New roles for our national parks

An expanded vision for parks in the 21st century

The Sierra Club's National Parks and Monuments Committee has exciting new ideas for expanding and enhancing our national-park system. Our goals include:

including all the country's major ecological regions;
advancing the scientific study of the parks including learning how to deal with ecological threats and how to adapt to global climate change;
educating the public; and
limiting and greening development in the parks.

The United States played a pioneering role in inventing national parks, but today we lag behind in using national parks to protect and learn about our ecosystems. We should follow the models of neighbors such as Canada, Costa Rica, Panama, and the Dominican Republic.

Filling the gaps

In this diverse nation, shouldn't all major ecological regions be represented by a national park or similar natural reserve large enough to assure long-term preservation of natural resources?

A preliminary analysis based on this goal, started by Club staffperson Kirk Koepsel before his tragic death in February, suggests the need to create 38 new national parks (or similar areas) and to expand or change the management of 28 others. Within California, for example, the study identifies four gaps in current protection:

California Central Valley grasslands;
California montane chaparral and woodlands;
Pacific Northwest coastal rivers and streams;
the Californian Current.

There are many views on how much protection is "enough" and about how to define ecological zones. These proposals are designed to get local folks who know the land as well as political decision-makers started on discussing the big questions about the future of the national parks. In California we may ask such questions as:

where should new parks be located?
should management be significantly upgraded in the Carrizo Plain National Monument, our last large remnant of Central Valley grassland?
how might the National Park System protect our marine ecosystems?

Per-capita visitation to our national parks peaked 20 years ago and is now down 23%. With rising gasoline costs and increasing public concern about greenhouse gases, this trend is likely to continue. We should establish new national parks closer to where people live.

Activists from the Angeles and Kern-Kaweah Chapters are promoting Tejon Ranch as an ideal property for a new state or national park in California. Just north of Los Angeles, the 276,000 acres comprise unique convergence of four ecoregions: California Central Valley grasslands, Mojave Desert, Sierra Nevada forests, and California coastal sage and chaparral. This critical wildlife corridor is home to dozens of imperiled species, including the California condor and San Joaquin kit fox. The diverse landscape includes one of the highest numbers of oak species in the state and extensive native grasslands now rare in the West. In addition to the oak savannas and woodlands, Tejon Ranch's unique ecosystem, untouched terrain, and acreage make it an ideal site for a new state or national park.

Hearing what our National Parks can tell us

National parks can also serve as bellwethers of environmental change caused by development, industrialization, and global warming. National parks are ideal sites for studying our natural world and how it reacts to change and for learning how to protect it.

We need to expand science programs in parks. We should determine habitats for plants and animals as well as threats to these, both those internal to the parks, and those from the outside, including threats from public use and global threats such as climate change. We need to determine the major ecological regions' intrinsic resilience to these threats and what actions we need to take to protect these areas. We need to evaluate land use to determine what practices within each ecological region are compatible with ecological vitality.

As we gain such knowledge, we need to expand education programs in the parks to spread such knowledge widely. The education programs should relate to school curricula at all levels and in all subjects.

Park outreach should also be designed to galvanize public interest in national parks. As the public becomes more informed about and involved with the parks, we will see more activity by environmental organizations, user groups, and adjacent communities to defend and enhance the parks.

Limiting development, greening development

We need to limit development in the national parks. The only facilities in the parks should be those essential to their protection and to enabling visitors to enjoy and learn from them. Even these should be carefully located in the parks' vestibules, away from critical habitats. If a facility can function well outside parks, whether it serves resource protection, visitor education, lodging, or other park-management purposes, then that's where it should be. Park access and use should encourage walking and minimize fuel use and pollution.

Park facilities should be net zero-energy users, designed according the highest green standards. They can be models for all of us.

Facilities not essential for resource management and public use should be located outside the parks, where they can provide visitors with a full range of services while minimizing impacts on the parks themselves. These non-essential facilities can be close to where employees live, and they can be served by the utilities that also serve local communities. This will allow facilities to serve alternate community needs in park off-seasons, and to provide economic and social benefits that will generate community and political support for the park.

For example, at Yosemite the Sierra Club has advocated for relocating much of the employee housing and offices, overnight lodging, stores, and utilities from current sites in Yosemite Valley to spots outside the park in adjoining communities. The freed-up portions of the Valley can then be turned back to nature, for enjoyment by visitors.

Funding

Of each federal budget dollar, 1/12 of a penny goes to national parks. Our nation can afford to do better.

Entrance fees are not an answer. Today these contribute but 5% of the National Park Service budget, and they are already high enough to discourage use, especially by people with lower incomes. Fees just for entering national parks should be abandoned.

Nor should park staff have to beg for contributions, or invite private companies to use our national parks to advertise their products. The government does not ask a bos'n's mate to pass the hat to launch a new destroyer. We can easily afford to expand our national parks and reap the benefits of expanding programs in them. Things we learn and the benefits they generate will pay back the costs many-fold.

National parks can play an invaluable role in making a better world for us, for our children, and for our grandchildren. Let's expand our system of national parks to do this.

John F. Byrne, chair, Sierra Club National Parks and Monuments Committee