Olympic NP Will Close Visitor Center, Eliminate Most Seasonal Rangers

[hatrack]

"Olympic National Park is so pressed for cash that officials plan to close the visitors center in Forks and eliminate most seasonal rangers this summer, and they agreed to keep the popular Hurricane Ridge Road open in April only after the city of Port Angeles promised to help foot the snowplow bill. The plans were brought to light by the National Parks and Conservation Association (NPCA), a national-parks advocacy group, which is releasing a report today suggesting that chronic money shortages and rising expenses are forcing park superintendents across the country to make painful decisions on how to spend their money this year.

The report contends that officials overseeing the nation's 387 parks or historic sites are freezing jobs and cutting programs and asking staffers to make do with less — a trend some parks officials in Washington state reluctantly confirmed seeing here. They're hoping visitors won't notice much of a difference this year.

At Mount Rainier National Park, for example, Superintendent Dave Uberuaga said he is keeping a key administrative position vacant to free up enough cash to keep his summer seasonal work force employed. At Olympic, Park Superintendent Bill Laitner said he's working with the mayor of Forks, Clallam County, hoping they can find a compromise to help keep the park's visitors center there staffed through the summer.

EDIT

In this politically charged campaign season, some superiors have actually urged park officials to refer to changes they're making as "service-level adjustments," rather than cuts, and to notify agency headquarters about the most sensitive ones, "so that it won't cause public or political controversy," according to internal agency e-mails."

EDIT

[barbaraann]

1. That's ok. Laura Bush and her friends got to visit already.

http://www.kingcountyjournal.com/sited/story/html/138613

The Bushes have no further use for the park, so why bother opening it for the peons? We have no right to visit our public lands, only a right to work at low wages with no overtime or health care. We wouldn't have time to visit anyway!

[hatrack]

3. I just can't WAIT to see what Chimpy's going to do for Earth Day this year

Will he stand near some trees, or will he stand in front of some mountains? Only his greenwasher knows for sure!

[ramapo]

2. It's a shame

The NPS has suffered from neglect and worse for years now.

You would think the parks would be maintained and supported as an act of patriotism, protecting our natural, national treasures.

The NPS should be a branch of government that all could be proud of as well as a department that people could serve.

The NPS has suffered from privitization and the steady erosion of support, chiefly from the Republican "Government is bad" campaign.

Whatever happened to Bush's promise to provide adequate funding to the NPS?

[NNadir]

6. Whatever happened to any of Bushes promises.

This one was an especially absurd lie. If Kerry spent a month on tv reading from Bush's promises and pointing out the reality, he would not get through the list.

BUSH MUST BE DEFEATED.

[Southpaw Bookworm]

7. A National Outrage

That America's national parks, forests, and historic sites are in such pitiful condition. Places like Frederick Douglass's Home in DC are literally falling apart, Shenandoah National Park is horribly polluted, and Harpers Ferry is turning down school groups because it can't afford the park rangers to provide tours.

We are losing our history, and the government is too busy destoying other countries to give a crap.

:nuke:

As for Dubya's promised NPS funding, those would be his proposals aimed at allowing logging in national parks.

[Earth_First]

4. Working Vacation in Crawford...

he'll throw some brand new creme colored work gloves, grab the chain-saw and clear some "brush" and "dead-wood" all with the "Health Forests for America" backdrop in the background.

[primavera]

5. How long before the shrub...

... uses this as a justification for privatizing the national parks? I can hear him already: "The poor state of our national parks proves that they must be turned over to Weyerhauser for clear-cutting... ahem, I mean, for preservation!"

[ramapo]

8. Bush promises to shore up national parks

From a CNN report in 2000...

"Bush picked a roaring Washington state river as the backdrop to discuss his $4.9 billion plan to improve national parks. He accused the Clinton administration of spending too many federal dollars acquiring land and not enough keeping up existing properties, leaving the National Park Service with more pBroperty but fewer resources to take care of it..."

http://www.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/09/13/campaign.wrap/

The report also contains this...

"He also lent his support to state efforts to improve salmon habitats threatened by federally built dams in the region."

The administration's water policy resulted in the largest-ever reported salmon kill.