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?

:-(

[Dead_Parrot]

2. Welcome to Amerikkka!

O chocking smog in spacious skies,
For GM waves of grain,
Dig up the mountain majesties
Above the toxic plain!
Amerikkka! Amerikkka!
Bush dumped his load on thee
And crown thy rich with more tax cuts
From sea to putrid sea!