Yosemite National Park Planning: The Dark Side

Connor Murphy

Description

I first visited Yosemite Valley 70 years ago, and revisited the Valley many times since. But over the past half century, I've become distraught over the commercial plundering of this national treasure–I'm heartbroken by the crowding, the traffic, and the proliferation of inappropriate construction projects. This book spells out how we the people can take back the Valley and return it to nature.

Sujets

• Campgrounds
• Travel
• Parks

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 05 juillet 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781456626877
• Langue: English

Extrait

Yosemite National Park Planning: The Dark Side
by
Connor Murphy

Copyright 2016 Mr. Connor Murphy
All rights reserved
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
http://www.eBookIt.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-2687-7
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

 
For Paige
Chapter 1: The National Parks—America's Best Idea
After watching The National Parks: America's Best Idea, a 2009 documentary film by Ken Burns, I thought it would be a good time to once again visit Yosemite National Park.
I first visited Yosemite National Park 70 years ago, when I was 6 years old. I've been returning to the park every few years ever since. But over time, I've become more and more critical of the commercialization of nature there. On my last trip, I ended up driving into a traffic jam in a new, still-under-construction parking lot. I felt thoroughly disgusted with the crowding, traffic, continuing proliferation of inappropriate construction projects, and the desecration of nature.
When I got home, I looked up Yosemite on the Internet and found that the plundering of nature was the result of nearly 40 years of inept national park planning—it piqued my interest.
Professional Curiosity
I came to the conclusion that dreadful planning stood at the center of Yosemite National Park's failure to solve its long-standing problems because I've spent most of my adult life working as a land use planner solving problems for a living.
I've written enough plans during my career to know at a glance when someone is doing legitimate planning or just out, to fool the general public into thinking planning is being done.
My planning experience ranges from leading large-scale planning projects from Alaska to Central America, to obtaining millions in planning grants for Native American tribal governments. I've worked with indigenous peoples living in isolated locales and I've worked with cities at the center of innovation. But most importantly, I've written plans for wilderness and backcountry areas many times larger than Yosemite National Park.
You may be asking yourself, what qualifies this author to write a book about Yosemite? My answer to that is I'm no more qualified to write about Yosemite per se, than any other park visitor, but I am more qualified to write about the deplorable state of planning I witnessed while visiting Yosemite.
As a casual visitor to Yosemite, I'll refrain from trying to tell readers how to fix the Park—I'm not qualified to do that—but I will tell readers what I learned about Yosemite's planning: When it comes to planning, I'm an expert.
I hold a Masters in Urban and Regional Planning and I've spent over 30 years working in the profession.
Going over the plans I've written, I picked out the two that come closest in scope to the plans that need to be written for Yosemite National Park.
• Ceñaliulriit Coastal Management Plan . A natural resource management plan for the 48,000 sq. mi. Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta Region of Alaska. The plan was designed to facilitate oil and gas development without degrading habitat within 36,000 sq. mi. of wetlands and the world's second largest wildlife refuge.
• Comprehensive Salmon Management Plan: Prince William Sound . A fisheries resource plan for the 37,000 sq. mi. Prince William Sound region of Alaska. The plan improved the general economy and enhanced the 750 vessel fishing industry. Over 200 salmon spawning streams were surveyed and eight world-class hatcheries were constructed based on the results of the study.
Yosemite National Park, by comparison, covers only 1,100 square miles—not nearly as big as places I've written plans for, but still related in some ways.
The Making of the National Parks
When I started my investigation of Yosemite National Park planning I found three aspects, few are aware of:
• The park was founded as a profit-making "theme park" and destination resort.
• The park has always been managed as a profit-making business.
• The park is run by a sub rosa organization, ineffectual and suspicious.
Abraham Lincoln was the American president who set aside Yosemite Valley and its surrounding territory for public use: [I]n 1864, President Abraham Lincoln signed legislation giving Yosemite Valley and the nearby Mariposa Big Tree Grove to the state of California "upon the express conditions that the premises shall be held for public use, resort and recreation." 1
