Politics has taken the voice away from the National Park Service. Instead of relying on the expertise of its biologists, archaeologists, botanists and others, the agency has deferred to partisans in the Interior Department with intentions not always in the best interests of the National Park Service Organic Act.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke was so anxious to score a major infrastructure success project last fall that he drained a quarter of the National Park Service's construction budget to do that. Now we're left wondering what else is being drained of $12 million so a backcountry lodge in Glacier National Park can be rebuilt to serve a very, very select group of park visitors. At the same time, a program that reaches out to millions of fourth-grade students is hanging in the balance because the secretary sees it as a money loser.

If you're in the RV business, or want larger campgrounds, or perhaps more lodging concessions on public lands, you're likely thrilled with the makeup of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke's "Made in America" Outdoor Recreation Advisory Committee. If you prefer less infrastructure on public lands, well, you're probably in a funk over his appointments.

From dismantling national monuments to privatizing national park operations to skirting the National Environmental Policy Act to open parklands up to hunting and vanquishing wilderness. Is that on Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke's agenda? It doesn't take much of an imagination to think so.