Archive for the ‘mismanaged’ Category

Are National Park Resources being Mismanaged?

Tuesday, March 1st, 2011
I think most would agree that our National Parks are woefully under-funded. From the backlog of maintenance projects for trails, park facilities and historical structures, to declining resources for ranger and educational programs, scientific studies, and even the hiring of new park rangers, it’s obvious that there just isn’t enough money to go around.

Indeed, the National Parks Traveler recently reported that the National Park Service has a maintenance backlog in the neighborhood of $8 billion.

Moreover, according to National Parks Conservation Association President Tom Kiernan, out of a budget of approximately $2.3 billion, the Park Service has an annual operations shortfall of $600 million.

However, incongruously, every couple of weeks I come across a news report showing that the Federal Government has purchased a new tract of land to protect a viewshed along the Appalachian Trail or the Blue Ridge Parkway, or to protect headwaters on lands next to an existing National Park, or even to create an environmental buffer next to a park. I’m really only focused on what’s taking place in the Tennessee – North Carolina area, so I’m sure these federal land purchases are occurring with much more frequency when you consider the entire nation, especially in the western mountain states.

You might also note that the National Park Service recently added three new units to the system just in the last couple of months.

Now I’m learning that President Obama is considering using the 1906 Antiquities Act to designate 17 new National Monuments through a presidential proclamation. This would add more than 13 million acres to the management coffers of the National Park Service.

The recently published America's Great Outdoors Report also recommends that the administration "work with Congress to consider new congressional designations of or additions to wilderness, wild and scenic rivers, national parks, national wildlife refuges, and national conservation system lands. Priority for federal support should be given to sites where strong local, regional and national support exists."

I have to ask - how can this be justified? How can the U.S. Government continue to purchase more land when they obviously can’t manage what they already own?

The Feds are effectively diverting funds from programs and park improvement projects in order to purchase more land. The end result is an even larger amount of total land mass that is under-funded and mismanaged. It all comes down to a question of quantity or quality. Do we want more and bigger parks, or is a better quality experience at existing parks more important?

Is anyone else alarmed by this?


Jeff
HikingintheSmokys.com

Posted in National Parks, funding, mismanaged, resources | Comments Off

Are bears in the Smoky Mountains being mismanaged?

Friday, January 28th, 2011
There is a pronounced tendency among some pantywaist poltroons in the U. S. National Park Service, in the Smokies and elsewhere across the country, to fall back on the tired old nostrum which suggests that their mission exclusively involves the natural world, humans be damned.

As you might tell from the quote, Jim Casada, book author and frequent contributor to several outdoor magazines, has a pretty provocative article on the Tuckasegee Reader website in which he basically calls out park service employees in the Smokies for not doing enough to protect humans from bears.

Casada's contention is that by not aggressively managing bear-human contact, bears are beginning to lose their fear of humans, which could result in more encounters and possibly deaths.

In a Little River Outfitters forum posting from earlier this week, Casada points out that:

Similarly, my brother, Don, covers perhaps a thousand miles of Park trails each year. He says that he has noticed a distinct change in bear behavior in the last two or three years, including two encounters this past summer in which bears showed no fear of him whatsoever.

In his Tuck Reader article, Jim offers a tried and true solution once used by the park back in the day:

All that is required is taking any of many actions which traumatize bears in the sense that they restore a healthy dose of fear of humans. There was a time, although the Park doesn’t like to talk about it, when bears which repeatedly caused “bear jams” (stopped traffic on Highway 441) got a serious dose of corporal punishment in the form of a spanking. Yes, that’s right—a good old-fashioned dose of hickory tea. The bear would be shot with a tranquilizing dart and then, usually after being transported, get a good whipping as it began to awaken. Almost invariably one spanking did the job.

There's also a current discussion on this article in the Backpacker Magazine forum.

So, do you agree with Casada, or do you think park rangers in the Smoky Mountains are following the proper and best bear management methods?


Jeff
HikingintheSmokys.com

Posted in Jim Casada, Tuckasegee Reader, bears, mismanaged, smoky mountains | Comments Off