Then, eight years later, President Grant expanded the legislation's concept by creating Yellowstone National Park. Yosemite Valley and its surrounding territory were added to the national park system in 1890. 2
In 1916, Congress passed The Organic Act, 3 which created the National Park Service, to manage the national parks and to conserve the scenery, the natural and historic objects, and the wildlife therein; and provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.
Public Use, Resort, and Recreation
The NPS, from its inception, took Lincoln's words, "public use, resort and recreation" to heart—by creating theme parks and destination resorts. According to Wikipedia, In common language, the terms theme park and amusement park are often synonymous. However, a theme park can be regarded as a distinct style of amusement park. A theme park has landscaping, buildings, and attractions that are based on one or more specific themes or stories. 4 In the case of Yosemite, the theme is water:
"Water in its myriad forms has created and sustained Yosemite National Park. As ice, it has sculptured the sheer walled valleys, polished the shining shoulders of the mountains, and gouged hundreds of lake basins. Freezing and thawing day by day through thousands of springs and autumns, it has etched sharp peaks and mantled mountain slopes with boulder fields and scree." 5
A destination resort is a resort that contains, in and of itself, the necessary guest attraction capabilities. A destination resort . . . offers food, drink, lodging, sports and entertainment, and shopping within the facility so that guests have no need to leave the facility throughout their stay. 6
Yosemite, and many other national parks, fit those definitions quite well. In essence, they have become leafy commercial ventures operated by concessionaires.
In fact, it seems that hospitality, in the commercial sense, is part of the NPS's mission. In the words of Stephen T. Mather, the first director of the NPS, "Scenery is a hollow enjoyment to the tourist who sets out in the morning after an indigestible breakfast and a fitful night's sleep on an impossible bed." 7
At this point, the National Park Service's original commitment to commercialization has grown to the point where "NPS Commercial Services Program administers more than 500 concession contracts that, in total, gross over $1 billion annually." 8
An Overview of Planning to Date
To get a feel for the amount and quality of planning the National Park Service has done over the years, I searched out all of the available plans written for Yosemite National Park, since the 1970's.
Miscellaneous Yosemite National Park Plans 9
General Management Plan Cultural Resources Management Plan , Volume 1, National Park Service, 1979
General Management Plan Natural Resources Management Plan , Volume 2, National Park Service, 1979
General Management Plan Visitor Use Park Operations Development , Volume 3, National Park Service, 1980
Concession Services Plan and Environmental Impact Statement , National Park Service , August 1992
Yosemite Valley Plan , National Park Service, 2000
A Sense of Place, Design Guidelines for Yosemite Valley , National Park Service, 2004
Transportation Improvement Strategy Report , National Park Service, 2011
Economic Benefits to Local Communities from National Park Visitation , National Park Service, 2011
Tuolumne Wild and Scenic River Final Comprehensive Management Plan and Environmental Impact Statement , National Park Service, 2014
Merced Wild and Scenic River Final Comprehensive Management Plan and Environmental Impact Statement , National Park Service, February 2014.
Reading all of these plans became quite a chore, but I was able to do it with relative ease because I have many years of experience reading and evaluating federal plans and their associated environmental documents. In Alaska, I reviewed oil and gas development documents prepared by the Department of the Interior's Minerals Management Service, the agency that managed our nation's natural gas, oil and other mineral resources on the outer continental shelf.
Without that previous experience, I would have been overwhelmed by the National Park Service's voluminous paperwork, dense writing style, and failure to follow federal writing guidelines and instructions.
My first task turned out to be sorting through all of the plans—I needed Godric Gryffindor's Sorting Hat 10 to work through the hodge-podge of paperwork. Eventually, after quite a bit of sorting, I found that the National Park Service dates its Yosemite planning from the three volume base year general management plan. The three following general management plan volumes guided Yosemite National Park planning from 1979 to 2014:
Volume 1. Cultural Resources Management Plan .
Volume 2. Natural Resources Management Plan .
Volume 3. Visitor Use Park Operations Development Plan .
In 2014, the 1980 General Management Plan was superseded by the Merced River Wild and Scenic River Plan, November 2014. I will have more to say about the Merced River plan, shortly.
Conveniently, I found that the National Park Service provides a summary of each of the three volumes, so what you will be reading next is not my understanding or