
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, October 3, 1993                   TAG: 9310150368
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: D3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Geoff Seamans Editorial Writer
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THE YELLOWSTONE BLUES

THE BLUE RIDGE Parkway isn't the only unit in the National Park system. Suburban development encroaching on the parkway, the controversy du jour in this neck of the woods, isn't the only threat facing the system. And scenic views aren't the only kind of beauty that America's parklands offer.

Taking the last point first ...

My wife and I took a week's vacation last month - my first visit there, her second - to the grandaddy of national parks, Yellowstone, and its neighbor, Grand Teton National Park.

One big non-scenic beauty is that if you can afford to get to them, you can afford to get into them. Ten bucks got us a week's pass into both Yellowstone and Grand Teton.

That's a lot cheaper than any amusement park I know of - and the elk, moose, bald eagles, buffalo, coyotes and bear (one only) we saw were not Disneyesque moving mannikins.

Nor were the canyons, falls, lakes, geysers, mountaintops and boiling springs some sort of computerish "virtual reality." This was real, honest-to-God reality.

Well, not quite 100 percent honest-to-what-God-had-made-of-nature-before-man-came-along reality.

Which is where the threats come in.

Some pollution by humankind is inevitable. Without roads, hotels, lodges and campsites, Yellowstone and Grand Teton wouldn't be accessible to the general human population, however inexpensive the entry fee. Even hikers and backpackers more energetically outdoorsy than I must have trails through the wilderness.

But must wilderness visibility be reduced because of industrial emissions hundreds and thousands of miles away? Can "let-burn" fire policies withstand pressure from those who want museum-piece parks, forever captured in what is presumed to be the "right" stage of a forest's natural life cycle?

Most of the '88 Yellowstone fires, ignited by lightning during an unusually hot and dry season, were natural events. Because they were, the Park Service generally (until late in the day) followed a "let-burn" policy, which itself sparked fiery controversy.

Even with a pure "let-burn" policy, however, the process would've been less than wholly natural. Decades of human intervention to suppress past Yellowstone fires had created a build-up of kindling beyond what nature alone would have amassed, and made the '88 fires more intense than they otherwise would have been.

But places like Yellowstone and Grand Teton (and, yes, the Blue Ridge Parkway) are as close to pristine nature as most of us will get. Despite today's heightened environmental consciousness, however, it's not clear whether or for how long the line can be held.

Writing entitlement checks, not governmental operations, is what's fueling the national debt, and the Park Service is a case in point. In after-inflation dollars, its budget for operating the 51 national parks, and more than 300 other assorted units ranging from battlefields to national seashores memorials, hasn't risen in a decade - even though visits to those units have risen 25 percent.

The result, as David Nevin reported in the August issue of Smithsonian magazine, is deferred maintenance, low pay that drives some of the best rangers to other occupations, and difficulty in controlling both the human crowds and, in some parks, an explosion of non-native animal and insect pests.

The government-overhaul study headed by Vice President Al Gore recommended an increase in user fees at the national parks. That would erode one of their beauties, accessibility to Americans of modest means. But without it, there might well be less to be accessible to.

by CNB