Musings from around the National Park System in 2022/Kim O'Connell

With the final days of 2022 here, and the 365 days of 2023 about to debut, it seems like a good time to reflect a bit on the past year in the National Park System.

Horses And Hikers At Great Smoky

Horses can do a lot of damage to trails. I saw that first-hand in Yellowstone National Park while on a backpacking trip through the Bechler region. There were several stream crossings that hikers shared with equestrians, and in some places the piston-like churning of hooves were readily evident in the gouging indentations of stream banks where the horses were getting out of the water. Horse poop on the trails was another calling card, too. 

Which leaves me puzzled as to the decision at Great Smoky Mountains National Park to charge hikers and equestrian riders the same $8 daily fee for accessing the park's backcountry for overnight trips. If you're planning to hike the 71 miles of Appalachian National Scenic Trail through the park, an eight-day permit will cost you $40.

The pricing set to take effect March 1 is expected to help offset the costs of maintaining the backcountry, but it seems odd because a 1,000-pound horse can do a lot more trail damage than a 180-pound backpacker with a 30-pound pack, yet equestrians aren't being asked to pay more. When you consider there are 550 miles of park trails open to horseback riders, it would seem logical that a lot more trail damage will be done by horseback travel in the park than by hikers.

When you see motorists heading into the park to explore are going to be charged just $15 for a seven-day parking pass pass, the backcountry fees for both hikers and equestrians seem particularly out of whack, since front-country costs to maintain restrooms, parking areas, and picnic grounds have to be higher than those for occasionally clearing trees from trails, ensuring the bear cables are sturdy enough, and other maintenance that often involves volunteers and grants to help pay for some of the work.

Dueling Volcanoes

It's a once-in-a-lifetime experience to stand before one erupting volcano, but to be able to see two volcanoes erupting simultaneously, well, what can you say? Visitors to Hawai'i Volcancoes National Park had that opportunity in November as Mauna Loa awakened after a nearly 40-year nap to complement nearby Kīlauea's eruptions, which have been ongoing since September 2021.

Early risers gathered in viewing areas along Kīlauea caldera before sunrise could spy a massive glow from Mauna Loa caldera, Mokuʻāweoweo (13,677 feet elevation), and a smaller lava lake within Halemaʻumaʻu (4,009 feet) at the summit of Kīlauea.

Florida, Where Politics Trump The Environment

The National Park Service's efforts to live up to its mandate to preserve natural resources for the enjoyment of future generations seem futile in Florida, where politics trump the environment. That's obvious at Biscayne National Park, the country's largest marine park, where years of efforts to set aside 6 percent of the park for a marine reserve in a bid to restore and protect a stretch of the only tropical coral reef system in the continental United States died when the commercial fishing industry opposed the effort.

It continues to be obvious as pollution pours into Biscayne Bay and threatens to suffocate the marine life there. And it's underscored by a report that found that the state agencies in charge of overseeing its most important fisheries have allowed them to be overfished to the point that their continued reproduction has been affected. Among the fisheries involved are those along the Florida Coral Reef that runs through Biscayne, Everglades, and Dry Tortugas national parks.

There's a glimmer of hope on the horizon though. Back in 2020 the National Parks Conservation Association sued the National Park Service for dropping the marine reserve idea. The lawsuit, which is still pending, noted that when Biscayne was designated a national park in 1980, Congress directed in the park's Establishment Act that the Interior secretary could limit or prohibit fishing "in the interest of sound conservation to achieve the purposes for which the park is established."

NPCA's lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, points to the agency’s failure to create a marine reserve and phase out commercial fishing in the park.

The Interior secretary, under the enabling legislation for Big Cypress National Preserve, also has the authority to "limit or control" new oil exploration or development in the preserve. More than 100 organizations and individuals, including Florida's agriculture commissioner, have asked Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to block Burnet Oil Co. from developing reserves in Big Cypress. For now the oil company has put its plans on hold while the Park Service develops a more robust environmental impact statement on the company's plans to drill horizontally into the preserve.

NPS Staffing Woes

Years of vocal concern from park advocates that the National Park Service was understaffed came home to roost at Mount Rainier National Park this month when it was announced that Paradise, that idyllic location at the foot of Rainier, would be closed to the public during mid-week this winter because there was not enough staff to ensure the public's safety.

