Dwight T. Pitcaithley: On the Brink of Greatness ... National Parks and the Next Century
[Dwight T. Pitcaithley served as chief historian of the National Park Service from 1995 to 2005 and is currently college professor of history at New Mexico State University. He is the immediate past president of the George Wright Society.]
Almost a hundred years ago, just before the creation of the National Park Service, the British ambassador to the United States, James Bryce, spoke to the American Civic Association on the subject of national parks and their importance to society. With great simplicity, he acknowledged the obligation to “carefully guard what we have got.” “We are the trustees for the future,” he charged. “We are not here for ourselves alone. All these gifts were not given to us to be used by one generation, or with the thought of one generation only before our minds. We are the heirs of those who have gone before, and charged with the duty we owe to those who come after....”(1) As this country begins to think about the centennial of the National Park Service, it is appropriate that we have a serious conversation about parks and their value to our society, and the role we want parks and the National Park Service to play in the future. What is our obligation, as the trustees of these magnificent places, to our children and their children? The upcoming centennial provides an opportunity to think creatively about the kind of National Park Service we want for the next century and envision systemic changes for its betterment and ours....
The problems facing the National Park Service as it begins to think about its one-hundredth birthday help us imagine reasonable solutions. Indeed, the Park Service has been envisioning a healthier and more professional future for itself for some time through a number of thoughtful reports. One outgrowth of the Park Service’s celebration of its seventy-fifth anniversary was the production of National Parks for the 21st Century: The Vail Agenda (1992). Beginning with the statement that the Park Service was increasingly called upon to “play a broad role of preserving, protecting, and conveying to the public the meaning of those natural and cultural resources that contribute to the nation’s values, character, and experience,” the report created six categories of objectives that would lead to excellence throughout the agency. Those six categories and their objectives—resource stewardship and protection, access and enjoyment, education and interpretation, proactive leadership, science and research, and professionalism—remain relevant and largely unrealized today. A decade later the National Park Service Advisory Board, under the direction of John Hope Franklin, produced Rethinking the National Parks for the 21st Century (2001). This report created a fresh and clear vision of the role that a well-funded and professionally managed agency might play in American society....
Having suggested that increased funding is essential for the National Park Service to meet its obligations to Congress and the American public, one must ask what the appropriate level of funding for the agency ought to be. The president’s current budget proposal calls for a dedicated increase over the next decade of $1 billion in federal funding with another $2 billion of possible funding through a matching arrangement involving private/public money. (Because of the conditional nature of the second part of this proposal, it cannot contribute to any reliable future funding projections.) If approved by successive Congresses, this federal commitment would raise the overall budget by 2016 to around $3.5 billion. With the operating shortfall for park operations estimated at somewhere between $600 and $800 million and the deferred maintenance backlog estimated at somewhere between $5 and $8 billion, a total budget of $3.5 billion remains substantially inadequate. Estimating budgets, of course, is no small task. One way to conceptualize a well-funded National Park Service, however, is to consider that the 1966 budget for the agency at the end of Mission 66 was just over two and half times the budget in 1956. Applying the same growth factor to the 2006 budget results in a 2016 budget of $6 billion!(10)...
Read entire article at George Wright Society website
Almost a hundred years ago, just before the creation of the National Park Service, the British ambassador to the United States, James Bryce, spoke to the American Civic Association on the subject of national parks and their importance to society. With great simplicity, he acknowledged the obligation to “carefully guard what we have got.” “We are the trustees for the future,” he charged. “We are not here for ourselves alone. All these gifts were not given to us to be used by one generation, or with the thought of one generation only before our minds. We are the heirs of those who have gone before, and charged with the duty we owe to those who come after....”(1) As this country begins to think about the centennial of the National Park Service, it is appropriate that we have a serious conversation about parks and their value to our society, and the role we want parks and the National Park Service to play in the future. What is our obligation, as the trustees of these magnificent places, to our children and their children? The upcoming centennial provides an opportunity to think creatively about the kind of National Park Service we want for the next century and envision systemic changes for its betterment and ours....
The problems facing the National Park Service as it begins to think about its one-hundredth birthday help us imagine reasonable solutions. Indeed, the Park Service has been envisioning a healthier and more professional future for itself for some time through a number of thoughtful reports. One outgrowth of the Park Service’s celebration of its seventy-fifth anniversary was the production of National Parks for the 21st Century: The Vail Agenda (1992). Beginning with the statement that the Park Service was increasingly called upon to “play a broad role of preserving, protecting, and conveying to the public the meaning of those natural and cultural resources that contribute to the nation’s values, character, and experience,” the report created six categories of objectives that would lead to excellence throughout the agency. Those six categories and their objectives—resource stewardship and protection, access and enjoyment, education and interpretation, proactive leadership, science and research, and professionalism—remain relevant and largely unrealized today. A decade later the National Park Service Advisory Board, under the direction of John Hope Franklin, produced Rethinking the National Parks for the 21st Century (2001). This report created a fresh and clear vision of the role that a well-funded and professionally managed agency might play in American society....
Having suggested that increased funding is essential for the National Park Service to meet its obligations to Congress and the American public, one must ask what the appropriate level of funding for the agency ought to be. The president’s current budget proposal calls for a dedicated increase over the next decade of $1 billion in federal funding with another $2 billion of possible funding through a matching arrangement involving private/public money. (Because of the conditional nature of the second part of this proposal, it cannot contribute to any reliable future funding projections.) If approved by successive Congresses, this federal commitment would raise the overall budget by 2016 to around $3.5 billion. With the operating shortfall for park operations estimated at somewhere between $600 and $800 million and the deferred maintenance backlog estimated at somewhere between $5 and $8 billion, a total budget of $3.5 billion remains substantially inadequate. Estimating budgets, of course, is no small task. One way to conceptualize a well-funded National Park Service, however, is to consider that the 1966 budget for the agency at the end of Mission 66 was just over two and half times the budget in 1956. Applying the same growth factor to the 2006 budget results in a 2016 budget of $6 billion!(10)...