Re: [TomAiello] WARNING: Colorado big E sizzling
CUTBACKS SQUEEZE NATIONAL PARKS
Officials count on volunteers, service reductions as costs rise
Zachary Coile, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Monday, May 1, 2006
Washington -- Over the last decade, more people are visiting the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and the park has grown by thousands of acres, from the recently restored Crissy Field to the addition last year of one of San Mateo County's largest undeveloped tracts of land.
But during the same 10 years, the Bay Area's popular national park has cut its staff by 30 full-time employees. Facing flat budgets from the federal government and rising costs, park managers have been forced to rely on volunteers and outside groups to avoid reducing public access.
Park officials say resources are stretched so tightly they are having trouble keeping up with basic services, such as picking up trash at Crissy Field or providing regular patrols of the newly acquired lands near Devil's Slide.
"You can only stretch the rubber band so far," said Brian O'Neill, the park's superintendent. "There is no question that we can't continue to endure cutbacks without commensurate cutbacks in services and our ability to be stewards of these places."
The story is the same -- and, in some cases, worse -- at the National Park Service's other 389 parks, preserves, seashores and historic sites across the country, where superintendents are making painful choices: cutting seasonal and full-time staff, closing visitor centers and reducing interpretive programs.
Though the Bush administration has supported modest spending increases for the national parks in recent years, they have barely kept pace with inflation. Meanwhile, operating costs continue to rise each year, forcing park managers to cut services or find volunteers willing to provide them for free.
A General Accountability Office report released last month, which examined 12 of the most heavily visited national parks, found that park officials have made difficult decisions in light of their money woes, including:
-- Closing the visitor center at the southern end of Shenandoah National Park in Virginia.
-- Shutting down winter use of seven restrooms along roads and trailheads in Acadia National Park in Maine.
-- Reducing backcountry patrols in Utah's Bryce Canyon National Park.
-- Cutting interpretive programs at Grand Canyon National Park from 35 in 2001 to 23 in 2005.
-- Shortening a visitor center's operating hours and cutting naturalist programs and Indian art tours at Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.
The Park Service has fared better than many other domestic agencies as the Bush administration, struggling with rising budget deficits and a war in Iraq costing $10 billion a month, has tried to reduce spending unrelated to defense and homeland security programs. But any cuts in services at the national parks -- which have more than 450 million visitors each year -- are more likely to be felt directly by the public.
Top administration officials took issue with the GAO report, saying it was overly pessimistic and failed to emphasize that the Park Service's budget had climbed from $1.4 billion in 2001 to $1.7 billion in 2005.
"Record high levels of funding are being invested to staff and improve our parks," Matthew Hogan, the Interior Department's acting assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks, wrote in an official response to the report. "Over time, the national parks have received significantly more funding increases than most nondefense government programs."
But the GAO investigators said the overall funding increase for the Park Service was somewhat misleading.
Congress boosted funding to help reduce the backlog of delayed maintenance at the parks -- a priority that President Bush campaigned on in 2000 -- between 2001 and 2005 by 4 percent annually in inflation-adjusted dollars. But the amount the agency was given for daily operations at the parks actually fell slightly in inflation-adjusted dollars, by 0.3 percent.
Without sufficient daily operating funds, park officials have been unable to keep pace with steadily rising costs -- especially employee salaries and benefits, but also utilities and fuel for vehicles -- forcing them to make cuts.
"Officials at the park units we visited stated that they absorbed these additional costs by reducing spending on personnel and other expenditures," the GAO report said. "Park officials also told us that they reduced services including reducing visitor center hours, educational programs, basic custodial duties and law enforcement operations, such as back-country patrolling."
Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks, known for their groves of giant sequoia redwood trees, delayed the opening of the Lodgepole visitor center by 5 weeks -- until next Monday -- to save money.
The two parks have trimmed staff, cutting one full-time ranger and three seasonal rangers in the interpretative division. Instead they have added volunteers from the Student Conservation Association to keep a presence at spots like the General Sherman Tree, the world's largest tree by volume.
"Those are the trade-offs that we have to make," said William Tweed, the chief park naturalist. "We are trying very hard to provide visitors services, but we are providing less than we were providing a decade ago."
At Yosemite National Park, which drew more than 3.4 million visitors last year, park officials estimate they have reduced their full-time staff by 5 to 7 percent, and their seasonal staff by 20 to 25 percent over the last five years.
As the number of park rangers has fallen, Yosemite's managers have asked volunteers to help out. On a typical summer evening, only one out of five interpretative programs is conducted by a park ranger. The others are run by volunteers, friend-of-the-park groups and Yosemite's private concessionaire, Delaware North.
"They see the erosion in the operating budget," said Scott Gediman, a park spokesman. "We sit down at the table with them and we say, 'We don't want to cut these services,' and we say, 'Can you help us do that?' "
Parks across the country have found similar savings by enlisting volunteers to perform tasks that rangers used to do. Retirees collect fees at campgrounds, friend-of-the-park groups run historic sites and maintain trails, volunteers and employees at park bookstores hand out maps and answer questions from visitors.
The Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area near Los Angeles has had a hiring freeze for the last four years, forcing the park to rely on retired schoolteachers to lead education programs and to seek state grants to pay for other programs.
"People are still having a good experience and a quality experience, but clearly they are going to see fewer rangers as we direct our efforts to coaching volunteers and building partnerships to deliver services," said Woody Smeck, the park's superintendent.
But park managers admit there are limits to what volunteers and friend-of-the-park groups can do. Officials with the Golden Gate National Recreation Area -- which includes sites such as Alcatraz, Fort Mason, the Marin Headlands and Muir Woods -- have been asking volunteers and nonprofit partners to perform more basic services, from running interpretative programs to protecting natural resources.
"They are asking the really basic question, 'What is government providing?' " O'Neill said. "They are saying, 'I want to create a margin of excellence, but I don't want to be a substitute for what should be a basic function of government.' "
Within the agency, park officials are preparing for more cuts. The Bush administration is proposing to cut $100 million from the agency's budget next year, although Congress may seek to restore the money.
Rep. Steve Pearce, R-N.M., who chairs the House Resources subcommittee that oversees national parks, said the parks should not be asking Congress for more money, but should focus on reforming their business practices to spend their money more wisely.
"Of course, every agency says they need more money to do their job ... it's not unusual," Pearce said. "But the management of the parks over the past 10 or 20 years has allocated up to 90 percent of their budgets on salaries -- and that's not a very positive position to put yourself in."
Most parks already have crafted business plans to become more efficient. Many parks are now undergoing a process called "core operations analysis" with the goal of bringing fixed costs -- especially personnel -- under 80 percent of their budget. But some fear it could be used to pave the way for even deeper staff cutbacks.
"We would hope that core operations analysis would be used to help justify the true needs in the parks," said Blake Selzer, legislative director of the National Parks Conservation Association, which supports increased funding of the parks. "It should not be used as a justification for insufficient budgets or as a justification to cut appropriations."
A bipartisan group of 105 House members signed a letter warning that the proposed cuts to the parks budget "will undoubtedly lead to additional reductions in resource protection and visitor services, and further increases in visitor fees."
Thirty-two senators signed a similar letter urging Congress to "address the significant operating shortfall plaguing our national parks."
E-mail Zachary Coile at zcoile@sfchronicle.com.
