NATIONAL PARK SERVICE Research in the Parks NPS Symposium Series No. 1

In the exuberance of self-congratulation on the progress that has been made in the 100 years since the establishment of Yellowstone National Park, it might be salutary to pause long enough to ask some basic questions about the future. Can we take for granted that our National Park System will flourish in coming years? Or is blight likely to set in? What will our parks actually be like 10 years from now?

As an exercise in prognostication, I would like to propose two simulations of what a visitor's experience might be like in 1982. One model is built on the presumption that we continue with present practices and trends, and at current financial support levels. The other model is based on doing what is necessary through achieving changes in government action and citizen attitude and by obtaining required funds and personnel.

Inasmuch as I am speaking before a convention of scientists, it might be well to set forth some facts about the present before conjuring up models of the future.

But first a caveat. Despite some shortcomings that I will be pointing out, it must be acknowledged that in general the National Park System is the best of its kind in the world and is today providing outstanding opportunity for recreation, education, and inspiration for millions of people each year.

Yet behind the glow of success there are some big problems. Many of them relate to the proliferating popularity and growth of the parks. Over the past decade, visits to National Park System units have risen from 100 million to 210 million, an increase of 110%. In those 10 years, 91 new areas have been added to the system as it expanded from 193 areas in 1962 to 284 areas today. In addition to five new national parks and four new national monuments, many historical areas have been added, plus an assortment of new recreational units (national seashores, lakeshores, scenic rivers and trails), as well as a scientific reserve, and even a cultural park. But unfortunately, the "service" part of the National Park Service has suffered somewhat in the growth syndrome. Only 2000 additional personnel have been added in the 10 years to serve the additional 110 million people, the National Park Service also has had to spread itself thin staffing 91 new park areas acquired in the past 10 years.

While funds for land acquisition in new areas have been generously forthcoming in almost an adequate amount, funds for park operating programs, i.e., maintenance, interpretation, and protection, have failed to keep pace. Scientific research has never been given the emphasis it deserves. Nor have there been funds for collection of adequate basic data on park resources. Funds for development and construction have actually dropped in the past 5 years. Nineteen of the areas added since 1962 have had little development for visitor use, and are really just "paper" parks, with minimal protective and planning staffs on hand. On the other hand, the fact that these 19 and other areas have been authorized is a large plus that should not be overlooked.

Now let us look at some current practices which have implications for our construction of future models:

Some national parks have severe overcrowding problems, based on the philosophy that every citizen has a right to visit the park of his choosing at the time of his choosing. As a first step to limiting park access, park administrators are seeking to establish carrying capacities by estimating what the planners believe are the physical capacities for each park. These estimates, however, are not backed up by scientific research. Three national parks (Rocky Mountain, Sequoia, and Kings Canyon) now prohibit wilderness use beyond a maximum daily carrying capacity, and restrictions also have been placed on use of camping sites, and for attendance on some guided tours within park areas.

Many national park areas are underutilized. The crowding of some national parks comes partly from heavy use by nearby residents who may visit the park every weekend during the summer.

Main U.S. highways go through several national parks such as Olympic, Yellowstone, Great Smoky Mountain.

National Park Service rangers, often graduate biologists or natural scientists, are needed in some parks to run campgrounds and to patrol highways.

Practices inappropriate to national parks are still authorized in some places: mining in one park and three monuments, controlled shooting of wildlife in one park.

The national parks are visited mostly by white, middle-class people. The poor, especially the black poor, are rarely seen in the parks due to lack of transportation, funds, and desire to visit wild areas.

Regional planning, and regional coordination among federal agencies responsible for recreation, is extremely limited.

Transportation systems within parks are outmoded.

Before getting to our models, we should link these and other practices to current trends such as:

The surge of environmental interest in the nation which has made more people aware of national parks and has also brought with it an increased desire for protection of the parks and the wildlife in them. Environmental education is increasing, and more urban youngsters are getting the desire to visit national parks.

The shorter work week, longer vacations, higher salaries, increased number of automobiles, recreational vehicles, campers, jeeps, snowmobiles, and dune buggies, lowered air transport prices for groups, and larger planes—all increase the pressures of use on national parks.

The expansion of off-season use of parks.

The developments of civilization which encroach on wildlife habitat.

