Conscious Choice Seattle: Dawn’s Early Call

November 2004 | Back Woods

Dawn’s Early Call

You might think there is no room for a cell phone during a camping trip. The National Park Service begs to differ

by Kari Lydersen

Cozy nights around the campfire interrupted by someone yammering away about business. The solitude of dawn broken by a tinny ring.

These are the kinds of complaints campers and hikers have reported since cell phone towers have popped up in national parks, providing cell phone service to these remote areas.

But the threats the towers pose to America’s parks and forests go deeper than aural annoyances, according to critics who don’t want to see cell phone towers on National Park Service land. Depending on their placement, the towers often rise as unnatural behemoths amid otherwise idyllic natural settings. One of the most egregious is at the Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone, where a 100-foot cell phone tower constructed in 2001 now stands directly in view of the famous gusher.

“Cell phone towers compromise the beauty of the park system as a whole,” said Chas Offutt, communications director for the group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

Lee Dickinson, the director of special use programs for the National Park Service, notes there are telecommunications receivers in about 35 of the country’s 388 sites managed by the National Park Service. This number includes towers as well as receptors placed on existing buildings or structures. It is not clear yet how many towers total have been built, though the count at Yellowstone National Park is six.

The companies building the towers pay a land-use fee depending on market value for the land in question, and reimburse the specific park for costs incurred in locating and maintaining the tower. The land-use fee is supposed to go directly to the U.S. general treasury, meaning there is no economic incentive for any given park to construct towers.

But on Sept. 13, PEER announced findings that money from the concessions paid by two wireless phone companies to build towers in Yellowstone National Park were kept in the park budget, rather than deposited with the U.S. treasury. They also note that as part of a contract that ended in 1999, park employees received about 70 free phones and free minute plans donated by the company MetaCom, which was later bought by Western Wireless.

Frank Buono, a retired longtime National Park Service employee, explains why the news of Yellowstone keeping land-use revenue from the towers is troubling to him. It creates an incentive for parks to get involved in partnerships and investments from private companies. Special-use concessions could involve rich mineral deposits, grazing rights and rights-of-way for telephone and electrical lines and irrigation.

Yellowstone keeping the money, insists Buono, sets a terrible precedent. “Common sense says park managers will easily succumb if they can see this revenue stream coming into the park,” he says.

Al Nash, a Yellowstone ranger who has spent much of his career at the park, doesn’t think the towers are overly harmful. He notes the amount of revenue in question-roughly hundreds of dollars a month in rent for each tower — is a drop in the bucket for a park the size of Yellowstone. He says it is not clear Yellowstone violated any rules by not turning land-use fees over to the treasury, but they are investigating the regulations, “and if we are supposed to be turning over money, then that will be done.”

“We think some level of cell coverage is important, especially for safety aspects,” said Nash. “Because of new privacy laws there are situations where we aren’t allowed to discuss situations (involving injuries or health problems) over two-way radio, but cell phones provide an extra level of privacy. Most of our rangers feel like cell coverage enhances our ability to do our jobs.”

Nash said the park has received complaints about the tower near Old Faithful, and park officials are talking with the company and state preservation officials about ways it could be made less intrusive, including possibly lowering or camouflaging it.

The debate over cell phone towers and revenue from special-use concessions in general is especially relevant now with national parks feeling the effects of budget cuts. A report by the National Parks Conservation Association that came out early this year said the National Park Service is underfunded by $600 million, with $50 million of that diverted to fund extra homeland security at “icons” like the Golden Gate Bridge and Statue of Liberty.

A good number of park visitors say they are not against cell towers if they are placed in already-developed areas or in places where they don’t block cherished views. Yet there is growing sentiment that any cell tower construction should come with a required public comment period.

Other purists don’t want to see towers at all. “This administration is starving [the park service] for funding and forcing them to whore themselves out,” says Scott Silver, an Oregon scientist and environmentalist. The idea of safety isn’t enough of a reason.

“There are many of us who say part of the whole idea of going out in the wilderness is to challenge yourself and take that responsibility and not overreach. ... If you’re carrying a cell phone, you’ll think ‘I can cross that ice field, because if something goes wrong I’ll just make a call.’”

Kari Lydersen writes regularly for the Washington Post and is an instructor for the Urban Youth International Journalism Program in Chicago.

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