pleasures or stunning observations that may occur from special experiences, over long time periods. The key for value to be derived from national parks is for our experiences in the actual resources or situations to be sufficiently authentic and profound to etch themselves into our beings. This etching cannot be done in the midst of crowded conditions, excessive development, or traffic jams on narrow park roads.
That existing levels of use and development in most parks degrade the scenery and natural resources is without question (to us). But they do more than this, they degrade the opportunities for visitors to contemplate and reflect on scenery and natural resources because of the distractions of high levels of use and development–and none of the reports mentioned this. Sax built his ideas on Frederick Law Olmsted’s, who would have thought modern hotels and massive traffic jams were anomalies in parks not simply because they intrude on the scenery or even might impair ecology, but because such commercialism and crowding intrudes upon our ability to contemplate the mystery and grandeur of this thing called ‘nature’. Sax defines conservation of national parks as disallowing high levels of use and development because this precisely gives ‘…the ordinary citizen an opportunity to exercise and educate the contemplative faculty that establishment of nature parks and public places is justified and enforced as political duty. The more nature there is in national parks the greater allowance is made for the free roaming of the human spirit and intelligence: Conservation begets freedom. The setting is a precondition for activities that cultivate human independence, curiosity, and self–directed thought because it is only those areas, free from development, that allow contemplation and reflection, and which do not depend on artificial entertainment found in places like modern hotels and bars or ski slopes for our attention. Sax’s ideas provide a strong basis for a non–consumptive and contemplative and reflective experience in national parks, although his views are decidedly anthropocentric.
A wonderful book to read is by Jon Livingston, a Canadian biologist, who wrote 30 years ago The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation. Sax and Livingston come to many of the same conclusions about the need for parks to be free of development and heavy visitation. However, Livingston wrote that conservation is a fallacy insofar it is rooted in anthropocentric interests, and he reminds us that the human assault on places like national parks is not lessened until we humans change in a manner such that we recognize that we are not separatefrom—not better than—animals. We are only different. Livingston reminds that the onus is on each of us to make an inner change, to accept relatively undeveloped national parks for the benefit of the animals and not for our own selves in a setting of accommodations developed forour comfort. With respect to national parks, technology and politics having to do with complicated public transportation schemes will not provide the solution because, ultimately, if we humans insist on having preeminencein national parks the wildlife and the scenery ultimately will lose, as will our ability to contemplate and reflect; rather, the solution requires a change in our own values and what we accept as our place in nature. Although Leopold Revisited provides us a reminder about the scientific reasons to protect nature in natural parks and the challenges of doing so, The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation provides a strong philosophical rationale.
Although we tend to call the most significant national park problem the one of conservations vs. use and development, in a sense this is not quite accurate. As mentioned above, Congress has reaffirmed on numerous occasions the primary fiduciary responsibility of the NPS is preservation, and courts have also affirmed this. Consequently, it remains not only to the NPS to resolve the problem but to participatory democracy as well. But in its history the NPS has never done so, and there is no indication that the agency will do so now. The most significant problem might be how to instill appropriate values in people so that they want their national park experiences to comport with an authentic nature with little or no human–manufactured distraction.
It might be naıve to believe national parks can be saved from use and development, which is to say, us. Yet, national parks are the embodiment of an ideal about peoples’ relations with nature and although difficult to achieve the ideal is worth believing in.
Finally, we might question that the problems of parks can be understood or resolved by data regarding use and development. Rather, resolution of problems will require understanding of the need for contemplation and reflection. If national parks are to remain the pinnacle of a nation’s beauty, healthy natural resources, and cultural heritage, then they simply cannot be viewed and treated as typical recreation areas. And if such a pinnacle is achieved, then as Edward Abbey said:
They will complain of physical hardship, these sons of the pioneers. But once they rediscover the pleasures of actually operating their own limbs and senses in a varied, spontaneous, voluntary style, they will complain instead of crawling back into a car; they may even object to returning to a desk and office and that dry–wall box on Mossy Brook Circle. The fires of revolt may be kindled–which means hope for us all.
Best part about Yosemite is one can go in, drive around, hike less than a mile total and enjoy wilderness. :)
Justin - what a balanced approach. Enjoy the amenties of a miniscule portion of the park and then go enjoy the massively larger undeveloped section of the parks.
I wonder if anyone has actually calculated the developed footprint in the California National Parks as a % of the total. I'm guessing you would be talking a fraction of a percent.
Couldn't Yosemite be recreated at 1/4 scale in Las Vegas, with the replica El Capitán being a hollowed-out 4,000-room hotel?
And with air-conditioning, of course. I mean the whole replica valley. Who wants to walk in that heat?
That should detour many of the Yosemite visitors. After all, I once encountered a group of Italians wandering alongside the replica Grand Canal at Las Vegas's Venetian Hotel. The real thing probably has too many cobblestones coated with pigeon droppings and the water is probably polluted and odoriferous. The replica in Las Vegas was as pristine as a swimming pool.
Or maybe, since PJ doesn't want anyone going to the parks, we could just pretend they exist. Since noone is going to them, noone would know it was pure fantacy.
Jlemons
This wording from the act that established the first park, Yellowstone:
as a public park or pleasuring-ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people
And this wording from the Organic Act
the Service thus established shall promote and regulate the use of the Federal areas known as national parks, monuments and reservations . . . by such means and measures as conform to the fundamental purpose of the said parks, monuments and reservations, which purpose is to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.
Would seem to refute your contention that the NPS's role is primarily preservation.
EC, courts have held time and again that the primary mandate of the NPS is preservation, and that the enjoyment section is secondary.
A noted historian, Robin Winks, broke down the Organic Act and explained that reasoning. You can find his essay here:
/2007/12/robin-winks-evolution-and-meaning-organic-act
Congress also has come down on the side of preservation first, enjoyment secondary, when there are conflicts between the two:
http://www.nps.gov/protect/policy_section.htm
Ebuck: I have looked at just about every court case involving preservation vs. use and all of them affirm the primary fiduciary responsibility as preservation. And, as I said, on numerous occasions Congress has repeated the reaffirmation as has the NPS.
The words you quote is from Yellowstone's enabling act also have been ruled in several court cases to be consistent with the Organic Act.