A May 1, 2002 article in the Portland, Oregon newspaper, the Oregonian,
shows how the Park Service seems to be out of control in the Bush
Administration.  FULL  ARTICLE PRINTED  BELOW.

At a meeting of Park Service superintendents in Portland this week the land
grabbers were setting their sights on your land and other lands between
national parks across America.  The proposal uses soft words and invokes
children and wildlife to hide the real agenda, a huge land grab of private
and Federal land.

The first thing that occurs when parks are created is that large areas are
designated off-limits, roads are closed, campgrounds shut down, public
services reduced and the public limited to using as little as 5% to 10% of
the land area of the park to recreate. For example, 95% of the new Death
Valley National Park is wilderness, closed to the public!

A current proposal to force people to use busses in Yosemite is one
example.
If the Park Service gets its way,  the public won't be able to visit
Yosemite unless they are willing to ride a bus and stuff all their camping
equipment on a bus.  People do not leave their urban area to be forced into
another urbanized area.   The public is going to support parks less if they
can't go there.

See article below - using a sea lion as an illustration with no barriers in
the ocean is exactly what the superintendents really want with the park
corridors -- no barriers.  That means the loss of private land, grazing,
farming, forestry, recreation and many other multiple uses that take place
adjacent to the parks.  It means local communities losing tax base and
economic support for schools and roads, often used by park personnel.

This new initiative has support from Park Service Director Fran Mainella, a
liberal Democrat.  How did a liberal Democrat get appointed to a top job in
a Republican Administration?????  Simple - her former boss was Jeb Bush,
the Governor of Florida and the President's brother.

Mainella has, as you might expect, appointed two liberal Democrats to help
her to trash private property rights and restrict recreational access to
the parks.  Here they are, the National Park Service's two deputy directors:

Deputy Director Randy Jones is was brought in after serving as Park
Superintendent in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado.  His claim to
fame at Rocky Mountain was that he was opposed to any private land in the
park and refused to set foot on private land if it was inside the park
boundary.  He even attempted to prevent a 73 year old widow from repairing
a bridge to her property, but was overruled by the Corps of Engineers.
Jones's anti-private property stance is now guiding the Park Service.

The other new Deputy Director is Don Murphy.  His claim to fame is
spending the past four years running an outfit called Americans for
Heritage and Recreation (AHR).  This was the umbrella group the ran the
campaign
to approve CARA, the Condemnation and Relocation Act, the infamous $47
billion land acquisition trust fund!!!!

Here is what Murphy thinks of private property rights.  This is the
"Guiding Principles" from which he ran AHR:

"AHR adamantly opposes any restrictions on the Land and Water Conservation
Fund, especially those that limit acquisition, employ arbitrary geographic
restrictions on the use of funds, require new authorizations, or prevent
condemnation."

Believe it or not, these are the liberal Democrats appointed by Interior
Secretary Gale Norton to run the National Park Service.  Anti-private
property rights, anti-recreation.

The Park Service should be actually following the supposed Bush
Administration agenda that they want to take care of the existing parks.
It looks to us like the Park Service is spending more time on how it can
expand the parks!


ACTION ITEM:

Call and e-mail your Congressman and both Senators.  Let them know you
oppose more land acquisition funding and ask them to vote against HR 701,
CARA, the Condemnation and Relocation Act, and S.990, the "Son of CARA"
Land Grab.

Urge them to question the funding for massive "wildlife" connecting
corridors and additional expansion plans by the Park Service.   Wildlife is
just being used an excuse
for land use controls.  Tell them to force the Park Service to take care of
what they already have, instead of expanding their empire.

You may call any Congressman or Senator at the Capitol Switchboard -- (202)
224-3121 or the temporary FREE NUMBER  (800) 648-3516.


The Oregonian  -- Portland, Oregon -

Park Leaders See Value In Networking

05/01/02 by Michael Milstein

Spectacular national parks such as Crater Lake and Mount Rainier may be
icons all by themselves, but they will lose their value to people and
wildlife if they become lone refuges all by themselves, said national park
superintendents who gathered Tuesday in Portland.

Park superintendents from around the West focused on a Bush administration
goal of building "seamless networks" of parks around the country. It does
not involve creating new parks as much as building connections among
famous and lesser-known national parks, plus the state parks, playgrounds
and inner-city parks that may be the first place many children enjoy the
outdoors.

Such connections may be as simple as attracting children from Portland's
city park programs to Crater Lake to admire its pristine water and
wildlife, or as elaborate as a parklike path for people to Rollerblade
from Mount Rainier to Puget Sound.

By building such connections, park managers will inevitably create
corridors that also serve wildlife, they said. Without them, isolated
national parks will become overcrowded final refuges for wildlife and an
increasingly urban society trying to escape the development and sprawl
that go with it.

"That's the future of Mount Rainier if we don't save all that stuff from
Mount Rainier to Puget Sound," said Jon Jarvis, superintendent of Mount
Rainier National Park. "It becomes the last place wildlife has to go, but
also the last place for recreation."

The new initiative has support from National Park Service Director Fran
Mainella and Interior Secretary Gale Norton, said Randy Jones, deputy
director of the Park Service. They and park managers see it extending the
reach of national parks to city residents who otherwise may lose touch
with such natural places and the reasons for protecting them.

"We have enjoyed tremendous support for the parks, but we have to make
sure the parks remain essential to what is becoming our new and diverse
constituency in this new century," said Chuck Lundy, superintendent of
Crater Lake National Park.

Studies in California have found that wildlife uses even tenuous links
between park and forestland that involve crossing bridges over an
interstate, said John Reynolds, regional director of the Park Service. A
sea lion tagged at Point Reyes near San Francisco turned up in Russia this
year, evidence of long-distance connections between wildlands, he said.

The Bush administration has made national parks the core of its
environmental strategy, vowing to repair the backlog of almost $1 billion
worth of decaying buildings and potholed roads.

But Liz Raisbeck of the National Parks and Conservation Association told
superintendents Tuesday that her group is concerned "the pendulum may be
swinging heavily" toward more intensive uses of parks that could damage
them. She mentioned administration moves to compromise policies that could
have banned snowmobiles and Jet Skis in parks.

Donald Leal of the Political Economy Research Center, a free market think
tank in Bozeman, Mont., said parks could control such uses by charging
higher fees to account for the noise and pollution they may emit.

"Don't send the idea that recreation is free -- it does have costs; it
does have impacts," Leal said. "There is no mechanism in place that tells
people who are using the parks, who are using the snowmobiles, that they
have to bear some of the cost."

American Land Rights Association - Land Rights Network
PO Box 400 - Battle Ground WA 98604
Phone: 360-687-3087 - Fax: 360-687-2973 - Email: <alra@landrights.org> -
http://www.landrights.org
Legislative Office: 508 First St SE - Washington DC 20003
Phone: 202-210-2357 - Fax: 202-543-7126 - Email: landrightsnet@aol.com