National Parks Conservation Association
By Jim Miller
President Obama’s recent stops in Lake Tahoe and Hawaii highlighted his conservation efforts, and while these activities have not received as much coverage as they deserve, one might reasonably argue that conservation and the preservation of endangered wilderness is the President’s most impressive legacy.
As the New York Times reported, “Obama has visited more than 30 national parks and emerged as a 21st-century Theodore Roosevelt for his protection of public lands and marine reserves. His use of the Antiquities Act of 1906, which gives a president unilateral authority to protect federal lands as national monuments, has enabled him to establish 23 new monuments, more than any other president, and greatly expand a few others.”
From Maine to Hawaii the President has been on a historic run naming new monuments and greatly expanding already existing wilderness areas. While much of this flies under the radar screen, particularly in the midst of the often sordid campaign to elect his successor, Obama’s efforts firmly establish him as one of the great American Presidents when it comes to recognizing and acting on the dire need to save wild spaces.
The same Times piece makes a compelling argument that:
Only a fool would argue that the Roosevelts were wrong to have saved those scenic wonders. The same can be said of President Obama’s actions last week. In 1846, after adventuring in that northern forest, Henry David Thoreau mused in “The Maine Woods”: “Why should not we, who have renounced the king’s authority, have our national preserves… for inspiration and our own true recreation?’”
But, as we all know, there is no shortage of fools in American politics, and Obama’s bold conservation push stands in stark contrast to the efforts of the Republican party and their craven corporate allies to privatize the commons. As Think Progress reported in the wake of their convention, the GOP platform calls for “an immediate full-scale disposal of ‘certain’ public lands, without defining which lands it would apply to, leaving national parks, wilderness areas, wildlife refuges, and national forests apparently up for grabs and vulnerable to development, privatization, or transfer to state ownership.”
More specifically, as Politicsusa uncovered earlier this summer, it is our old friend the Koch brothers and their buddies in the fossil fuel industry who would like to take over stewardship of our nation’s invaluable public lands:
A favorite target of Koch-Republicans is the National Park system that Republicans have so drastically underfunded that a Koch and ExxonMobil-funded organization is calling for an end to national parks and privatization of all federally-owned land. The argument being put forward by the executive director of Koch fossil fuel organization, Reed Watson, is that since the National Park system is hurting for funding, the only option is to first stop creating national parks and then cheaply sell off those already in existence. Why? Because according to the Koch brothers’ organization calling to sell off all public land and national parks, “True conservation is taking care of the land and water you already have; we can protect it properly.”
The group pushing to sell off (privatize) the national park system to the fossil fuel industry, and indeed, sell off all public land to the highest corporate bidder, is the Koch and ExxonMobil-funded Property and Environment Research Center (PERC). PERC, Exxon-Mobil, the Koch brothers, and Republicans across the nation contend that no state, federal, or local government has any right to own any land within America’s borders.
So on this 100th anniversary of America’s best idea, we should celebrate wonders that are our national parks, thank President Obama for protecting them as well as becoming the master of monuments, and fight hard against the forces trying to despoil the commons in the service of corporate interests.
The war on public lands in the United States exemplifies how far we have gone in the direction of knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
If we lose our wild spaces, whether they be National Parks or other natural wonders, we will lose perhaps the most essential aspect of our identity as Americans. Public lands belong to all of us and they speak to the best of who we are as human beings with some sense of rootedness in the natural world that is our home in the truest sense of the word.
This land is our land, as Woody Guthrie put it, it belongs to you and me.
Jim Miller
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The Kochs want to diminish all public spaces until they are small enough to be drowned in a bath tub. Public anything is anathema to them. Their mantra is privatize everything. Then, of course, the only ones who would be allowed to go there are the ones who could afford the price of admission.
So the Koch brothers and Exxon would have our nation owned and operated by the highest bidder? That sounds pretty scary to me. Thanks to Barack Obama we are so fortunate to have a true leader in the white house. All people should have access to unspoiled natural beauty to refresh and restore their connection with nature.
Beautiful, Jim!
Just one clarification: President Obama has not set aside any Wilderness, neither creating nor expanding wilderness areas, because only acts of Congress can designate Wilderness areas. [Wilderness designation was relatively bipartisan from 1964 to the early 1980s, then designations only happened in package deals releasing other lands to commercial use, now that political deal-making rarely happens.]
