National parks need more stable funding to survive, advocates say

[Thom Little]

People love their national parks, but paying to prevent their deterioration is becoming a struggle over the price of preserving America's heritage.

From California's majestic Yosemite Valley to Pennsylvania's historic Gettysburg battlefield, years of tight budgets has left parks struggling to fix trails, roads and campgrounds, and with fewer rangers to keep the peace and lead nature hikes.

The shortage of park rangers helped opened the way for Mexican drug cartels to establish guarded marijuana farms in remote areas of Kings Canyon and Sequoia parks, and to a lesser degree, Yosemite Park. The pot farms appears limited to those vast California parks, officials say.

Conservationists and a growing number of federal lawmakers say it's time to rescue the national parks with more stable funding.

"There is a problem. The parks are in a tight squeeze," said Rep. Mark Souder, an Indiana Republican who is sponsoring a bill that would let taxpayers donate to the park system through a check-off box on income tax forms.


http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/13331536.htm

[papau]

1. Stable Park funding is gone because the rich need tax cuts?

:-(

[wakeme2008]

2. NO because Corps want to take over the Parks.

It will not be the Grand Canyon, But the Outback Canyon..... :grr:

[badgervan]

3. Remember the Bathtub...

This war on clean environment, increasing breaks to businesses who want to expand onto fed lands, the cutting of park ranger and other protector's jobs, not to mention the refusal of bush to back up his words to rebuild New Orleans with federal aid - all of these despicable things, and many, many more, are just part of the master plan to "drown the federal government in the bathtub", as Grover "Turtle" Norquist has famously stated.
Except when that federal government can be used to enrich repubs, or cut dems out of the governing process, of course. Or to further their war aims. Geez, we have to replace these black hearted %$#&*@'s before we lose all of the good stuff that has made our country great. You don't think these idiots wouldn't pave over the entire continent if it made them richer? Damn right they would.