Going Wild

For some of the visitors who jam Yosemite Valley on summer weekends, the grandeur of its granite domes and thundering waterfalls just isn’t enough. These demanding consumers want to go horseback riding, play tennis or golf and then cool down with glasses of Chablis from their hotel minibars. And, of course, get snapshots of their vacation developed in just four hours at a nearby photo shop.

This summer, however, Yosemite vacationers will have to rough it. A bulldozer will soon reduce the photo store to rubble. Many other amenities are being cut off and freedoms restricted. Gift shops will be demolished. Raft rides have been be curbed. Campfires are sharply limited. Meadows are off limits to pedestrians.

All these changes, which are taking place in many of the national parks across the U.S., reflect a new way of thinking. Gone are the days of luring visitors by building hotels, cutting archways in redwood trees and pushing bonfires off cliffs to create rustic fireworks. Backed by the Clinton Administration and Congress, park rangers aim to return the parks to a more natural state, maintaining them as wild sanctuaries rather than theme parks. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, for his part, vows to ban new construction, from roads to lodging. “If you want to play golf, watch people feeding bears or see a nighttime firefall, don’t expect to do it in a national park,” he declared in May. Environmentalists applaud the back-to-nature shift. “This is the first long swing of the pendulum away from development,” says Paul Pritchard, president of the National Parks and Conservation Association.

The change has been provoked by overuse. National parks have become plagued by much of the urban frenzy from which people try to flee in the first place. Besides being the home of America’s highest mountain, biggest glacier, tallest geyser and longest cave, the park system now has some of the densest crowds, dirtiest air, ugliest architecture and longest traffic jams. Last year the national-park system’s 367 areas drew 273 million visitors, more than double the crowds of 30 years ago, and the throng is expected to double again in just a decade. In response, park custodians have decided to cut back sharply on visitors’ access and creature comforts as a necessary cost of protecting the oases for future generations. “Making an honest determination about a visitor’s experience is a very difficult balancing act,” says Michael Finley, superintendent of Yosemite. “I will always err on the side of the natural resource.”

Attendance at Yosemite, 200 miles northeast of San Francisco, has increased 10% this year, compared with the same period in 1993 and is expected to total 4 million by year’s end. Locals refer to the park as “YosemiCity.” The park’s carrying capacity, as biologists term it, is stretched to the limit. As a result, superintendent Finley has imposed drastic cutbacks. Sales of souvenirs and other retail items are being slashed 25% and overnight accommodations 20%. Dozens of cabins and more than 100 campsites beside the Merced River will be taken out. To stop the trampling of meadows, Finley has built split-rail fences and boardwalks. KEEP OUT signs have been posted along riverbanks denuded of fragile vegetation.To protect fish, anglers must use barbless hooks and release all the rainbow trout they catch.

At the Grand Canyon, which draws 5 million visitors a year, the rim is congested with automobiles, and the air is filled with the buzz of helicopters and small planes carrying sightseers. The number of air passengers has doubled since 1987, to 800,000. On the busiest routes through the canyon, an aircraft streaks by about once every 90 seconds, which has created a noise level that harasses wildlife and threatens fragile cliff formations. Congress has restricted the flyover areas to about half the canyon, but the National Park Service and the Federal Aviation Administration are devising regulations to limit noise and air traffic even further.

On the busy South Rim, where 7,000 vehicles a day compete for 1,500 parking spaces, rangers are trying to discourage autos. Businessman Max Biegert has revived the Grand Canyon Railway, which last year trundled 100,000 passengers to the rim from the main highway 65 miles away. A rail spur under development will connect with shuttle buses that now carry visitors along the rim. Eventually a hefty fee may be imposed on motorists who insist on bringing their cars into the park.

In Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park, which is bursting at the seams from the region’s population boom, rangers have closed down a ski area and dismantled three dams to restore the land for elk and sheep grazing. To protect the alpine terrain above the timberline, rangers have closed off a favorite breeding haunt of the endangered bighorn sheep near Crater Lake.

Changes have taken place underground as well. In Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave, which is 350 miles long, park managers have halted a popular boat ride on an underground river because the disturbance was harming aquatic wildlife, including 12 species of eyeless cave dwellers found nowhere else in the world. Park tour guides have also abandoned a tradition of their forebears, who illuminated recesses of large chambers by throwing torches into them. The kerosene smoke darkened cave walls.

At Yellowstone Park, the return to nature means restocking a controversial animal. In June the Clinton Administration approved a plan to reintroduce 30 gray wolves into the park. The homecoming occurs after decades of persecution and annihilation of the animals, largely at the hands of ranchers who feared for their livestock.

As incredible as it seems today, 30 years ago many parks were deemed too remote and unprofitable for business ventures. As a means of enticing companies to offer lodging and other services, Congress permitted monopolies to gain concessions with long-term contracts. As a result, the government’s share of concession revenues was less than 3% of the $650 million that visitors spent in 1992 in the parks. In March the Senate approved a bill to boost the government’s cut and open contracts to fair competition. The House is on the verge of following suit. Payments would be earmarked for the parks, which would help reduce the park system’s $2.2 billion backlog of maintenance and repairs.

Thirty-year-old contracts have recently expired at Yosemite, and will soon end at other major parks, giving their managers great leverage in scaling back commercialism. Yosemite Concession Services, the winning bidder for the contract there, has agreed to sweep away much of the clutter of souvenir stores. Slated for demolition is a gimmicky gift shop near the edge of Glacier Point that obstructs the view of Yosemite’s waterfalls 3,200 ft. below. Even the merchandise at remaining stores is gradually changing, from kitsch warbonnets and rubber tom-toms to local Native American handicrafts and products reflecting environmental themes.

But sometimes local economics frustrate change. The park service’s attempts to remove a luncheonette and gift shop in New Mexico’s Carlsbad Caverns have ignited protests from the state’s congressional delegation, though the contract has expired. Babbitt ventured up to Capitol Hill to tell Senator Pete Domenici his decision was final, only to watch Representative Joseph Skeen slip through an amendment in an appropriations bill, depriving the park service of the money to tear down the structure. Conservationists call such meddling “park barrel,” alluding to the politicians’ talent for stuffing budgets with pork for voters back home.

To curtail auto traffic and raise money for repairs, many park managers aim to charge higher entrance fees. As vacation destinations, the parks remain an absolute bargain, usually costing only $5 to $10 a vehicle. Half the national parks charge nothing at all. A park-service proposal to collect entry fees on a per-person basis, instead of per vehicle, would raise about $73 million to help offset the repeated budget cuts that have decimated the ranks of rangers and depleted maintenance programs.

Sometimes the measures are even more drastic. On Memorial Day weekend last year, holiday gridlock at Yosemite forced rangers to close gates, turning away more than 750 vehicles. As a last resort, other parks, including Mammoth Cave, sell reserved tickets through a commercial agency, Mistix. David Mihalic, the former superintendent of Mammoth who now heads Glacier park, thinks rationing makes perfect sense to people: “When you go to Cinema 6 and Terminator 2 is sold out, maybe you go see another movie.” Sacrificing some human concerns for nature’s well-being may not please everyone, but the loss of paradise would prove even less popular.