Category: National Parks

From The Washington Post:

A federal appeals court has ordered the National Park Service to halt its ambitious plans to reshape public access in Yosemite Valley after concluding that some construction projects underway could harm the Merced River.

The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which was issued late Tuesday, has thrown a long-delayed $441 million blueprint designed to transform the visitor experience in Yosemite National Park into turmoil, again.

After decades of contentious debate, park officials had just embarked on the new master plan, which they a call a back-to-nature campaign to limit or change human activity in ways that better protect Yosemite’s many natural wonders.

But some environmental groups contend that the proposed renovations would imperil, not enhance the natural splendor of, Yosemite and the Merced River, which runs through the park. The groups filed a lawsuit to stop the valley plan but were rebuffed last month in federal court. Their appeal of that decision led to Tuesday’s ruling.

From Christopher Reynolds in the Los Angeles Times, Cold and alone, yes. Crazy? Not yet, the story of Craig Peterson who “spends winter at Crater Lake Lodge with an ax and 520 inches of snow. Yeah, he’s seen ‘The Shining.'”

From the The Salt Lake Tribune:

The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument — whose rugged beauty was formed over the ages by ice, wind and water — has weathered its biggest legal storm.

On Monday, a federal judge upheld former President Clinton’s use of the Antiquities Act to designate the embattled reserve in southern Utah nearly eight years ago.

In a 47-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Dee Benson rejected each of the “myriad claims” offered by the Utah Association of Counties (UAC) and the Colorado-based Mountain States Legal Foundation, a group that represents grazing, mining and motorized-recreation interests in the West.

President Clinton, joined by Vice President Al Gore on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon in Arizona, signs a [proclamation] declaring 1.7 million acres of southern Utah’s redrock cliffs and canyons as the Grand Staircase- Escalante National Monument in September 1996.

Try to imagine Bush and Cheney doing this.

The Los Angeles Times tells how “Upheaval in the National Park Service has turned the genial ranks of America’s rangers into outposts of fear and frustration.”

Millions of visitors a year hear friendly rangers banter about prehistory at Agate Fossil Beds National Monument in Nebraska or geology at Utah’s Zion National Park. The crisp green and gray uniforms declare that all is right in this nationwide realm of 387 taxpayer-financed battlefields, cemeteries, ruins, seashores, parkways, preserves, scenic rivers, trails and parks. Out of earshot, however, many employees complain about slashed budgets and staffs, and say they fear recrimination if they don’t toe the line. …

Working for the park service has always been a calling as much as a job, one with such a shared commitment that staffers often feel like kin. Third-generation rangers and husband-and-wife teams are common. Employees not only go through extensive training together in search and rescue and other skills, they also work together in remote, sometimes searingly beautiful locations, and often live in close quarters in modest housing, paying rent to Uncle Sam.

At Death Valley, all hands pitch in to drive the ambulance or firetrucks or do countless other chores. Before heading to town, 58 miles away, a staffer asks around for video or grocery requests. When a relative is sick or dies, employees donate vacation days to their bereaved colleague.

Beneath the camaraderie lies a devotion to “the mission,” enshrined in the congressional Organic Act of 1916 that created the park service. Any ranger anywhere will rattle it off like the Ten Commandments: “Which purpose is to conserve the scenery, and the natural and historic objects, and the wildlife therein, and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner … as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”

The article continues.

The Los Angeles Times reports that More National Parks Fail New EPA Smog Ratings.

The Environmental Protection Agency plans to announce next week that the air quality in areas that include at least eight of the nation’s most popular national parks, including Yosemite, is in violation of a new and more protective federal smog standard, National Park Service officials said Wednesday.

Yosemite would join a roster of national parks — including Sequoia, Kings Canyon and Joshua Tree in California — listed as having unhealthy air. The air quality in those three parks already violates the EPA’s old and less stringent smog standard, which was based on a one-hour measurement of air quality. That is being phased out in favor of an eight-hour measurement.

Other popular national parks to be newly designated as having dirty air include Rocky Mountain in Colorado, Great Smoky Mountain in North Carolina and Tennessee, Acadia in Maine, and Shenandoah in Virginia, National Park Service officials said.

