Expansion of North Cascades National Park

Well thanks Lowell I always enjoy reading your lofty rhetoric and am glad your mind is still open.
As to my Park bashing... I can't understand why you see a distinction between the two issues.
I have talked at length about both and at the present time it's evolved into a discussion about the Park Service, I'm sure it will devolve again into other aspects.

The NC3 group is advocating for bigger Park budgets to fund expansion of the Park and that areas not presently under Park jurisdiction be made so at the expense of some present user groups. At the same time, the NPS has problems with leadership, realigning it's mission for the 21st century and has severe employee satisfaction  problems and pockets of rampart corruption, cronyism and mismanagement. There are, I'm sure tremendous individuals within the organization but the problem is systemic in the organisation. How can we hand over areas in perpetuity to an organisation with these problems? I just can't for the life of me understand why you don't acknowledge that they are a related concern. Believe me I am as frustrated with you  as you are with me and can't understand why you don't see the connection and are constantly defending the indefensible . I fear our views of the world are so far apart that we will never agree on anything of substance... other than we love the mountains and skiing. Maybe that's enough.

It is not an accusation that a Park Superintendent was involved in a real estate deal with a park concessionaire that had sufficient ethical problems to demand an internal investigation and then tried to hide the facts and obstruct the investigation, it is a fact of record.
It is not an accusation that the case was referred for criminal prosecution but declined , it is a fact of record. It is not an accusation that the said person was reprimanded and transferred, it is a fact of record. It is not an accusation that the said superintendent is currently in a supervisory position with the Park Service , it is a fact of record.

With your love of history and fact finding I would have thought you the prefect person to use your considerable talent to confirm this for yourself and even discover who the individual is for yourself. It's very easily done. Then you will satisfy yourself that it is not an accusation but a fact and therefore a valuable chapter in the history of the park service and maybe even a footnote in your Aplenglow project. Try to forget that it's me that gave you the initial information as I think your distaste for me is clouding your judgement of this issue.

I don't think I have called for" the starving the beast "approach in this discussion ( although I have in the past in all honesty) but if my comments have been ambiguous on that matter let me restate them now.

I do not want any legislator to authorize additional funding for the specific aims of increasing the North Cascades Park unless it specifically excludes the highway 20 study area. Normal funding levels for the park service should try to be maintained but also reflect the current economic position and general belt tightening by "main street". If a legislator supports funding for this park expansion initiative and any study thereof..... do not vote for them. Is that clearer?

Edited for bad sentence construction and additional comment

... I don't agree with wholesale bashing of the Park Service or the argument that we should cut support for the agency more than we already have. It seems to me that the Park Service has been a victim for the last two or three decades of the "starve the beast" approach to government. Remember James Watt, Reagan's Interior Secretary? He thought stewardship of public lands was less important than preparing for the Second Coming. Since the Reagan years, the Forest Service and Park Service have been repeated targets of budget cutting by politicians eager to "starve the beast." They don't want to make the parks more efficient, they want to strangle and/or privatize them. I suspect that some of the poor leadership in these agencies is the result of this malign neglect.

Most of my contacts with Park Service people over the years have been with career-level rangers, people like Bill Lester and Kelly Bush (North Cascades), Mike Gauthier and Stefan Lofgren (Rainier), and Jack Hughes (Olympic). My impression is that all of these people are absolutely first-rate, and they're all dedicated to the National Parks. And, from what I hear, they've all coped with tremendously tight budgets and barebones staff and resources. I want these people to get more support, not less.

Let's elect national leaders who'll put good people in charge of these agencies and provide adequate funding. Let's quit pretending that we can "starve the beast" of the Park Service and still protect the National Parks we love.

... but I'm absolutely sure that I want the existing park to be well managed and well funded.

I agree wholeheartedly and would add that Congress (and the Executive Branch) sets both legal direction and management emphasis in all the federal land management and regulatory agencies. Executive and congressional direction created conflicting goals and regulations and budgets belied mission statements. Many good federal employees left the gov't because of that direction and emphasis in both the Reagan years and, especially, the Bush years. It became very difficult for dedicated professionals to work for the USFS, EPA, OSHA, USF&WS, etc.

mmmmh acarey!

That seems to me to be party true but not entirely true. The current poor status of federal agencies and the Park Service in particular can certainly be attributed partly to Congress and past Executive Branches and their direction but not entirely. The Park Service leadership itself must accept some responsibility for its current sorry state of affairs and its culture. To do so otherwise would seems to me a complete deflection. It's not us...... it's all their fault.
Let me remind you of a statement you made in a previous post.

The NPS all too often (in my considerable direct experience) has been guided by inept, ineffectual, poorly educated (in ecology), and counter-productive technical and administrative leadership ascribing to quasi-religious concepts of the "awesome power of nature" and "preserve [by human exclusion]"

Where you meaning that the inept, ineffectual...... technical and administrative leadership was solely confined to Congress and the Executive Branch because that's not the meaning I inferred when you originally posted the above.

