Motor mayhem in the parks
THE NATIONAL PARKS are popular destinations for visitors because they offer spectacular natural scenery away from the noise and pollution of populated areas. That appeal can only suffer if the Bush administration goes through with its revision of National Park Service policies to permit greater access for off-road vehicles, snowmobiles, and jet skis. The policy revision campaign is the national version of the back-and-forthing that has gone on for years at Yellowstone National Park over the use of snowmobiles. If the Interior Department and park service adopt the new policies in their current form, the burden will fall on park superintendents all over the country to fend off the motorized sport vehicle industries.
The Senate will hold a hearing on the policies April 4. The senators -- from both parties -- who oppose the changes should use the hearing to find out why the administration is moving in this direction and to remind Interior Secretary Gale Norton that the parks are to be preserved for future generations, not degraded. The head of the Forest Service has said repeatedly that the damage to national forests caused by off-road vehicles is one of the four biggest problems the forests face. It makes no sense for the national parks to allow greater use of off-road vehicles. The revisions also demote clean air as one of the principal attributes of the parks and require that park officials first seek ''technological solutions" before fighting outside sources of air pollution.
Republican Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee took park service director Fran Mainella to task last month for the revision's deletion of language that ''unambiguously defines conservation and resource protection as the primary purpose of the park service." That primary purpose dovetails with the desire of visitors to enjoy the parks without having to contend with the sounds and smells of internal combustion engines. Advocates of greater recreational vehicle use cannot argue that the parks need a new influx of motorized visitors; many of the parks have trouble handling the visitors they are drawing now.
The policies were last revised in 2001, 13 years after a 1988 revision. The park service justifies a new version just five years later, in part, on the grounds of post-Sept. 11 security requirements. But new security regulations could be handled through direct orders from the park service director, without going through a complete revision of the policies.
The heavily negative reaction to the new policies from both the public and many congressmen leads inescapably to the conclusion that the park service is catering to one constituency: the makers of recreational vehicles. If necessary, Congress should use legislation to keep the national parks national, and not commercial.
