A way forward toward preservation and keeping public lands in public hands

Here’s a thought that is both obvious and controversial: A good deal of the public reaction to the staffing changes in our National Park System is really political anger at Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Supporting federal workers has become a popular way to object to the direction the new administration has taken.

It has less to do with the effect of the actual changes to the operation of our National Parks, which aren’t clear yet, and more with giving voice to your opposition to Trump and Musk, and being seen doing it. In other words, it’s political, not practical, or even reasonable.

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In the spirit of being reasonable and using the current focus on the management and staffing of our Parks to ends we all can agree on — preservation of natural resources and fair public access — let me try to set out a few broad points and then some specific operational issues to focus on.

First, we all love Rocky Mountain National Park. Suggestions that people want to see it overrun and destroyed are hysterical and should be treated with disdain. It’s an emotional outburst disguised as a silly argument. The National Park Service is consistently one of the most liked and trusted government agencies. Our parks and forests and all public lands are national treasures we all want to preserve as well as enjoy, without reservation.

But this public goodwill toward the National Parks is obscuring some obvious management challenges at NPS that won’t be fixed by ignoring them any longer.

Most Americans would agree that spending money and preserving our Parks is something the government should spend money on. But not indiscriminately, and not without more supervision and accountability. And not without a genuine democratic process that gives the public a meaningful say in the management of our public lands.

To that end, there are three points I believe are worth adding to our current conversation about how to preserve our natural wonders for generations, help solve the very real operational challenges NPS administrators face, and guarantee that bureaucrats or bureaucratic processes do not trample public rights to public lands.

Maybe the managers of our public lands need more help than they’re willing to admit.

If the Park can be brought to a standstill or a crisis by the loss of a small part of its workforce, maybe it’s the management of the Park that needs more help than it’s admitting. RMNP has published no information about how many full-time employees it has, what they do, and how many people work behind a desk or from home.

Some members of the public would have more confidence in sending more resources their way if the NPS and RMNP were more transparent about what their real organizational needs are.

We’ve seen no specific analysis of the “staffing shortage” in the five years I’ve been engaged on this issue. I’m fully prepared to believe it’s real. But tell us exactly what you need and why you need it. Please.

Where did the money go?

Three major pieces of legislation over the last five years — The Great American Outdoors Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the Infrastructure Act — have allocated more than $6 billion to deferred maintenance, housing, and staffing needs throughout the National Park system.

RMNP may not have received a dime of that money. I’ve asked. They never answered.

We do know that three major projects in the Park — the construction of the new Fall River Entrance, the Moraine Park Campground, and the Transponder System — are all greatly delayed or, in the last case, non-functional.

We don’t know if they’re over-budget. It might just be that more transparency and cooperation without outside resources, such as the Department of Government Efficiency—can help with some of the technological problems Park management has.

And it might be that visitation is not the problem here.

The problem might be that Park management has not been properly trained to allocate the resources and manage the projects they have. They are all good people doing important work we all value, but they seem to have taken a bunker mentality and turned ordinary operational challenges into a non-existent visitation crisis that results in less access and higher costs for the public — a lose-lose deal for everyone.

Visitation is not the problem and the public is not the enemy.

Total visits to RMNP last year were about the same as they were ten years ago, about 4.1 million people. The Park will tell you that there was a 44% increase between 2012 and 2019.

This is cherry-picked data, now six years old, designed to create a sense of crisis, designed to usher in permanent reservations on public land.

If the Park was more focused on allocating its resources to its existing problems, they would not be punishing the public, again, by threatening closures, less access, and higher camping and reservation fees.

There’s a great deal of justifiable public sympathy for our national parks and the people who administer them. We love these places. It’s our obligation to preserve them for future generations. That includes improving how they’re managed now, which also includes who is doing the managing and whether they are going about it with the right priorities.

Based on my five years of interaction with RMNP over the timed entry system, I believe the people who administer our Parks have taken the view that public visitation is at odds with preservation, both of which are mandated by the 1916 Organic Act.

In the name of preservation, they have dug in their heels to resist innovation or any help from the public or the private sector to actually solve the operational challenges they clearly face.

My fear is that the public, in the absence of concrete facts and information from NPS about what its needs are and how its money has been spent, will have this sympathy for our public lands turned into a permanent and exclusive/elitist system that makes the Parks more expensive and less accessible to all Americans. And the poor management and permanent sense of crisis will continue.

NPS is not allowed to say who has been let go. Or, it could be the decision was so hasty that its consequences are yet unknown, in which case, the panic and fear-mongering are unjustified. All possible.

It could be that the changing circumstances have exposed something which has been true for a long time now: Our public land custodians need more help deploying modern technology and modern facilities/institutional management practices. All of which is perfectly understandable. The current challenge may not be what they were trained for.

Instead of a crisis, this ought to be the perfect chance to find out exactly what kind of help they need and then get it to them with bipartisan legislative support. Part of that process would be to find out what resources were already allocated their way. And then, to the extent employment law allows, find out exactly what positions/functions are impacted and what functions are essential and need more resources.

This is an opportunity to preserve our Parks through better management and a shared sense of purpose about the incalculable value of these beautiful public lands. Let’s not waste it importing political feelings into a discussion that should be based on facts, data, and results.

Denning calls for transparency and evidence-based policy decision making

Dan Denning, a financial writer for Bonner Private Research, a daily, weekly, and monthly investment research and analysis publishing group, grew up in Estes Park, graduated from Estes Park High School, and lived in Estes for 50 years.

Today he resides in Larimer, Wyo., but still has family in Estes and was a full-time resident in the spring of 2020 when the time entry system was introduced as a “temporary” measure during the pandemic.

He opposed time entry then and continues to stand opposed to it on the grounds that it is “unfair, unnecessary, and undemocratic.” (Time for a real choice in Rocky.)

According to Denning, “there is no visitation crisis in RMNP. There may be a resource allocation crisis. And the Park management may need some much-deserved outside help in leveraging new technology solutions to their problems — getting accurate visitor counts, no-show rates on reservations, etc.”

Denning sees these as problems to be solved rather than a crisis or an attack on public lands.

“In fact, public lands have been under attack by the timed entry system and by Bureau of Land Management land use rules in recent years, driven by the Interagency Visitor Use Management Council in Washington,” said Denning, adding “which seems to have been hijacked by politicized and radical environmentalists.”

“This behind-the-scenes ideological push by unelected bureaucrats has had the effect of privatizing public lands, making them less accessible unless you’re rich, white, and retired,” said Denning.

“Let’s put a stop to that. We can do better. We owe it to future generations to make responsible, evidence-based policy decisions now.” — Estes Valley Voice

The Estes Valley Voice welcomes opinion commentaries on subjects of interest and concern to the people of the Estes Valley, and we welcome civil dialogue about subjects on which people have differences of opinion. Please contact the Estes Valley Voice at news@estesvalleyvoice or 970-586-1888 if you are interested in submitting an opinion commentary for publication.