A company wants to "wire" developed areas of Yellowstone National Park for high-speed broadband Internet access/NPS, Jim Peaco file

Editor's note: This updates that Yellowstone National Park erroneously listed the public comment period for the AccessParks broadband initiative. It will run Nov 14-29.

There's a concerted movement under way to further commercialize the National Park System, one that, like the frog in the pot atop the stove, might soon be too late to stave off.

Last month brought word that an Interior Department advisory committee wanted to see national park campgrounds "modernized," with better WiFi service, food trucks, "mobile camp stores," and other amenities "to enhance the visitor experience."

More recently, a company wants permission to hard wire developed areas in Yellowstone National Park so it can offer high-speed Internet service. While this proposal is currently aimed at more than 400 structures that are managed by Xanterra Parks & Resorts, the Park Service anticipates that "installation will be expanded in the future to offer the same service to the NPS and other concessioners."

Those behind these proposals -- Interior's Subcommittee on Recreation Enhancement through Reorganization, aka Outdoor Recreation Advisory Committee, in the first instance, and AccessParks in the second -- seem to believe that Americans and other park visitors can't endure a national park vacation without a cell signal, someone to cook their meals, or the foresight to properly plan for camping in a park. 

It makes you wonder how the first century of national park visitors managed to survive in the National Park System, let alone actually enjoy their visits.

Long ago the late Michael Frome, a giant among park advocates, urged the National Park Service not to turn parks into "popcorn playgrounds."

Back in 1991, in a speech delivered to top Park Service managers during the Vail Conference held for some agency introspection as it marked its 75th anniversary, Frome bluntly told the gathering that, "(N)ational parks cannot be all things and still be national parks. Prudent, intelligent people must realize that unrestrained pressure is not progress. It may satisfy expediency today but will impoverish the future. I find the preservation and protection of wild nature, including vanishing species of wildlife driven to their last refuge in the national parks, not nearly as important as opening the parks for extraneous uses ranging from military maneuvers in Acadia to a juvenile detention center in the Delaware Water GAP and to sheer commercial-driven play and pleasure in most of the rest."

In May 2010, as Frome was about to reach his 90th birthday, he told me that commercialism was threatening the soul of the parks movement.

"The concessionaires are their senior silent partners," he said of the Park Service. "And so are the tourist boosters. We don’t use the word ‘ecology.’ But I want to say there are many, many wonderful people in the Park Service. And I want to support them, and we need the voice, the old voice of (Newton) Drury and (Stephen) Mather and people like that.

"... Today we need a strong voice that we don’t get from the Park Service, and we need a better alliance with strong voices on the outside, which we don’t get," added Frome, who passed away in September 2016. “Where they go now is, 'let’s get more people into the national parks', and they hear the voice of the American Recreation Coalition (which largely represented the motorized recreation interests, and is now called the Outdoor Recreation Roundtable), which is the voice of more noise and more machines in the national parks."

For a brief moment last month the Park Service wanted to bring more "noise and machines" into the parks in Utah. Acting-Intermountain Region Director Chip Jenkins ordered the parks to allow ATVs that were registered in the state and permitted to drive on state highways to also be allowed to drive on dirt and paved roads in Arches, Canyonlands, Bryce Canyon, Zion, and Capitol Reef. But some park superintendents pushed back, as did some local political leaders, and the directive was quickly withdrawn.

What's laughable about the AccessParks proposal for Yellowstone is that the company actually believes those who head to parks for vacations cut their stays short because there's not strong, reliable Internet access in those wild, remote landscapes where many parks are located.

"We couldn’t stay in national parks or most RV parks for more than a few days due to lack of quality Internet," the company states on its website. "We believe that by addressing the need for predictable, quality internet in remote lodging, RV parks and campgrounds, we are helping more people experience the outdoors we love, for longer periods of time, and with the untethered freedom of exploring confidently. The outdoors should be a part of everyone’s life, especially younger generations. When parents can keep up with work for an hour in the evening, the kids benefit from longer stays."

If you look at visitation numbers, it doesn't seem as if many people are cutting their stays short so they can get home and back to the office. Back in the late 1980s, when National Park System visitation rose to a then-record 287 million, park managers were lamenting that "we're loving the parks to death." By 2015, the annual tally had surpassed 307 million. It climbed to 331 million in 2016, the Park Service's centennial year, before tapering off a bit to 330.8 million in 2017 and 318 million in 2018.

And, if you look a bit deeper, you'll discover that human connection with nature, not Verizon or AT&T, is literally good for the soul and your health, both physical and mental.

AccessParks, which claims to have installed similar broadband service across the Armed Forces installations, obviously is looking out for more revenues, not your health. The proposal for Yellowstone calls for daily pricing of $14.95; if you're staying in a lodge, the cost will be embedded in your room rate, otherwise you'll be asked to opt-in and upload your credit card information. As for that personal information and credit card account number, AccessParks points out in its terms and conditions that it can't completely ensure that it will be protected.

What Frome so worried about, and what we should all be concerned about, is not a lack of Internet connectivity, but a lack of spaces in the park system where we can indeed relax and enjoy friends and family without that electronic tether, or the boisterous voices of others chatting away on their phones, spaces where the Park Service truly is focused on conserving "the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein." 

Parks are spaces where the environment and ecology should come first, not corporate profits for services that aren't necessary to meet the Park Service's mission.

"Isn't the point to connect with nature? National parks need to remain unplugged," Judy Ielaidnis-Smith wrote on Traveler's Facebook page.

Now, the Park Service has a good argument that reliable Internet service is important for their staff and concession employees in the parks. As Yellowstone Superintendent Cam Sholly put it to me, "In regards to people who opine that connectivity upgrades within developed areas shouldn't occur, I invite them to come live at Grant Village or South Entrance, or Old Faithful for a season. They can see first-hand the enormous frustration much of our workforce has not being able to connect - whether that's kids doing homework, or other things we all use the internet for."

Fair enough. And Internet systems can be devised that restrict access to those workers and employees without unleashing it on all visitors to the parks. 

Just as the frog realized too late that it was being boiled alive, the parks are in danger of being over-commercialized before the public realizes it.

Public comment for the AccessParks proposal in Yellowstone will officially open November 14 and run through November 29.

Traveler postscript: The National Park Service on Tuesday, after reading this editorial, informed the Traveler that the Outdoor Recreation Advisory Committee had quietly been disbanded on November 1 and that no immediate action was being taken on its recommendations, including the one to "modernize" campgrounds.