Posted on 04/23/2003 11:51:55 AM PDT by microgood
(CNSNews.com) - A federal plan to restrict the use of private automobiles in California's Yosemite National Park is raising the hackles of land rights advocates nationwide and prompting protests at the park.
"The Park Service is trying to force visitors out of their cars and into big buses, and drive people away from our national parks," Chuck Cushman, executive director of the American Land Rights Association (ALRA) said in an interview with CNSNews.com Tuesday. Cushman also leads the newly formed Visitors and Communities for an Open Yosemite.
Cushman led a group of several hundred protesters at Yosemite on Tuesday as U.S. Rep. George Radanovich (R-Calif.) was chairing an Earth Day congressional hearing at the park on the new regulations.
The new restrictions on private automobiles are contained in the National Park Service's Yosemite Valley Plan, which was passed during the final days of the Clinton administration.
The Yosemite Valley Plan is estimated to cost taxpayers $442 million and includes plans to eliminate hundreds of prime riverside campsites and cabins and reduce by two-thirds the availability of daytime parking spaces for visitors. A spokesman for Radanovich was not available for comment, but the congressman has raised concerns about key aspects of the plan.
Local business leaders also fear more regulations will further weaken tourism to the park, which has dropped steadily since 1996 when 4.2 million people visited. This past year's visitors totaled 3.46 million, according to the Park Service.
The Park service is engaged in "social engineering" at Yellowstone and is trying to do the same thing at other national parks, Cushman warned.
"Forced busing did not work in Los Angeles or in Boston schools, and it won't work in our national parks," Cushman said.
"The Bush administration still has a chance to kill the plan," he added.
The ALRA has a long history of fighting battles in Yosemite. In the 1970s, when the Park Service attempted to evict all private property owners from the park, the ALRA successfully fought off the attempt, and Cushman still owns a house in the park.
But Courtney Cuff, the Pacific regional director for the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), a private watchdog group that monitors the federally run National Park Service, thinks the new regulations will help "create more of a balance" at Yosemite.
"We see the plan as actually providing a great opportunity for visitors in a sense that the eco-system will be restored," Cuff told CNSNews.com. The NPCA, along with the Wilderness Society and the Sierra Club, are promoting the new federal regulations at Yosemite.
"We are striving to restore what is so beloved about this park: access to flora and fauna, amazing wildlife and trees," Cuff said. "We are going to really bring this park into the 21st century," she promised.
Cushman believes environmental groups that have pushed the busing plan are doing so as part of their "divine plan," which seeks to preserve the parks as an environmental Holy Land.
"Groups like the anti-people Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society treat nature like their church," he said.
"They don't want people camping or driving or generating trash. To them, it's defacing their church. It's a religion thing," Cushman explained.
The green groups are engaging in "the pagan worship of trees, and they are willing to sacrifice people" in the preservation process," Cushman said.
I've got an even better idea. We'll just tear up ALL the roads in North America, and we can all just move back to Europe (except full blood indians, who will have to learn how to live off-the-land all over again)
What I want to know is, why is wilderness "sacred" just because there happens to be some magnificent waterfalls in one valley? Didn't Manhattan used to be "pristine wilderness"?
IMHO, National Parks are there for the people to enjoy. Obviously, there has to be some wilderness in the park, or there's nothing to enjoy. But in places like Grand Canyon, where there are literally hundreds of miles of canyon ridgeline, but only a precious few parking places for cars on only a few miles of canyon rim, the parks are very UNDER utilized by people. They could have many MORE people visit, not less, and still be beautiful places (except to enviro's who hate all people)
Why would people enjoy going to "wilderness", only to be crammed on busses, and crammed into a few tiny places designed specifically to reduce the number of people the park can handle?
If you look closely under the skin of these policies, you will find people who are looking to make money with contracts for the busses, and the trains proposed in places like Grand Canyon.
If we can't enjoy our parks why bother having them?
Tourists in shiny new SUV's cause the brown haze? But not the "undocumented" field workers in their 25 year old pickup trucks?
Think again.
I used to live in LaLa land. And it seems everyone in California thinks the state should have shut the border the day after they moved in. Damn glad I left.
"What the hell are ya doin' goin' up to Banff? No self-respectin' Albertan goes to Banff! Too many Neezers up there!"
("Neezers," by the way, was his term for all things Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese, etc. Many of the summer tourists in the national parks in western Canada are Japanese.)
That being said, there are some small parks where a certain amount of this makes sense. Zion is one that comes to mind.
I believe you should have access to some of the park by car, but the main canyon at Zion had it roads carved in a different era. In that time it was remote, and cars were fairly standard in size. With the family vans, the Suburbans and the RVs trying to drive in those close tunnels is silly. The only alternative that made sense was to give access to only those staying the night within and have the afternoon visitor take a bus tour in a small bus with an experienced driver.
I was glad to have had the experience when I did drive in, but this thing of bumper-to-bumper traffic in some parks is a management issue as well as the enviro-nazi hot-button.
Yosemite does have a problem because its in a tight valley. But these goons are trying to do the same crap in a lot of National Parks. I visit Grand Canyon a lot. And they've locked up the road west of the main canyon lodges and forced people into buses for no good reason except to provide some lucrative contracts for someone operating the buses.
As I posted above, there are hundreds of miles of canyon ridge line, and hundreds of thousands of empty acres of land you could put parking areas.
But these idiots even block off a few square feet around the parking lots with fences and nasty signs so they can make a big deal about "restoring" some of the pristine forrest. Give me a break. I can't believe there are some threatend species that need those few extra feet, while there are hundreds of square miles of empty land around. They're obviously doing it for the publicity, or just to justify their jobs, or because they really are so environmentally religious that the feel the need to "restore" those few square feet to forrest.
I believe the people who run the National Parks see visitors as intruders onto "their" parks. The park employees live there you know. And there are lots of off-season days and hours that are pretty lonely. I'm sure they resent having to deal with visitors, and would prefer they just go away.
And some people with ATV's and 4X4's will get there anyway ;)
but what about folks in wheelchairs or with other similar disabilities? that's the only problem I can't answer.
The purpose of the park is to preserve its natural state so that later generations of people can enjoy it. Granted, that takes a bit of balance between handling people and preserving nature.
If the purpose of the park is just to preserve nature for its sake, rather than for the sake of human visitors, then where does that philosophy end? If nature deserves protection from man, then the ultimate solution is to kill all the people. Everyplace was "pristene" at one time. If one place deserves to be called a "park" and protected, then doesn't every pristene place?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.