NPCA: Secretary Zinke's first 100 days have been disappointing for the national parks/Photo © Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0.
Editor's note: The following column is from Theresa Pierno, president and CEO of the National Parks Conservation Association. It was initially posted Friday on NPCA's Park Advocate blog.
Today marks Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s 100th day leading the federal agencies that manage much of our public lands, including the National Park Service. Secretary Zinke has described himself as a “Theodore Roosevelt” Republican and pledged to make park issues a focus of his tenure, including tackling the National Park Service’s more than $11.3 billion maintenance backlog and keeping park rangers on the job.
But is he living up to these promises? While there are plenty of opportunities for Secretary Zinke to work to protect and fund our parks, his and the Trump administration’s actions to date may have detrimental long-term impacts for our national parks. Under his leadership, parks face multiple new threats.
• An administrative budget proposal would cut 13 percent of Park Service funding. If enacted, it would be the largest cut to the agency since World War II. This budget could mean fewer park rangers and staff to maintain and care for our parks. It would also mean cuts to programs that protect our shared American history in communities across the country. The administration has claimed its budget proposal includes increases to help address the multi-billion-dollar backlog, but the reality is, under the Trump administration’s budget, money for these maintenance needs would actually decrease.
• In a call to review federal policies that might "burden" domestic energy production, the Department of the Interior is reviewing rules for oil and gas drilling inside national park units. These commonsense guidelines establish safety and enforcement standards for existing or potential oil and gas drilling in more than 40 national parks including Everglades, Cuyahoga Valley, and Mesa Verde. This review presents a clear threat to the Park Service’s mandate to leave parks “unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”
• A temporary federal hiring freeze earlier in the year impeded the Park Service’s ability to hire permanent staff, including park rangers. This freeze could challenge Park Service managers to adequately fulfill their mission to support parks. These types of actions — such as reducing staff in the Park Service’s Washington Support Office, Denver Service Center, and regional offices — should not be undertaken without thoughtful attention to the important services these offices provide. Secretary Zinke has also expressed interest in privatizing certain park services like park campsites, but NPCA is concerned that significant privatization of park services or public-private partnerships could elevate private interests over the public interest. While concessions play an important role in our parks, so do the many park rangers who are a central part of the experience for the visitors who value them.
• The Department of the Interior is currently reviewing 27 national monuments designated through the Antiquities Act with the potential to alter or rescind federal protections on these sites. Interior is specifically targeting two national park sites: Katahdin Woods and Waters in Maine and Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve in Idaho. The Antiquities Act is a century-old bipartisan conservation tool used by nearly every president since 1906 (eight Republicans and eight Democrats) to create more than 150 national monuments — many of which are national park sites. While specific monuments were singled out by Secretary Zinke, this process opens the door to review ALL national monuments designated since 1996. To date, more than one million Americans have spoken up in support for keeping these monuments protected, just as they are.
• In April, the Department of the Interior reversed course on previous rulings and took steps to approve a dangerous groundwater mining proposal that threatens Mojave National Preserve, the third-largest national park site in the lower 48 states. The Cadiz Inc. proposal would pump 16 billion gallons of water per year from the Mojave Desert to southern Orange County by way of a pipeline. This project threatens the park as well as the plants and wildlife that rely on fragile desert water sources.
A sampling of Secretary Zinke’s actions to date call into question his commitment to honoring Roosevelt’s values, park landscapes, Park Service staff and more. We are troubled by this trajectory and remain hopeful that Secretary Zinke will honor our nation’s history in the manner anticipated by the Organic Act that governs our national parks: “... 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."
We will continue to hold Secretary Zinke accountable to prioritize the protection and defense of our national parks. Our nation’s natural resources and history depend on them.
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Comments
I just spent a week in a national park area and found very few rangers. Like too many of our parks, rangers are being replaced by volunteers. There are more volunteer interpreters than rangers. Volunteers are now introducing themselves as "Volunteer ranger Susie" or John or whoever.
Most distressing was an air of deep despair that was obvious not only in ranger ranks but also among the volunteers.
There is a great deal of fear that PRIVATIZATION is coming.
We need to be extremely watchful and ready to go to battle when needed.
More "Sky is Falling" from those who can not move on with their lives. He won, she lost, get over it. The "article" has a lot of he "could/maybe/possibly/don't know yet" conjectures. No substance or proof for such a clickbait title.
First 100 days of any job, you spend it REVIEWING what the last person in your job did. What they did right, what they did wrong. You look at what COULD be fixed, what MAY BE right.
He probably has a few 1000 more files to go thru to see just how screwed up the office really is since they spent 8 years playing political correctness and having the SoS sell mining rights to our national parks to foreign donors, he has a lot to REVIEW.
We have 8 more years to see what he will do. Give him time before you judge
Presidential terms are four years, Mark Antoniy.
"8 more years to see what he will do"?
Once I see that the driver of the car that I'm riding in is drunk and out of control, I can pretty well guess what he will do without going the entire trip.
The bottom line is what matters. The NPS is simply not generating enough revenue. Raise the prices for one thing. Start charging admission to parks like The Great Smoky Mountains for another. Eliminate all and I mean ALL national monuments if there is no admission fee or start charging one. I spend 85.00 a year for a park pass. To everyone up in arms about protecting our parks, and I am one of them, if half would do the same thing and buy a pass, chances are we're not having this concern, not to mention the easing of the financial burden.
I just completed a 15 month NPS Centennial speaking tour travelling 44,177 miles, visiting 176 park units and giving 71 formal talks about park history. Our parks are in disarray; they are understaffed, underbudgedted and at the same time overused. Zinke has not approved nor recommended, even, an NPS director and I fear this is his plan while he does Trump's bidding to dismantle much of the Obama agenda. I would urge everyone to write Secretary Zinke and express your feelings and demand he appoint a new director from the ranks who has a committment to our parks. And to buttress Lee Dalton's comments above, Volunteers, bless their hearts, are doing a great job to fill in where ranger's should be however, we need more park rangers, period. In one major park, I met only two rangers--all the rest were volunteers. The trail crew was a volunteer group from the Sierra Club. The bookstores were run by former heads at Xanterra and filled with off-shore "souvenirs." We can do better.
He has 3 years, 6 months, 2 weeks, 3 days to be exact. Not eight years.
Mary, you assume he'll finish out his term. Anything is possible, but the odds are that this President will self-destruct well before then. Doug Lean's assessment about the state of our National Parks is consistent with my own, and I concur that Secretary Zinke and our Congressional representatives need to hear from those of us with similar concerns.