Relating current practices and trends, we can arrive at the first of our models for the future, based on an assumption that we continue in the present mold. The visitor to Yellowstone National Park in the summer of 1982, let us say, would face a situation like this:

Four days after leaving Philadelphia—four days of constant driving along crowded super-highways and stopping at crowded motels—the Arthur Brown family approaches the eastern entrance of the park on U.S. 16. After waiting an hour at the entrance gate because the single ranger on duty cannot cope with the traffic backup, the Browns are informed that all camping spaces and lodges are full. They start the loop drive making 50 miles an hour between traffic jams. They want to stop at Fishing Bridge, but the ranger moves them on because the bridge is jammed with fishermen, and the parking lots are full. At Canyon Village they have lunch, waiting an hour in line at the cafeteria. Because it is getting late, they take the short cut west to Norris Junction and get caught in a massive traffic jam as 200 cars stop to see one elk a mile away running for his life as tourists with cameras swarm out of cars and head across the meadow. The Browns reach Old Faithful late in the afternoon, just missing an eruption of the geyser. They cannot find a ranger to ask questions, but the girl in the concession souvenir shop tells them that it will be an hour or more before the next eruption of Old Faithful. Mr. Brown decides they had better head for West Yellowstone to get a motel for the night so they can get an early start for the next day's planned visit to Grand Canyon National Park. They have thus visited Yellowstone, seeing none of its natural wonders, nor any wildlife.

Possibly this model does exaggerate things a bit. Yet in my most recent visit to Yellowstone 4 years ago, I ran into all the elements of such a park visitation.

Obviously, we do not have to accept that model. If certain changes are made, the experience of a visitor to Yellowstone in 1982 can be greatly different. A blue-ribbon citizen commission and five citizen-manned task forces are now looking into the basic problems and issues confronting the National Park System. The task force findings will be made public next spring and will constitute the source material for discussions at a National Parks Symposium in April 1972. I am certain these task forces, and the commission which reviews the results of the symposium, will make constructive suggestions. The National Park Service itself already has a number of new policies in the works, many of which, however, require added personnel and funding.

From the viewpoint of one interested observer, I would like to suggest what I think are certain basic needs to be met in the next 10 years.

1. Extensive research should be started immediately in order to establish a carrying capacity plan for each area. Because some crowded parks would be damaged by over-use, or the visitor's park experience could be ruined by crowding, we will not be able to wait for results before taking some trial-and-error actions, such as placing limits on visitation in certain areas.

2. A reservation system should be established, tied-in to a regional interagency computerized recreation use system. Unlimited access to parks is not necessarily a right for all citizens at all times.

3. Increased funding should be obtained for interpretation, maintenance, and scientific research related to preservation of ecological systems. Yosemite—the national park that due to riots, smog, crime and crowding has had the worst public image—at present needs, say National Park Service officials, an additional $8.5 million over present funding levels for visitor services and maintenance.

4. Until a reservation system can be installed and needed personnel added (without raiding the staff of several parks just to keep one troubled park in order), some national parks should be closed. Three years ago lack of personnel and operating funds forced the National Park Service director to take the drastic action of shortening the hours some parks or park facilities were open during off-season, and even closing a few small historic sites. Should this situation occur again, and should parks be seriously threatened by lack of personnel or maintenance funds, a more effective solution might be for Congress to temporarily shut down public use of Yosemite Valley in Yosemite National Park and the entire Grand Canyon National Park, areas which require large staffs and tremendous maintenance funds. The benefits would be twofold: enough funds and personnel would be freed to help most other parks in trouble; and the shock to Americans might be enough to force recognition of the need to adequately support the National Park System.

5. A list and timetable should be established for acquisition of all presently identifiable historic and natural areas needed to fill out the National Park System, and to purchase privately owned land within boundaries of older parks. A special priority should be placed on acquiring a national park in the Brooks Range of Alaska, a park preserving one of the few remaining prairie ecosystems in Kansas or Oklahoma, and a Channel Islands National Park in California, to name the more obvious. Priority should also be given to establishing marine parks, and for making marine sanctuaries offshore park beach areas.

6. Where possible and where habitat is sufficient, steps should be taken to reinstate native species of wildlife which have disappeared from a park. This should include wolves, mountain lions, coyotes, and other predators.

7. A sliding-fee schedule should be set up for visiting and camping, based on carrying-capacity studies which should show how long the average person needs in an area to adequately experience the values of each park. For instance, if it is determined that Yellowstone is a 3-day experience, those speeding through the park or lingering for an extended vacation, might be required to pay much higher fees, depending on length of stay. Also, a system of financial and transportation assistance should be worked out so that low-income families can visit a distant park.

