Parks protection: New draft focuses on conservation

Conservationists say they are delighted with a switch in National Park Service management proposals — a change that could play a role in the off-road vehicle and grazing debates in Utah.

Several conservation groups sponsored a telephone press conference Monday shortly after Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne released a new draft policy plan for the Park Service. The plan replaces a draft issued last year that conservationists denounced as opening the door to resource abuse in Park Service areas.

"When there is a conflict between conserving resources unimpaired for future generations and the use of those resources, conservation will be predominant," Kempthorne said, according to remarks posted on the Interior Department Web site.

"Today is a good day for the protection of national parks around the country," said Rob Arnberger of the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees, during the telephone press conference. People wanting to protect the parks had turned back an attempt to diminish park protections, restoring principles that were spelled out in the 2001 park policy plan, he said.

Ron Tipton, senior vice president for programs for the National Parks and Recreation Association, said the group is "very encouraged by today's event and especially by the secretary's strong statement" that conservation must prevail.

"We're aware that this is not a final decision," Tipton said. The draft will be reviewed by the Park Service for about three weeks, he added. But the new plan's emphasis "is clearly on protecting park resources."

The earlier draft was "out of whack" with the Park Service's program, tending to make it more open to damaging park resources, he contended.

In the 2005 draft, he said, off-road vehicles would have been allowed in wilderness areas that were not yet protected by Congress, he said. That language is gone from the new policies, according to the conservationists.

"We think it's a good day for America's heritage that the 2001 policies have been restored," Tipton said. But he warned that Congress needs to keep an eye on the program and continue to pressure the Park Service.

"There was never a need for this (2005) rewrite," said Kristen Brengel of The Wilderness Society. She said an ongoing controversy about Canyonlands National Park's Salt Creek may be affected by the new policy. Under the 2005 proposal, driving off-road vehicles there would have been grandfathered in as a historical use, she said.

"It would have given them a platform from which to try to keep that area open" even though the vehicles could have caused resource damage by repeated crossings of the creek, she said.