Conscious Choice Seattle: An Ad in the Park

May 2004 | Back Woods

An Ad in the Park

As the National Park Service faces more budget cuts, fewer visitor services and more sponsorship may result

By Bill Berkowitz

This summer, when backpackers, hikers and families—with kids in tow—pony up to get into America’s national parks, they could be in for a rude awakening. Due to dramatic budget cuts, some parks may be cutting back hours, hiking trails may be impassable and educational programs may no longer exist. Even some bathrooms may be shut down.

Over the past few months, the National Park Service (NPS) has quietly imposed a hiring freeze, abandoned maintenance projects, cut visitor services and reduced park hours at a number of America’s national parks. And, according to Ski magazine, “Forest Service officials appear to be leaning toward a policy change that would allow more visible displays of sponsors, whose logos, names or ads could appear on items they underwrite.”

The theory about potential sponsorship, says Scott Silver, the executive director of Wild Wilderness, a Bend, Oregon-based environmental advocacy group, is that the NPS can attract park goers—customers—with the help of private partners in the tourism industry. He speculates that as early as this summer the NPS could announce a public-private partnership initiative.

The National Park Service used to be one of the most dependable government-run outfits, according to Silver, a longtime environmental watchdog.

“From its earliest days, the idea behind the agency was that our national parks would be to America what the cathedrals and architecture of Europe were to those countries,” Silver explains. “Most NPS officials cared a great deal for the parks and did a good job managing them.”

During the mid-1960s, the tourism industry began to get its grips into the NPS and by the time George W. Bush took office, the process of “Disneyfication” had become well established, Silver says. Now, “politics rule supreme within the Department of Interior and it appears that when the leadership of the NPS is not misdirecting the media and the American public, they are speaking out of both sides of their mouths.”
In mid-March, the Associated Press reported that national park superintendents were told to “cut back on services—possibly even closing smaller, historic sites a couple days a week or shutter visitor centers on federal holidays—without letting on they are making cuts.”

Budget cuts, however, may not be the sole source of the National Park Service’s problems. Since 2002, the NPS has spent more than $100 million on travel, including trips to China, Japan, Africa, France and Russia. The Washington Times reported that Rep. Charles H. Taylor (R-NC), chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on the interior, and Rep. Norm Dicks (D-WA), the ranking minority member of the subcommittee, told NPS director Fran Mainella “to cancel all foreign trips and significantly cut domestic travel.”

Yet not everyone is unappreciative of the administration’s national parks strategy. The American Recreation Coalition (ARC) is the country’s leading advocate of pro-privatization initiatives for the National Park Service and other public land management agencies. In June, during its Great Outdoors Week celebrations, the ARC’s Sheldon Coleman Great Outdoors Award will be presented to Mainella. (Previous recipients have included Alaska’s Republican senator Frank Murkowski and George H. W. Bush.) According to ARC’s president, Derrick Crandall, Mainella deserves the award because she “increased public-private partnerships in the park system, increased volunteerism and began new funding concepts including Partnership in Parks.”

A recent study by the National Parks Conservation Association emphasized the bleak outlook for the country’s national parks.

"America’s national park rangers have become an endangered species,” NPCA President Thomas Kiernan said when the organization released the Endangered Rangers study. “President Bush—and some of his predecessors—made strong commitments to the American people about protecting our national parks. But when push comes to shove, the parks are underfunded year after year by Washington.”

To Silver, the National Parks Conservation Association is an example of “weak, compromising, go-along-to-get-along types of organizations playing footsy with the Bush administration only to have their toes crushed.”

“We’re never going to save the National Parks by cozying up to this administration,” he says. Silver fears that if trends continue in this vein, “people should be prepared to kiss the whole American Commons goodbye.”

Bill Berkowitz is a freelance writer covering right-wing groups and movements.

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