They Won't Feed the Bears at This Birthday Bash

The National Park Service is celebrating its 100th birthday this week but it is not an untarnished history.
We have 59 national parks - from the steamy tropical Everglades in Florida to the alpine majesty of Denali in Alaska - that have been selected for their spectacular natural qualities. Congress in 1916 told the park service that its first and foremost responsibility was to conserve "the scenery and the natural and historic objects and wild life."
Yet at times park managers over the last century have engaged in such contrary actions as exploiting wildlife, running carnival-like spectacles, allowing wholesale development and even permitting massive destruction of what makes the parks so special.
One of the most egregious examples was at Olympic National Park in the Pacific Northwest, a majestic region dominated by forests of Douglas fir, red cedar, western hemlock and the iconic Sitka spruce. Loggers were upset when the Olympics were first set aside as a national park but they were appeased during and after World War II when top park officials quietly initiated regular timber sales.
The logging was only supposed to remove scrap and bug-infested trees, but it did generate significant revenue for park improvements. It was also illegal.
Some of the park's seasonal naturalists were so upset by these actions that they gathered evidence of the crimes. This included photos of stumps that had once held Douglas firs five feet in diameter, and fields that had been clear-cut. Working with national conservation leaders, they forced a showdown with park officials at a 1955 meeting in Seattle.
Conrad Wirth, who ran the Park Service and appears to have been aware of the logging, was faced with such overwhelming evidence that he had to agree it was wrong and that the timber sales would cease. Afterwards he began to hedge, until he was confronted with a transcript based on a secret tape recording. Many of the part-time naturalists, however, never worked in the park system again.
Park officials also liked to entertain tourists by feeding bears at the park dump. Yosemite constructed a platform that was illuminated at night to watch the bears feed. Sequoia and Yellowstone built bleachers at the dump. There is a photo of Horace Albright, then Yellowstone Park superintendent and later chief of the entire system, depicted picnicking at a table with several bears.
Such carnival tricks were commonly employed to lure visitors to the park in order to boost popularity and revenues. Yosemite valley featured tennis courts, a swimming pool, and nightly dancing capped by a spectacle called firefall. About 9 p.m. a large bundle of live embers and burning logs were tossed over a 900-foot cliff, a display that could be seen throughout the valley.
The parks at times were less sanctuaries and more as high-end resorts with high class hotels, restaurants and touring cars. And we are especially fortunate about some of the proposals that never got off the drawing boards, including dams that would have flooded the Grand Canyon, tramways up Mount Rainier, and a hotel at the foot of Mount Denali, just as starters.
What changed?
After World War II park officials realized they no longer had to find ways to lure visitors to the parks - visitors literally began to flood the parks. That's a dilemma that remains today, with attendance now topping 300 million a year.
At first park officials responded to this influx by building more roads to more priceless but fragile assets. Eventually a combination of more science-based naturalists who joined the park service along with a cadre of conservationists and environmentalists such as Ansel Adams, David Brower and Howard Zahniser, began to make a difference.
Some of the stupidity - such as feeding bears - became obvious. Stunts such as firefall went only with intense resistance. Today the park service has pretty much fully embraced the idea that they are stewards and not showmen of the national parks.
That's why when we celebrate history - as hundreds of millions of us will this summer - and why it is important to keep in mind that these priceless wonders are not here just for us to enjoy, but for future generations.
One need only visit the dining room 750 feet underground at Carlsbad National Park to find that old tendencies can be tough to eradicate. Or witness the recent controversies at Grand Canyon where new proposed developments - from gondolas to uranium mines - threaten the canyon's integrity.
We need to keep in mind that threats to alter this rich inheritance never end.