The article continues.

From The Washington Post:

After decades of debate, Yosemite is embarking on a $440 million plan to limit or change human activity around the glorious but beleaguered park. Some campsites will be eliminated or moved, roads and trails will be refigured, and many visitors will eventually have to roam the valley in shuttle buses instead of their cars — all to better protect the park’s natural wonders without ruining public access.

Striking that delicate balance has become the crucible of national parks across the country — from Yellowstone’s struggle with snowmobiles to conflicts over motorized boating on the Colorado River inside the Grand Canyon.

New population pressures and recreational pastimes that keep pushing deeper into pristine wilderness are laying siege to many national parks, and some of them are at a loss for solutions. Yosemite believes it has found its remedy.

Read more.

Photo.

David Horsey, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Thanks to Lee for the link.

From The Salt Lake Tribune:

… a Feb. 20 e-mail to park superintendents in the northeastern United States that outlined potentially controversial cuts by Park Service Deputy Director Randy Jones. Among the cutbacks: reducing the number of lifeguards on beaches, eliminating all ranger-guided tours, not cutting lawns, privatizing campgrounds and closing parks “every Sunday and Monday” this summer season. The memo told superintendents that Jones said to refrain from issuing news releases about the cuts.

“He suggested that if you feel you must inform the public through a press release on this year’s hours or days of operation, for example, that you state what the park’s plans are and not to directly indicate that ‘this is a cut’ in comparison to last year’s operation,” reads the e-mail, apparently written by Northeastern Deputy Regional Director Sandy Walters. If pressed, “use the terminology of ‘service level adjustment’ due to fiscal constraints” to describe the cuts, the memo said.

Read more.

From The Bozeman Daily Chronicle —

Yellowstone National Park’s bison pens are likely to reach capacity this week, which means trapped animals will be shipped to slaughter whether they have brucellosis or not.

Read more.

The Arizona Republic reports:

For nearly a decade, some of the state’s largest ranchers have waited patiently to strike a deal with the federal government to enlarge Petrified Forest National Park and protect the area’s geological and archaeological treasures.

But time appears to be running out as development pressures increase and the ongoing drought makes the cattle industry less viable.

Meanwhile, bills seeking the park’s expansion by 97,000 acres, doubling its size, languish in U.S. House and Senate subcommittees with no hearing dates scheduled. And the state, which has been a latecomer in endorsing the expansion, still faces a laborious process in determining the value of State Land Department property that would be involved in the process.

Read more.

Rocky Mountain News reports:

The Great Sand Dunes National Monument and Preserve is one step closer to doubling in size and becoming Colorado’s fourth national park.

Money to buy the Baca Ranch property adjacent to the existing monument, which features the tallest sand dunes in North America, was officially placed in escrow Friday at a California title company.

Read more.

Click here to view current photos from Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and Glacier national parks on one page.

NewMexiKen has been taking a look at the Old Faithful Geyser WebCam and Grand Canyon WebCam from time-to-time during the day.

The Old Faithful cam is very much like being at the geyser — wait, wait, wait.

The Grand Canyon cam, though, is often attractive and never dull, just like the Canyon. Take a look.

Try also Many Glacier Cam from Glacier National Park.

was authorized by legislation on this date in 1899.

became such by an Act of Congress signed by President Grant on this date in 1872.

NewMexiKen photo, 2002

was so designated 75 years ago yesterday (February 26, 1929).

The photo and the following history are from the Grand Teton National Park web site.

The original Grand Teton National Park, set aside by an act of Congress in 1929, included only the Teton Range and six glacial lakes at the base of the mountains.

The Jackson Hole National Monument, decreed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt through presidential proclamation in 1943, combined Teton National Forest acreage, other federal properties including Jackson Lake and a generous 35,000-acre donation by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. The Rockefeller lands continued to be privately held until December 16, 1949 when impasse for addition to the national park was resolved.

On September 14, 1950, the original 1929 Park and the 1943 National Monument (including Rockefeller’s donation) were united into a “New” Grand Teton National Park, creating present-day boundaries.