I greatly applaud the National Monuments that President Obama established under the Antiquities Act, both natural and cultural, and agree with you that they are an awesome legacy. I am thrilled by his expansion of Bush’s Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument (yes I cheated to get the spelling right). I am hopeful that he will designate Bear’s Ears National Monument before he leaves office (protecting both natural and archaeological features). But few of his new National Monuments include wilderness, and those that do (Castle Mountain, Sand to Snow) had that designation on the lands before his proclamations.
I make the distinction between National Monuments and Wilderness as protected public lands to emphasize the range of areas Obama put into our shared heritage, and because each step of additional protection adds additional opponents. Stonewall, Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality, Pullman, Cesar Chavez, and Honouliuli (former WW2 internment camp on O’ahu) are some of the primarily cultural National Monuments Obama created, mostly with less publicity than natural areas like Katahdin Woods and Waters, Papahanaumokuakea, and Castle Mountains. To me, greatly broadening the stories we preserve as a nation and hand down to future generations, from prior emphasis on the revolutionary & civil wars and Presidents and European explorers to these many other strands of the American experience, is more impressive than only adding natural areas.
You’re absolutely correct that the Koch & Republican Party position is to privatize public lands, even those currently open for logging, grazing, mining, drilling, and recreation. They oppose the idea of public lands; their arguments about the federal budget and restrictions on human uses are just smokescreens. The newly designated Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument (aka Maine Woods) is a case in point. Even though the land and a $20M endowment for operations were donated (Burt’s Bees, with fundraising commitments for another $20M for the endowment), so there is no cost to the treasury, Republicans are up in arms against it. The donation & designation explicitly allow snowmobiles in the winter (even requiring some winter trail grooming) as well as sport hunting and all other current recreational uses, so it is far from wilderness, but still they oppose it. It converts timber (paper) company second-growth forests that traditionally allowed recreation, but where based on corporate goals access could be revoked or the land re-logged at any time, into NPS land that will allow that public recreation forever. The objection is to the “public” part.
National Monument designation of extant federal lands is opposed by the anti-public land folks, but also by grazing leaseholders, miners, loggers, and motorized vehicle (jeep, ATV, snowmobile) and some mountain bike recreational users. Public lands (National Forests, BLM, BOR, military) have no blanket mandate for sustainable use: mining, bombing, logging, grazing, solar power, recreation, all can be allowed even if they degrade the lands for future uses, and use rights can be given or sold to individuals. National Monument designation on extant federal lands implicitly increases protection via the 1916 NPS Organic Act mandate of “…unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations”. However, most recent N.M. designations explicitly specify additional allowed uses such as continued grazing, working extant mining claims, or specific forms of recreation. In most cases the extant uses being allowed will not further degrade the natural features, but they may preclude recovery or improvement in conditions.
The wilderness act of 1964 defined wilderness as “area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” Designated wilderness generally prohibits permanent structures (bridges are usually allowed) and mechanical vehicles (motorized or mountain bikes, although mountain bikers argue that as human powered they should be allowed in wilderness). The “untrammeled” part also mandates other management restrictions related to fire, wildlife, sustainable human visitation levels, and invasive species, plus substantial additional reporting on wilderness characteristics.
http://www.wilderness.net/map.cfm shows currently designated wilderness. If you zoom in, you’ll see the “cherry stems” of non-wilderness corridors for dirt roads in places like Death Valley. You’ll likely be surprised how little legally designated wilderness there is in National Parks outside of Alaska (and even in Alaska most NPS land is “Preserve” not Wilderness): there’s none in Yellowstone or Canyonlands! That lack of Wilderness designation matters less than you might imagine: NPS can use the Organic Act mandate of “unimpaired … future generations” to manage some wild areas as de facto wilderness (closed even to NPS vehicles). There are also legal mandates that the condition of park natural & cultural resources SHALL be part of the annual evaluation of park superintendents, so the agency culture & incentives push toward conservation.
Forest Service and BLM have legal mandates for multiple use and beneficial use, and “wilderness study areas” are past their due dates, so those agencies tend to be fighting for managing _some_ of their lands as roadless areas, not full wilderness. This congress simply isn’t going to designate more Wilderness. Within the agencies, different regions & employees have very different ideas of how lands should be managed. See Will Falk’s SDFP posts about BLM chaining Pinyon-Juniper, which contrast with the BLM guys who drove the protection of a swath of BLM land as a wildlife corridor from Death Valley to Mojave Preserve. Public pressure, & local political pressure, matter!
Disclosure: I do “Natural Resources Stewardship Science” for NPS, which alas is not as cool of a job as it ought to be. I do not speak for NPS here, or anywhere else. To me, wild lands are crucial for biodiversity and ecosystem conservation, but also for people getting away from lights and sounds and stress.