8. Environmental education should be made a part of all elementary school curricula, and young children, especially in cities, should be taught about national parks and taken on supervised trips to nearby natural areas.

9. Formation of nonprofit service corporations should be encouraged to manage some park concessions. These nonprofit corporations could also run campgrounds and perform routine maintenance tasks, thus freeing National Park Service personnel for activities related to protection of the park and interpreting the park to the visitors.

10. All nonpark traffic should be banned from existing highways running through parks, and no new federal highways should be established within parks. When roads are needed into newly acquired parks, they should be designed by the National Park Service as low-speed, scenic routes, and not by the Federal Highway Administration as wide, straight, high-speed highways.

11. The transportation system within parks should be revised to place emphasis on declining use of the private automobile and accelerated use of public transportation.

12. The size of the naturalist force should be increased and methods should be devised for allowing the public to view wildlife in its native habitat.

13. Youth hostels and low-priced overnight accommodations should be provided at the fringes of parks.

14. Border parks with Mexico and Canada should be established, with camping and interpretive facilities that can be internationally shared.

If these and other changes take place in the next decade, combined with heightened respect for park values by those visiting the areas, and a willingness by the park-goers to accept some restrictions, the experience of the Arthur Brown family visiting Yellowstone in 1982 might more nearly follow this model:

During January, the Browns go to a Department of Natural Resources Urban Planning Center in Philadelphia, one of a dozen such centers which were started in major cities in 1975. They are assisted by a ranger-counselor, who suggests that rather than spending most of their time in travel, and trying to see too many national parks, they instead make a regional visit to the Yellowstone area. He explains that in addition to Yellowstone National Park there are within a day's driving radius, U.S. Forest Service, Corps of Engineers, and Bureau of Reclamation recreation areas, and state parks in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. An itinerary is set. Using a computer, reservations are made for lodges on the edge of parks, and camping within some areas. The ranger-counselor then gives the Browns some educational material to study during the winter.

In July, the Browns head west from Philadelphia, camping along the way in state parks, with reservations having been made for them by the Department of Natural Resources computer, which is linked to state park systems. At Cody, Wyoming, they stop at a Department of Natural Resources regional visitor center. Here they obtain more information about the areas they will visit.

The Browns start their regional vacation at Bighorn National Recreation Area in Montana, then swing west to the Gallatin National Forest. They spend 2 days camping at Red Rock Lake National Wildlife Refuge, then go on to Yellowstone. As they approach the west entrance, they tune their car radio to a special wavelength. Out of the wide-open spaces comes the voice of a national park naturalist, identifying the trees, mountains, and wildlife they are seeing, and describing what lies ahead in the park. They find no delay at the entrance gate, where a staff of well-trained young men and women seasonal civilian park aides accept their fees and answer questions. They find their unitized camp site at one of the several small campgrounds established on the edge of the park away from crowded areas. They leave their car and take an electric-powered, open-air public minibus for a visit to Old Faithful. They walk the final quarter-mile because all roads and parking areas were removed from the fringes of the geyser back in 1973.

Later, at a road turnout in Hayden Valley, a National Park Service naturalist gives them information about the buffalo and moose grazing in a field nearby. He explains the ecology of the area—how each plant or animal (including man) fits into a total environmental order. Before returning to their camping site, they visit Yellowstone Falls and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.

The next day the minibus takes them to the starting point of a 7-mile hike to Hart Lake. On the hike they see several black bears (strict enforcement of the "no feeding" rules has forced all panhandling bears away from roadsides and campgrounds). The Browns spend their last night at a wilderness camp (food, bedding, and primitive facilities provided) at Hart Lake. The next day they leave Yellowstone for home, via Grand Teton National Park, where they spend the night at the Colter Bay Campground.

That's the way it might be in 1982. But to make that dream, or one like it, come true, we will need large increases in funding and greater public support and willingness by the average citizen to change his attitude about national parks.

The then director of the National Park Service, George B. Hartzog, Jr., in testifying in March 1971 before the House Subcommittee on Appropriations, told Subcommittee Chairman Mrs. Julia Butler Hansen that the nation must change its "whole attitude about what these parks are." We must, Mr. Hartzog said, "recognize that these parks are symbols of our inheritance rather than simply resources of land, water, buildings, and structures; and that, therefore, when you are managing the symbols of your inheritance, it is a much more expensive proposition than just maintaining a forest environment or an agricultural environment or an open space environment."