Well thanks Lowell I always enjoy reading your lofty rhetoric and am glad your mind is still open.
As to my Park bashing... I can't understand why you see a distinction between the two issues.
I have talked at length about both and at the present time it's evolved into a discussion about the Park Service, I'm sure it will devolve again into other aspects.

I don't agree with the tactic of holding Park Service improvements (in both management and funding) hostage to any specific geographic issue. We need an effective Park Service, period. We can agree to disagree on this.

I accept that what you've posted about the bad-apple superintendent is true. It seems to me that he should have been drummed out of the system. But I see this as a separate issue from management of the North Cascades.

I really do believe that we get the government we deserve. The deterioration of the Park Service and the bad-apples who have infested it at high levels, is in my opinion a direct result of political forces that have been acting on the Interior Department for the last few decades. Change the climate in Washington, D.C. and in a few more decades we can turn the Park Service around. It took years for the rot to set in, it will take years to root it out.

mmmmh acarey!

That seems to me to be party true but not entirely true. The current poor status of federal agencies and the Park Service in particular can certainly be attributed partly to Congress and past Executive Branches and their direction but not entirely. The Park Service leadership itself must accept some responsibility for its current sorry state of affairs and its culture. To do so otherwise would seems to me a complete deflection. It's not us...... it's all their fault.
Let me remind you of a statement you made in a previous post.

The NPS all too often (in my considerable direct experience) has been guided by inept, ineffectual, poorly educated (in ecology), and counter-productive technical and administrative leadership ascribing to quasi-religious concepts of the "awesome power of nature" and "preserve [by human exclusion]"


Where you meaning that the inept, ineffectual...... technical and administrative leadership was solely confined to Congress and the Executive Branch because that's not the meaning I inferred when you originally posted the above.

Obiviously, I agree it is just partly true for both the NPS and USFS. I made both posts. But like many things in nature, human systems are a result of multiple causation and interaction among causes. Organized citizen groups and industry groups are also very influential. So you have profound Executive Branch influence (Presidential appointments set a philosophical tone, the President's budget is the very 1st cut on what will be done), Congressional Influence (and funding and direction accompanying funding is maximally influential), organized group influences, and internal agency cultural influences. I am more familiar with the USFS, which developed a polarized culture of timber beasts vs. enviros, with the balance shifting as Congress passed more legislation (NFMA, ESA, NEPA, RPA, etc.) and every year passes budgets with earmarks. They aggressively engaged in one-upmanship and lobbying thru their respective support groups. But Congress (and the exec thru Congress) decided or overruled many outcomes with funding timber and roads (things such as the healthy forests act that promptly undermined the trust being built among the public and the agency) but not so much recreation or wildlife. I think congressional direction was more influential on the USFS than the NPS. Clinton tried to achieve some balance with the NW Forest Plan, Bush pushed that back. The NPS, in my rather remote observations of their internal workings, seemed to drift philosophically all by themselves in a closed atmosphere of group think. And because active management (other than road and facility maintenance) was not a primary activity I think it became unclear of what was desirable in the leadership positions. I think the Exec and Congress put less direction on the NPS because resource extraction is limited in parks; the main direction comes with funding for edifices, although where organized groups exist, they exert influence over the head of the NPS--for example, snowmobiles in Yellowstone, hunting bears and buffalos on the boundaries of Y-stone. Many Parks (for example, MRNP) were created solely as a result of citizen action rather than as Presidential (i.e., Monuments) or Congressional initiative. Still the Parks have organic legislation that sets their directions and the Exec appoints the agency heads (I think usually the Sec'y Interior chooses the NPS director, probably in conjunction with advice from NPCA and other orgs interested in Parks). But I think the Parks receive far less oversight than the forests by all groups, Exec, Congr,, industry, and public. Everything the forests do is under scrutiny from adversarial disciplines within the agency, and in the PNW, the Province Advisory Committees made up of stakeholders, environmental groups (who are really adept as using ESA and NEPA), industry groups who purchase influence, and communities who depend on receipts from timber sales (or the substitute payments from the NWFP).

But I think the Parks receive far less oversight than the forests by all groups, Exec, Congr,, industry, and public.  Everything the forests do is under scrutiny from adversarial disciplines within the agency, and in the PNW, the Province Advisory Committees made up of stakeholders, environmental groups (who are really adept as using ESA and NEPA), industry groups who purchase influence, and communities who depend on receipts

That's exactly the reason I don't want to see this land grab take place. Once the park service owns it we continue to recreate there at their whim, subject to their gut feeling or perception of higher value enjoyment.

At the moment the FS provides us somewhat more control, greater involvement and a far greater degree of professionalism in the management of our public lands.