Plowing snow from the park's steep and serpentine roads takes a special skill, and with the crowds that flock to Paradise for winter sports, it's good to have an adequate ranger force present to respond to anything that might pop up. The park has had challenges hiring for utility operators, custodial crew, roads crew (plow operators), and with the visitor and resource protection staff, who are the folks in the park that respond first to emergency medical needs and search and rescue operations.

Of course, coupled with the inability to find employees is the difficulty in finding places for them to live. 

Then, too, there's the issue of the NPS workforce's low moral. In the latest Best Places to Work in the Federal Government rankings (based on 2021 surveys), employees are not convinced the agency is succeeding with its mission. Park Service Director Chuck Sams said during his confirmation hearing that raising the workforce's moral would be his top priority. Has he made progress? The next survey should tell.

Recreation.gov.

Criticisms far outpace any applause for this supposedly democratic approach to doling out campsites, hiking permits, paddling permits, and timed-entry reservations for national parks, among other things. Along with the obvious -- if you don't have a lightning quick Internet connection the odds are miniscule that you'll be a winner -- is the not-so-obvious: If you enter a lottery to try to land a permit, say, to hike the Wave in southern Utah or climb Mount Whitney in California and don't win, you don't get your lottery entry fee back. That's pocketed by Booz Allen, the company that operates recreation.gov for the government.

Booz Allen was paid $182 million to set up and run recreation.gov. How much more it is making from lottery application fees and, in some cases, permit fees charged lottery winners, is unknown. For example, you have to pay a $6 fee to enter the lottery for permits to climb Mount Whitney, and if you win you're charged a $15 per person fee for the permit. Neither of those fees is refundable. 

According to the L.A. Times, in 2019 16,842 people entered the lottery to climb Mount Whitney. At $6 to enter the lottery, that translates into $101,052. Just about a third of those who entered landed a permit, the newspaper added.

When you consider that every year there are recreation.gov lotteries to watch fireflies in Great Smoky Mountains and Congaree national parks, to explore the Wave in the Paria Canyon-Vermilon Cliffs Wilderness, to drive the Denali Park Road, to raft the Rogue River "Wild Section," to head into the wilderness at Yosemite National Park, to raft the Middle Fork of the Salmon in Idaho, to run the Green or Yampa rivers through Dinosaur National Monument, and who knows how many more, that no doubt adds up to a sizeable amount of money to "manage the lottery system."

Those Visitor Use Management Plans

It's six years and counting as Zion National Park's staff continues to search for a workable visitor use management plan. With word in recent months that Cumberland Island National Seashore, Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks, and Yosemite National Park are either in the process or soon will be to develop their own VUMPs, let's hope it doesn't take each six+ years.

Fantastic Adventures

There are, across the National Park System, so many incredible adventures you can take advantage of. You can go deep underground at Carlsbad Caverns National Park, Jewel Cave National Monument, Mammoth Cave National Park, Oregon Caves National Monument, Sequoia National Park, Timpanogos National Monument, and Wind Cave National Park; ride bucking waves through Canyonlands National Park, Dinosaur National Monument, Grand Canyon National Park, and New River Gorge National Park and Preserve; and go underwater to explore marine trails at Biscayne National Park and Virgin Islands National Park.

A new one I discovered this year was the "slough slog" in Everglades National Park. As Contributing Editor Kim O'Connell wrote earlier this year, "One of the most distinctive landscape types in the Everglades, cypress domes have a somewhat misleading name. A cypress dome is essentially an island of trees in a wetland landscape. From a distance, cypress trees form a rounded shape that seems to imply a small, wide hill. But rather than an elevated rise, a cypress dome is actually a water-filled depression, like a wide, shallow pond with trees growing out of it. The deepest water is at the center of the dome, so there the cypress trees grow taller than the ones growing in shallower water around the edge, giving the formation its arched shape."

To really begin to understand one of the unique ecosystems in the Everglades, you need to, quite literally, wade in.

Here's hoping that more than a few of your trips into the National Park System in 2023 are adventurous!