Nicholas Kristof thinks “humans trump the bison and moose.” Two excerpts from his op-ed piece in The New York Times:

Yellowstone National Park, a wonderland at any time of year, is particularly dazzling in winter, when the geysers shoot out of snowfields and the elk wear mantles of frost. I took one of my sons to visit last year and learned two things that I don’t believe most environmentalists realize.

First, in winter Yellowstone is virtually inaccessible except by snowmobile. Cars are banned (except for one small part of the park), and Yellowstone is so big that snowshoeing and cross-country skiing offer access only to the hardiest backpackers, who can camp in snow and brutal cold for days at a time.

Second, a new generation of snowmobiles is available with four-stroke engines, not two-stroke. These machines cut hydrocarbon emissions by 90 percent — and noise by 50 percent. …

As an avid backpacker who loves the outdoors, I think the environmental movement should be trying to get more people out into the wild. That’s why I’d like to see the Bush administration’s compromise upheld, so Americans can continue to enjoy Yellowstone in winter. Cross-country skiers and snowshoers would, of course, still have all of backcountry Yellowstone for themselves, with no machines for many miles around.

Granted, snowmobiles are an intrusion. But so are cars. In the summer, we accept a trade-off: we admitted about 965,000 people last July to Yellowstone, with all the noise, garbage, public toilets and disruption that entailed, knowing that the park would be less pristine but that more people would get a chance to enjoy it. That seems a fair trade.

The philosophical question is the purpose of conservation: Do we preserve nature for its sake, or ours?

My bias is to put our interests on top. Thus I’m willing to encroach on wilderness to give Americans more of a chance to get into the wild. That’s why we build trails, for example — or why we build roads into Yellowstone.

was authorized by legislation on this date in 1895.

Learn about The New Museum and Visitor Center.

was designated a national monument on this date in 1933. It became a national park in 1994.

Hottest, Driest, Lowest: Death Valley is a land of extremes. It is one of the hottest places on the surface of the Earth with summer temperatures averaging well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. It encompasses the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere at 282 feet below the level of the sea, and it is the driest place in North America with an average rainfall of only 1.96 inches a year.

This valley is also a land of subtle beauties: Morning light creeping across the eroded badlands of Zabriskie Point to strike Manly Beacon, the setting sun and lengthening shadows on the Sand Dunes at Stovepipe Wells, and the colors of myriad wildflowers on the golden hills above Harmony Borax on a warm spring day.

Death Valley is a treasure trove of scientific information about the ancient Earth and about the forces still working to shape our modern world. It is home to plants, animals, and human beings that have adapted themselves to take advantage of its rare and hard won bounty. It is a story of western expansion, wealth, greed, suffering and triumph. Death Valley is a land of extremes, and much more.

From the Jackson Hole News & Guide

A legal turf war is taking shape with a federal judge in Wyoming blasting his counterpart in the nation’s capital for deciding a dispute over banning snowmobiles from Yellowstone National Park.

U.S. District Judge Clarence Brimmer said he “may ignore” a ruling issued by his peer in Washington D.C. during hearings in Cheyenne. “I don’t see any reason why a judge 2,000 miles from here ought to be deciding things that affect the people of Wyoming,” Brimmer said of U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan. Associated Press reported the remarks.

But conservationists counter that the nation’s capital is both a legal and appropriate venue for a case involving the nation’s first park.

“It’s not Yellowstone Wyoming Park; it’s Yellowstone National Park,” Doug Honnold, an Earthjustice attorney representing several conservation groups, said in a telephone interview Tuesday.

From the Billings Gazette

Severe restrictions on snowmobiling in Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks were blocked by a federal judge Tuesday, nearly two months after they were put in place.

U.S. District Judge Clarence Brimmer in Wyoming ruled that the restrictions would cause irreparable harm to companies that rely on snowmobiling in the parks due to lost business.

Brimmer issued a temporary restraining order against the restrictions and ordered the National Park Service to develop temporary rules for the rest of the 2004 season including use of cleaner, quieter snowmobiles.

It was not immediately clear what the next legal step would be, or what rules would be in effect for the 2005 season.