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A
bigger Waterton Park would protect many resources, including quiet
reflection
By
Ben Long
for Headwaters News
Sometimes I wonder. What in heaven’s name did
John Muir have to worry about, anyway?
In summer of 1896, the leggy, bearded mountaineer stepped off a
train in northwestern Montana and bolted for the high country. A
few months later he wrote about it in the "Atlantic."
Muir was stirred by attempts to set aside a million acres of northwestern
Montana as a national park. He wrote in his usual flowery style:
"Awakening from the stupefying effects of over-industry and
the deadly apathy of luxury, the people are trying as best they
can to mix and enrich their own little on-goings with those of Nature,
and to get rid of rust and disease."
Muir called the mountains that would become Glacier National Park
"the best care-killing scenery on the Continent."
Glacier would join America’s fledgling national park system
in 1910, 14 years after Muir’s visit, the result of intense
political lobbying.
Muir’s visit came only one year after the Canadian
government created Waterton Lakes Dominion Forest Park. Waterton
would be Glacier’s northern (and older) sister.
But the two parks have been a somewhat uneven match. This month,
Waterton-Glacier took an exciting new turn for the better. Canadian
Prime Minister Jean Chretien announced his intention to increase
Waterton Lakes National Park, immediately north of Glacier.
Finally, after 70 years of hope and talk, this would align Waterton’s
western boundary with that of Glacier.
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National
parks bow under the weight
of our numbers and expectations
By
Greg Lakes, editor
Headwaters News
Oct. 16, 2002
Managers of most national parks south of Waterton
National Park must envy the Canadians the opportunity to expand
their protected boundaries. Many of the western U.S. parks are suffering
from excess, either from within or without.
Yellowstone, arguably the flagship of the U.S. park system, will
get snowmobiles this year, under a Bush administration reversal
that will allow far more machines than would Clinton-era policy.
Each must be part of a group led by a guide -- or at least have
someone in the group who had attended a brief certification class,
officials say. And the machines must be cleaner and quieter than
the EPA requires, although those details have yet to be specified.
A ban on snowmobiles was to begin its phase-in this year, under
Clinton administration rules.
The Bush administration more recently decided that some national
parks, Colorado's Black Canyon of the Gunnison, in particular, lay
claim to too much water. States and irrigators have long fought
federal rights on water that arise on or flow through national parks
and other public land, that environmentalists and past administrations
said was essential to protecting parks' ecosystems.
Now, Interior officials say the Colorado park doesn't need all the
water it claims, that much of it should be available to downstream
users, and that if park managers find the remainder is too little,
as they expect, they should be able to get more from other sources
or the open market.
In Rocky Mountain National Park, too
many elk are ruining the willow and aspen that provide habitat
for a variety of other bird, insect and mammal species, and the
herds spill into the yards and gardens in gateway Estes Park.
Officials are drafting plans that could include fencing in the national
park, injecting birth control, hiring sharpshooters, allowing limited
hunting in the park, and reintroducing gray wolves.
Grand Canyon National Park suffers from too
much noise, according to a panel of federal judges, despite
15 years of court-ordered quiet. In late August, the judges rejected
the FAA's method of determining noise levels that averaged the decibels
from airplanes and helicopters conducting tour flights, mixing summer's
peak din with winter's relative calm.
The park still failed to meet its goal for quiet under the average
method, and the judges ordered the FAA to find a better way.
On top of the Grand Canyon, there are too
many visitors, about 1 million a year. The National Park Service
is drafting a new management plan to deal with the hordes, focused
on whether the park should become a commercial mecca or strive to
maintain its wilderness character.
At the core of the debate is management of the 25,000 visitors a
year who float through the bottom of the canyon on the Colorado
River. The pro-wilderness faction wants motorized boats banned,
but outfitters and guides are strenuously resisting any notion that
would cut into their profits.
And even the most remote national parks, including Utah's Bryce
and Zion are suffering from
too much air pollution. In 1990, Congress told the EPA to clean
the smog from the vistas in the West; that was followed by years
of commissions, reports and a lenient deadline of 2070.
The result has been that Canyonlands' air quality has not improved
at all and Bryce may have become worse. Analyses show that 85 percent
of Bryce's pollution comes from the stacks of coal-burning power
plants. Arches and Capital Reef round out Utah's roster of national
parks that don't meet visibility standards.
In April, the New York Times complained that President Bush had
reneged on his plan to fund national parks' backlog of maintenance
and repairs. Bush had promised the money to free park officials
from constant and chronic budget crises so they could concentrate
on conservation.
The editorial noted Bush's failure fell in line with most of his
predecessors'. Still, it said, Bush missed an opportunity to help
revive a struggling national park system:
"Increased funding along the lines Mr. Bush promised in his
campaign would do much to address the crisis. But so would a ringing
reaffirmation of conservationist values."
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