Local TV stations have been carrying ads for the new IMAX movie, National Parks Adventure for several weeks now. So when it opened in Salt Lake on Saturday, I was right there in line for tickets.

One of Alaska’s most treasured bear-viewing sites is about to be turned into a destination theme park, sacrificing grizzly bear habitat on the altar of commercial development. After a decade of development planning, EIS and public input, once aimed at major improvements in resource protection, the National Park Service has aborted earlier plans for removal of facilities at Brooks River in Katmai National Park. Protection of a unique population of bears at this premier site is now seriously compromised, going against 50 years of research-based recommendations

For the past 10 years, I have been actively engaged in the discussions about the future of Brooks Camp at Katmai National Park and Preserve and whether or how to implement the plan adopted in 1995 to have the federal government pay to move both Brooks Lodge and the National Park Service facilities to the south side of the Brooks River and out of prime brown bear habitat.

National Parks. They are places of wonderment. They spark our curiosity, help us relax, and can keep us in shape. They offer thousands of miles of hiking trails, majestic vistas, deep woods, rushing streams, and quite literally an open-air zoo of wildlife that relies on these landscapes to thrive and, in some cases, merely survive.