National Park system is under attack

[montana500]

www.wilderness-sportsman.com


"Our national parks, often called the best idea America ever had, are in real trouble.

Park budgets are being slashed, user fees increased, visitor hours reduced, repairs postponed, trail
maintenance and historic preservation pushed aside, and the National Park Service itself slowly
dismantled. Now, as a topper, legislation has been drafted in the U.S. Congress to sell 15 units
of the national parks system.

We Americans, we Westerners, are enriched by our 388 park units, which range from
designated trails, battlefields and recreation areas to preserves, monuments, seashores, historic
parks and the flagships of the fleet such as Yellowstone, Glacier, Bryce Canyon and the other
great parks, 18 of which are here in the states of the Rocky Mountain West.

The threat against our parks comes almost exclusively from the U.S. Congress and the
White House. Political tinkering is not new but the current threats have reached condition red
under the Bush administration and an increasingly conservative Congress.

With benign names such as "competitive outsourcing" and "park partners," our national parks are being starved on one hand and increasingly privatized on the other.

The Bush administration has plans to take $3 million from the already thin park service budget to replace park employees with even more for profit private contractors."