MB Civic

By Derrick Z. Jackson  |  June 21, 2006  |  The Boston Globe

PRESIDENT BUSH is petting fish. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne is hugging trees. Everything is going to be just ducky in our wetlands. It’s a green revolution in the most arid administration in our lifetime, the political equivalent of seeding the Sahara.

The question is whether it is merely an oasis amid desolation.

In the last month, the administration has sounded like its main lobbyists were not Exxon but the Sierra Club. Three weeks ago, Kempthorne announced 800 miles of new hiking, biking, boat, and historical trails. Last Thursday, President Bush announced creation of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument, spanning the equivalent distance of Boston to St. Louis.

Bush complimented the environmentalists who attended. One of them was filmmaker Jean-Michel Cousteau, the son of legendary marine ecologist Jacques Cousteau. In April, Jean-Michel showed the president and first lady Laura Bush his PBS documentary on the damage being done to the islands. It is a big day when an environmentalist has a movie night at the White House, especially since the film aired on PBS. A Republican-led House committee last week proposed a $95 million cut for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Bush has proposed his own massive cuts for PBS funding.

The next day, Kempthorne, the former governor of Idaho, announced that the Migratory Bird Conservation Commission had approved projects and American and Canadian partnerships that will allow the US Fish and Wildlife Service to restore more than 87,000 acres of North American wetlands. On Monday, environmentalists rubbed their eyes in disbelief as Kempthorne ditched plans by the previous secretary, Gale Norton, that would have softened up the national parks for commercial development.

“When there is a conflict between conserving resources unimpaired for future generations and the use of those resources, conservation will be predominant,” Kempthorne said. “That is the heart of these policies and the lifeblood of our nation’s commitment to care for these special places and provide for their enjoyment.”

Kempthorne’s revised draft of park management was almost a kind of touchy-feely Teddy Roosevelt with its promises of strict rules on snowmobiles and other noisy motorized recreational equipment. “Many park visitors have certain expectations they will hear as part of their experience . . . ,” the draft says, “such as wind rustling leaves, elk bugling, waves crashing on a beach.” It said, “Park resources should be passed on to future generations in a better condition than currently exists.”

The ultimate proof will be the resources behind the rhetoric. Even as Bush and Kempthorne made their announcements, the Associated Press ran a feature showing how earlier neglect by this administration has the parks slowly withering away. The proposed 2007 Bush budget would cover only 70 percent of anticipated park payrolls.

Yosemite managers say it is 32 percent underfunded, warning in a recent memo that “irreplaceable natural and cultural resources will be placed at risk,” such as “maintaining historic architecture and controlling invasive plant and animal species.” Death Valley superintendent J.T. Reynolds told the AP, “Most visitors do not realize that park resources have been under threat from deterioration, vandalism, neglect, and rot for some time. We put up a good front and try to keep high visitor-use areas clean and neat. Even this facade is fading due to lack of appropriate resources.”

In March, the federal Government Accountability Office published a report that translates into the parks slipping behind in a game of catch-up. Funding for cyclical maintenance and repair increased from $478 million to $641 million from 2001 to 2005. But the backlog of deferred maintenance in the parks is an estimated $5 billion. Funding for daily operations rose only from $903 million to $1.03 billion in 2005, a figure that represented a slight decline when adjusted for inflation.

Park rangers usually keep their lips buttoned about this while working. But on the same day that Bush announced the Hawaiian aquatic monument, the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees, which claims a membership of 515 with a total of 15,000 years on the job, published a scathing review of services that await visitors this summer.

“Forget about cutting the flesh or any fat,” said Bill Wade, chairman of the coalition’s executive council and former superintendent of Shenandoah National Park. “We are now cutting deeply into the sinews and bones of our national parks.” It is a great day when Bush pets fish. It will be a greater day when he pampers all of the parks.