This Old Park

Earlier this month, the National Parks Conservation Association celebrated the 100th anniversary of the founding of our country's National Park system. Perhaps trying to steal a little limelight from Al Gore, President Bush managed to avoid his father's inactivity in this arena by using the 1906 Antiquities Act to establish a national monument in New York (an African Burial Ground) and creating the world's largest protected marine area off Hawaii's coast. (His pop joins the illustrious ranks of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan as the only 3 presidents not to do anything with the national parks act while they were in office. But even their public approval ratings never dipped quite as low as W's.)

It seems cause to celebrate, but the warm fuzzy PR can't cover up the dire straights our national parks face entering into their second century. Yesterday, the Seattle Times ran a short story on how cash-starved and under-resourced our three National Parks really are. You might be battling for that cost of living raise at work, but Mt. Rainier and the Hoh haven't seen one in decades, and status-quo funding isn't keeping up with the parks' operational needs.

On the heels of all this, Olympic National Park will celebrate its 68-year anniversary next week, and management just submitted their general management plan for public review. Want to have a say in what happens with our penninsular treasure? Seattlest wishes we could offer you a direct link to the plan, but there's a few problems that we fear will hamper public review and response. First, it is 400 pages. That's like 1/2 a Neal Stephenson book, and we all know that is waaaay too much. Second, you have to actually go somewhere (e.g. the Seattle library) to get a physical copy or request that a CD be sent to you. Guess a 400-page PDF was a wee bit too large for the nps.gov website, but Seattlest suspects they won't get much response at this rate, which is a shame.